7. Moon Goddess Necklace
Stirling silver, moonstone.
2002. On loan from Adryon Kozel.
When I was ten, my mother gave me this necklace. Since I was really young, I would sneak out my bedroom window onto the roof at night and stargaze, and gaze at the moon. I watched Star Trek and wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. I fell in love with the Greco-Roman moon goddess Artemis Diana, who is also a favourite of queer women because she ran away into the forest to live with her handmaidens, and hunt and swim, instead of marrying. To me, space exploration, sci fi, and spirituality have always been linked. When I gaze at the night sky I imagine the moon watching over me, and all the possibilities inherent in all the stars and worlds. Now when I stargaze, I track the ISS passes, and I think about the astronauts travelling above me across the sky.
So this necklace became my protector and companion, and a good luck charm. I never took it off, until my graduation from undergrad, when my parents gave me a string of pearls and my moon goddess slipped out of my pocket and was lost. My mother had an exact replica made, and I decided the power of the original transferred into the second one, so to me this is the same necklace with the same meaning.