It Made The Difference

All my life, through hardships and chaos and disruption of all sort, I have always prided myself on being firmly grounded in the here and now. A sense of stillness is something that I require, not necessarily in my enviornment but in my mind. At 18, things finally came unhinged.

I don't quite know why my life became so unbalanced, but for the first time that I can remember, I had no faith in anything anymore. For so long I had identified myself with peace and stability, and I no longer had that. With timing that was just astronomical, during the very depth of this wild swing to the darker side of myself, I was taken to a crystal shop where I spotted a piece of tiger iron.

With my two feet always firmly planted on the ground, I had never given much thought to crystal healing. I'd have told you up until that point that it was absolute BS. But all the way across the long room, passed all of the sparkles and the glint of the brightly colored crystals was this dull and drab and barely noticeably piece of tiger iron. And for the life of me, I had never wanted to pick something up so bad in my entire life. I did pick it up, and I was hooked.

I didn't know what the stone was meant to do, only that I appreciated the weight of it in my hand. I felt that in both a literal and metaphorical sense, it was pulling me back to earth. I bought it, and kept it beside me for several days and nights.

The persistent anxiety and doubt that I felt, the thoughts that were so foreign and corrosive to my sense of self, soon became something that I could turn my back one. Although it was still there, it no longer dominated my day. And for the first time in months, I was able to get something done!

Only now that I see what tiger iron has done for me do I appreciate it's beauty. It's my go-to stone when these feelings arise again, and it has never once disappointed me.