A friend recently sent me a bracelet in the mail – no card, no note. Instead, the gift was accompanied by an explanatory text introducing the the bracelet as one for expectant mothers and informing me that the three stones on a thin cord were rose quartz and hematite. According to the text, rose quartz is meant to provide protection and emotional support for mother and child, while hematite is one of the oldest protective stones and believed to help maintain balance in body, spirit, and soul.

I felt a peace spreading through my body when I held the bracelet in my hands. It’s the type of jewelry that I’d like to wear without taking off, but I’ve decided to remove it at night for the sake of longevity. For many years I wore red string bracelets, believed by cultures around the world to protect the wearer from harm. In the tradition that I know, a loved one clasps the bracelet around the wearer’s left wrist where it should remain until it falls off on its own. I often found mine tangled in my sheets upon waking, and I’d like to prevent my newest protective bracelet from meeting the same fate.

I admit to being somewhat superstitious in certain contexts, having a baby being one of them, as well as fully persuaded by the existence of unexplained spiritual forces in the universe. I hadn’t known that I was holding any negative emotions until I put on the rose quartz and hematite bracelet and felt lighter, safer, more confident. I am not one to shy away from incorporeal practices of the ages.

My partner and I joke about how we found each other in the world – mostly by travelling through enough countries in the same year that we eventually landed in the same place. We are both happy to accept a spiritual explanation for that.

That a friend from halfway around the world sent me just thing that I didn’t know I needed has, to my way of thinking, similar spiritual overtones).

And any force of nature that people have believed in for thousands of years, especially at a time when I draw strength from all of evolutionary history, is a powerful one indeed.