For more than twenty years, pearls have been at the center of my life. Now my life is still about the pearls but it is also about the people, places and stories.
In 2006, newly married, I embarked on a journey through Asia and slowly began buying, and then selling, pearls! It was the beginning of my business, The Pearl Girls.
Over the years I’ve bought them, sold them, repaired them, restrung them, studied them and traveled around the world to see where they come from.
I have run teams of sales reps. I have sold wholesale. I opened my own retail shop. I employed mammas and offered on-site childcare, I created a signature necklace for Southern Living Magazine. I’ve traveled to over 20 pearl farms all over the world, meeting the people who grow pearls. I have met designers, metal artists, historians, scientists and more. I have asked a million questions and talked about pearls to anyone who would listen. And I have sold millions of dollars worth of pearls on my website, ThePearlGirls.com.
And throughout all of this, I have loved on two of the most amazing human beings, watching the transform from babies in my womb to amazing young men before my eyes.
I have gotten divorced and married again.
I have felt my heart expand as I embrace three stepdaughters and one amazing husband.
I have left my home and blended into a better, stronger family.
I have stayed up late at night, crying, feeling like my whole world collapsing around me.
And I have now experienced what it feels like to be fully loved and supported.
And I still love them. Pearls, that is.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
I realized that the most interesting part of this journey hasn’t always been the pearls.
It’s been everything that has come along with the pearls. The journey has been about the people, the places and the stories.
A strand of pearls isn’t always just a strand of pearls. It might be the necklace your grandmother wore every Sunday. The earrings you bought yourself after finally getting the job. The bracelet from a marriage that didn’t last. The ring no one in the family can quite agree about. The piece tucked into the back of a drawer for thirty years because looking at it brings back a person, a place or an entire chapter of a life. Your life.
I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years.
I’ve lived quite a few of them, too.
Pearls have taken me to places I never expected to go and introduced me to people I never would have met otherwise. They’ve taught me about travel and history and science. They have taught me about dreams and, ultimately, about loss. But also about business, value, expectations and the peculiar ways we humans become attached to beautiful things. And the way we crave a life of beautiful things.
And now I find myself wanting to write about all of it.
Actually, I’ve already started.
After twenty years of working in the jewelry business, I did something that surprised even me: I wrote a novel, A beautiful story that dropped into my mind on a 2017 trip to Japan. The World of Pearl.
It’s fiction, but like most fiction, little pieces of a real life inevitably find their way in. My years in jewelry gave me the world and eventually I discovered that I wanted to tell stories from it.
That realization has changed what I want The World of Pearl to be.
There will still be pearls here. Of course there will. I can’t imagine my world without them.
I’ll still write about unusual pearls, beautiful jewelry, fascinating places and the things I’ve learned over the years. But I also want to tell you about the people I’ve met, the places I’ve traveled, the things I’ve gotten wrong, the things I’ve learned, and the stories that have stayed with me.
And I’ll be writing about writing, too.
This isn’t really a reinvention of India or The Pearl Girls.
I think it’s an expansion of it. This is where the girl meets the world. This is my world. The World of Pearl.
Because after all these years, I’ve realized something.
The Pearl Girls was not the whole story. It was simply where the story began.
Welcome to the next chapter, The World of Pearl. This one is about pearls, people, places, stories.
I’m very glad you’re here.
India
I am a modern day treasure hunter who travels the world for gorgeous pearls and amazing adventures. I own a pearl jewelry and jewelry repair business, ThePearlGirls.com, with a cute retail store in Athens, GA. I also have a Pearl Travel business and travel blog at TheWorldofPearl.com.
