A Spirit Doll

My blog friend Nicole makes and sells beautiful spirit dolls on her website, Beadwright. I'm a great lover of dolls. Nicole's spirit dolls are made from hand-formed faces, sticks, fabric, and leather, cloth, and bead embellishments. They really appealed to me, so I ordered one from the website. Amazingly, the package from Nicole arrived from her home in Oregon in just two days, right before Christmas.

What a lovely doll! She's on display on my living room wall, along with a number of masks from a variety of cultures. I feel a sense of identity in all these masks also, and I think the doll is very compatible with them.

Nicole wrote me that she particularly made this doll to inspire balance, and to help to balance the life of its owner: me! "Balance is a tricky thing," Nicole says. "Just when we think we have it, life throws something else at us. Be it big or small. Look for the balance, the yin and yang, the hot and cold, the go and stop of it all." I feel this balance in the doll. I think she's beautiful. Nicole says "there is so much positive energy and love in her." Yes.

Masks that we've had for several years. The one on the left is Yupik from Alaska, the next two are African,
the next two are from a village in the upper Amazon and Costa Rica, and the far right one is from New Guinea.
We have a number of other masks and carvings as well.

Blog post © 2021 mae sander.