Fiona O’Leary Sloan is a 2013 Venture for America Fellow working as an urban planning consultant with U3 Advisors in Detroit, MI. She recently launched IARA (pronounced yiah-rah), an artisanal, handmade, and individually designed line of beaded jewelry, as part of the VFA Innovation Fund. Support Fiona and IARA by visiting her Indiegogo page.
Last summer, I was mugged. I was heading to after-dinner drinks with a couple of friends when three men approached us, stole our belongings, and raced off in a waiting car. It all happened quickly—10, maybe 15 seconds—and apart from a few scrapes and bruises, we stood on the street corner in Detroit, my home for the past two years, physically unharmed.
When I tell people I was mugged, they all want to hear my story. They ask if the muggers had a gun, if they threatened my life. They ask if I fought back, what time it was, where it happened. And with each answer I give, I see their empathy dissipate bit by bit: Did they have a gun? No. Did they threaten you? No. Did you fight back? No. What time was it? 11PM. Where did it happen? Corktown (a neighborhood as well known for its new restaurants as its petty crime). Well, they say, it could have been worse.
Yes, it could have been worse. I guess one could say it was a “gentle” mugging. Nonetheless, it left me rattled. A week later, I started beading again. At first, I didn’t connect the two, but I see now that returning to that craft in the wake of my mugging—a craft I found focus and solace in as a girl—was not coincidental.
The process of setting a loom, threading a needle, and weaving a tapestry of beads had always been therapeutic for me. Growing up in New Mexico, my godmother, an artist and jewelry maker, had taught me how to crimp wire ends and drape strands of beads. For an eleven-year-old perfectionist, the tactile nature of making jewelry was a far cry from the rote memorization required in my middle school classroom, and I soaked up every minute of her instruction.
Now, years away from those early lessons, I called upon my muscle memory and re-taught myself the bead weaving techniques historically employed by the Zuni and Navajo nations I grew up around, bought dime bags of beads in colors that reminded me of the year I lived in Rio de Janeiro, set the warps and wefts on my loom, and began beading.
Weeks went by before I realized how much my life had changed since the mugging. I came straight home from work most nights. I stopped leaving my apartment after dark. I invented migraines to explain my absence at parties and social gatherings. I watched my friendships wither and then vanish, like cold breaths in a Detroit winter.
All the while, I continued to bead, and before long I had made so many pieces of jewelry that I decided I should try to sell them. I registered as a vendor at a local farmers’ market and gave my fledgling company a name: IARA, after a fearless water siren found in Brazilian mythology. Naming my company IARA was emblematic of the person I had once been and wanted to be again: fearless.
The late Howard Thurman, a theologian and civil rights leader, tells us that we should not ask what the world needs of us, but what makes us come alive. To my immense surprise, IARA has lit my soul on fire in the best possible way. Founding IARA has been my own personal act of courage, a way to make productive use of the time I still spend indoors, a way to make something beautiful in a world I temporarily saw as dark and unkind.
Someone once said that everything will be okay in the end, and that if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. Things in my world are not okay yet. I still tremble when I have to walk to my car after dark; I still invent migraines; I still stay home more often than not. I still wince at the memory of my mugging, but I now realize that if I hadn’t needed comfort, if I hadn’t leaned my head on the shoulder of my childhood hobby, I would never be in the position I am now.
I am not healed but healing, and there are many women—some of whom may one day wear this jewelry—who are in the same place. I officially launched IARA last month as an Indiegogo campaign in coordination with Venture for America, the fellowship program that brought me to Detroit and encouraged me to think of my pastime as a potential entrepreneurial venture. This company is just starting, and I am producing a product that makes me proud. I hope that my jewelry can empower other women to walk confidently in the direction of their own dreams. That is life, after all: this cycle of one helping the next, finding the one glowing streetlight among rows of unlit streets.
The Innovation Fund is a four-week crowdfunding competition that gives VFA Fellows the opportunity to launch their business ideas and projects. Nine Fellow-led teams are off to the races sharing their new ventures with the world and hustling to raise as much money as possible on Indiegogo between now and March 16th.