💔 When Life Unravels the Bow

When I started Pink Bow Clay Co. back in June, I had big dreams.

A beautiful website, Clay & Play classes, a pop-up earring bar, holiday collections, how-to content, shows, markets, boutiques — the whole vision board.

And honestly, I hit the ground running. I poured every ounce of myself into it: long nights, endless prototypes, organizing chaos into something beautiful. But somewhere along the way, life had other plans. Cruel ones.

Without diving too deep into details out of respect and heartbreak, my cousin, who’s also been my best friend since childhood, went in for a necessary, life-saving operation on August 2, 2025.

It was supposed to be her fresh start. Her doctors were optimistic; her age, organ function, and overall health all pointed to a full recovery and a return to work in twelve weeks.

Yes, it was an organ transplant — a huge, scary surgery — but she walked into that operating room unassisted, strong, and ready to fight. I never imagined that would be the last time I’d hear her voice clearly.

Fast forward fourteen weeks, and it has been nothing short of a nightmare.

Every possible complication has found its way to her: infection, rejection, organ failure. She was forced into a second emergency transplant — a Hail Mary attempt despite how weak her body had become. And now, swelling on her brain.

Yesterday, the doctor brought us into a private room, that room no family ever wants to enter, and gently told us that there’s nothing more they can do.

Just like that, the world tilted.

I feel completely numb.

I can’t comprehend that this is real, that I may have to live the next forty years (God willing) without her laugh, her sarcasm, her daily texts. We were supposed to be the Golden Girls one day — rocking in our matching robes, sipping coffee, complaining about our hips.

This heartbreak doesn’t come in isolation.

It follows a year that already shattered me: watching my sister fight stage 3C triple-negative breast cancer, and losing my dad in March after his seven-month battle with congestive heart failure that began, ironically and painfully, on August 2, 2024.

One year apart. Two August seconds that changed everything.

I am exhausted. I am broken.

But I’m also clinging to the thread of what Pink Bow was meant to be — hope stitched through heartbreak. This business started as my distraction, my creative outlet, my form of therapy when the world felt too heavy. And now, it’s something deeper.

Pink Bow will go on because she believed in it.

Because Jen believed in me.

During the last phone call we shared, before she slipped into unconsciousness, she told me how proud she was of me. How she loved seeing everything I’d built. And that she’d ordered a sweatshirt with a pink bow on it because it made her think of me.

So that’s what I’ll carry forward.

Not the pain of losing her, but the love, the laughter, and the friendship that shaped who I am.

Every bow I roll, every clay piece I design, every market I set up — she’ll be there.

This isn’t the post I ever imagined writing when I launched Pink Bow.

But maybe that’s the point. Life doesn’t wait until everything is neatly tied and perfectly arranged. It frays, it tangles, it comes undone.

And sometimes… you just have to take the loose ends, pull them together, and make a new bow. 🎀