Born from a Story. My Own.
Long before Aubretta, I was a jeweler.
I went to school to become a jeweler and goldsmith. I learned the craft, built my own jewelry business, and eventually had a little studio in downtown Wausau, Wisconsin.
This wasn't something I thought I'd like to try someday.
It was a passion and something I'd already built.
Then life changed.
A difficult chapter brought me to Minnesota, and not long after, I found out I was going to become a mom.
Suddenly, stability mattered in a completely different way.
So I built another career. I built a life.
And somewhere along the way, my jewelry bench, tools and stones were packed away.
The dream wasn't.
For nearly fifteen years, some part of me kept wondering if I'd ever find my way back to it.
And then, at the beginning of this year, that quiet pull became almost impossible to ignore. I had this overwhelming feeling:
This is the year.
The year I was supposed to stop talking about coming back to jewelry.
The year I was supposed to actually try.
But wanting something and being willing to walk away from a secure ten-year career to pursue it were two very different things.
I prayed about it.
I cried about it.
I ran the numbers.
I even wrote an actual proposal to my husband trying to make the case for why leaving a stable career to chase this dream wasn't completely crazy.
Ultimately, the answer was no. And I understood why.
We had a family. A great salary. Benefits. Security.
There was no guarantee this would work.
But I kept coming back to the same thought:
I'd rather try and fail than spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I'd tried.
I started thinking about the 80-year-old version of myself. Someday, when she looked back at this chapter of her life, what would I want her to remember? I wanted her to be proud that I tried. I wanted her to say: Thank God you took the risk.
And I wanted my children to grow up having watched their mom chase something she believed in.
Not because success was guaranteed.
Not because everyone understood it.
But because sometimes you have to believe in the pull toward something before you know exactly where it's taking you.
And then, four months later, I was laid off.
Something that should have felt entirely like an ending felt strangely like an invitation.
The layoff didn't create the dream. It created the opening.
Suddenly, the things I hadn't been able to give myself, time and enough breathing room to really try, had been handed to me.
Call it timing.
Call it the universe.
Call it an answered prayer.
Call it life making a decision I hadn't been able to make myself.
Whatever it was, I knew what it felt like to me:
Pay attention.
So I did.
I drove back to Wisconsin, to the place where this story had started years before.
I opened boxes that had been packed away through moves, careers, motherhood and nearly fifteen years of life.
I pulled out my old tools.
My stones.
And the jewelry bench I'd once worked behind in my little studio in Wausau.
And I brought them home to Minnesota.
We emptied the little shed behind our house.
The storage boxes came out. Walls went up. Windows went in.
And slowly, this forgotten little space started becoming a jewelry studio.
My jewelry studio.
Nearly fifteen years after life pulled me away from that bench, I sat down behind it again.
And I started again.
And then it needed a name.
AUBRETTA
Aubrey + Loretta.
My daughters.
There is something incredibly meaningful to me about carrying their names inside the name of this dream.
Because part of building Aubretta is about what I make.
But part of it is also about what I hope my children see.
I want them to see their mom try.
I want them to know that you can build a life, change direction, begin again, and still make room for the things that call you back to yourself.
I want them to know that a safe choice isn't always the only right choice.
That failing at something you believed in isn't the worst thing that can happen.
Sometimes the bigger risk is never finding out what might have been.
Aubretta began with my story.
But it isn't meant to end there.
Because our lives are made of chapters.
Beginnings. Endings. People. Places. Memories. Risks. Reinventions. And all the versions of ourselves we meet along the way.
The jewelry I make begins with one of those stories.
Then it leaves my bench.
It finds you.
And whatever happens next belongs to you.
Every piece begins with a story.
the rest is yours.