The Thought that Held it All

When I was a little girl, I did not just play with Barbie, I created an entire world for her. I would spend countless hours setting up books as walls, sofa tops as penthouses, and even bring in bowls of water from the kitchen so that she could have an authentic swimming pool. By the time I finally set everything up to actually play with her, it was either time to go to bed or I was too exhausted to do anything else. My creativity was limitless and my poor friends suffered the fun – and consequences (we had a LOT of cleaning up afterwards) – of my over the top games. We did everything from creating entire malls in our backyard (with tree leaves used as money to purchase items) to full concerts where we would dress up and sing Madonna with a hairbrush to our dedicated audience of stuffed animals.

My mother was the same. She was my inspiration – and my goddess. I would spend countless hours curled up in her lap while she drew (what she liked to call) doodles on a sketch pad or made my Halloween costumes each year. Everything she touched was magical, and she could turn any item into a piece of art. She was my role model, and I worked very hard to become her equal in anything artistic. I won several state awards for my projects on my path to following her intricate shadow, but I always knew she had more to teach me. I watched her work on everything from flower arranging to sewing and sucked up the knowledge like a dehydrated sponge.

Unfortunately, we were both considered flawed outside of the creative world. I had trouble in school because I received the label of ADHD at the age of five. My mother got her labels at the age of thirty and they changed her world forever: schizoaffective disorder, borderline personality disorder, and major depression.

Although it was a long struggle, we both found our inner strength and learned how to use our flaws to our advantage. I changed my major in college to psychology and began working with thousands of children and teenagers all across the state of Connecticut to help them cope with ADHD and other disabilities. My mother joined several communities and programs to help adults get back on their feet and back into the communities.

Together, we found that creativity was the thing that helped in both of our situations. Is was (and still is) the joy that makes us feel like we have wings. It was actually my clients that turned us to selling on Etsy and decided on the name MDRL. MDRL is a path that I have started. MD stands for who I am now (Melissa Damon). The RL stands for Renaissance Lady, which is the utopia both my mother and I wish to reach for in our creative works and life. It is a modernized version of the Renaissance Man and means someone that is adept in many things.

We love to create crafts but we also want to help others with similar situations to our own. There is a beautiful non-profit group called “Friends” that is based in Connecticut. They work with people that have trouble with social situations and teach them how to do things like shop for groceries, interact with ease in public settings, and to just get out of the house and doing things in the outside community. We are taking a percentage of each of our items sold on Etsy and donating it to this program. We are also going to donate a percentage to a non-profit partial hospital called Joshua Center that does the same thing, but for children and teens. Our goal in selling items for Etsy is to show the world our love for crafts – while helping others along the way.

Each one of our pieces are made with love – and filled with dreams. We hope that you enjoy them and will continue to help us reach our goals.

Thank you. ^_^