This is my official Pandora bracelet, and I’m enamoured by it! ❤️ I started it back in November 2019 and completed it by the end of the holiday season. Looking in retrospect, I shrivel with a wee bit of guilt from my hasty whims, but I was so madly in love and obsessed with collecting charms that I couldn’t pace myself. “There she goes with her Pandora again,” my sister would laugh. Yeep.

Collecting charms is not only a fun and creative hobby or passion — albeit, eek, a very expensive one — it’s also a sentimental and charming way of storytelling. My bracelet holds many charms with different stories and meanings to me, most of which highlight my loved ones’ significance and role in my life, but my favourites are the “Little House Charm” and the “Elephant & Blue Balloon Dangle Charm.”

I could almost clutch my “Little House Charm” in my hand and nestle it cozily against my heart. For me, it symbolizes my family and childhood roots because it looks almost identical to my old childhood home in Ottawa that I grew up in, with the same two top windows and flowers in front. (I lived there for about 25 years!) I fondly remember the orange flowers that would grow every summer and could still picture Dad watering them. I’ve had bittersweet memories in that home and it’s the place that’s deeply shaped who I am today. That home, which has now been demolished, has become the centre of my heart and soul. To solidify its meaning to me, my parents have even gifted me this charm which was very sweet.

While the “Little House Charm” carries a soulful significance for me, the “Elephant & Blue Balloon Dangle Charm” wins the title of being the cutest charm on my bracelet. It also carries its own meaning. It’s a mommy elephant with a baby elephant on her back, and both are hanging from a blue balloon. I had bought this charm when I was pregnant and found out we were having a boy; it was to symbolize my little Keaton and I. This charm was no longer available in stores, but through serendipity and elemental forces that were in my favour, I was able to stumble upon it.

I love this bracelet dearly. It reminds me of this past holiday season when my parents came to visit us and I was pregnant. Pregnancy was challenging, but wearing my beloved bracelet — a little detail in my life — gave me a boost of warmth and energy. But because I’m a mommy now — a full-time food source, human pacifier, and archangel of cuddles — I can no longer wear it, as it’s heavy and chunky. Sometimes, however, I do try it on — even whilst in pjs — just to remind myself of its cute existence, and to, you know, feel a bit cute myself, especially now that these days I feel like a dusty ancient relic.

I can’t wait to wear this bracelet again; it’s been a long time since I’ve given birth and placed it safely in its box. I’m also currently working on bracelet number two! I’m aiming for it to be an all-silver tone and am super excited about the new charms I’ll be adding. Now… to pace myself.