Good as Gold: Passion and Authenticity through OM Jewelry Design

The name Yogini Cuisine accurately depicts the unique mixing bowl of offerings that I have cultivated over the years: private yoga instruction and retreats, blogging about cooking and conscious living, and perhaps my most precious ingredient in this recipe: literally, and figuratively, my jewelry design. You can’t eat it, though sometimes I like the mouthfeel of pure gold, or you can scrape a pearl on your tooth to see if it’s real…

I am excited to share with you the process behind Sarah Willis Jewelry, and how my approach is embodied.

When I was a younger woman I had an amazing and beautiful jewelry collection. Two gorgeous pearl necklaces, both from my grandmother. The first necklace, a single strand of pearls with a filigree clasp, given to me as a high school graduation present, was stolen out of my underwear drawer in college. The second set was lost. I hid them from myself as firemen ransacked my room after the front facade of a Brooklyn brownstone I was renting a room in collapsed. I can still picture the octagonal silk lined box. It contained the pearls, a double strand of irregularly shaped “potato pearls,” inherited from my grandmother after she passed, an emerald cut single carat or slightly bigger amethyst ring, a small diamond and ruby ring I found on the floor of a theatre, and a pair of CZ stud earrings. I hid them from myself in a moment of chaos and never found them. That was ten years ago. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t think about those pearls. Uggh. 

I have experienced pretty intense privilege most of my life. I went to the best schools and had no student debts to pay back. I have been given money by my parents to start businesses, get therapy, put deposits down on apartments in nice neighborhoods, and much more. At the same time, my parents’ style of love was conflicting for me: existent, yet often impudent and negligent of my emotional needs.  I was not encouraged to follow my dreams, my exploration of spirituality was viewed as woo woo, and my stance on health and wellness is mostly met with raised eyebrows, a lot of “what the fuck is she thinking” kind of conversations, both to my face and among family members / close friends. I was not met by their cheers in sports matches (I was captain of the volleyball team in high school and ran track and field and advanced to the top of my game as a half-miler). I was not guided towards the things that I really loved and naturally excelled at, sometimes I was even talked out of them. This created insecurity and a lack of self-worth, and lack of respect for my belongings, which manifested in a tendency to lose, give away or have my precious things stolen. 

It was when I became an entrepreneur and started my business that I felt empowered to create and support the ME that I had always wanted to be. When I decided to embark on a jewelry design career, it was somewhat spontaneous and serendipitous. A close friend’s sister is a jewelry designer, and we happened to be hanging out when I had $1000 in cash (payment from a Yoga client) in my pocket, and she quoted that exact price as the amount needed to get started with my molds and castings for my first OM charms. I had a fantasy that I would create pavé diamond Om charms. The price and way to that was out of scope then, but after three years, it arrived! 

Self-help culture tells us that when we find our calling, to listen. What is the first thing you wake up thinking about? Follow that dream, and your tasks will be laid out for you. I now proudly wake up obsessed with my jewelry. I look with admiration over my growing personal and professional collections. I know instinctively where I want the stones to be set, what color and carat weight I need to allow the sacred symbol of Om, also translatable to Pranavah, or “eternally new” in Sanskrit, to convey the meaning of such a sacred symbol, shape and sound vibration in its all beauty and mystery. 

This jewelry collection is the essence of me. It is rooted in Yoga, which I have practiced now for 25 years, including the pursuit of Sanskrit studies. It is a fine jewelry line, meaning that the metals we cast are 100% pure, and high vibrational, rather than dull amalgams of cheaper mystery metals. It is made in New York City in the diamond district, where my own ancestors bought and traded their wares a hundred years ago. I used to hear all the time about my grandfather’s pearl guy, and I found my current jeweler through a friend of my aunt. 

Fine jewelry and my Yoga inspired designs are the perfect marriage of my uptown girl style, and taste for the finest things money can buy, and my humble dedication to Yoga tradition. Yoga is a spiritual pursuit, and how it crosses over with Hindu iconography, with all the gilded colorful depictions of deities, patterns and symbols have become a part of our popular culture these last few decades; or maybe since the Jimi Hendrix album cover art from Axis Bold As Love. The meaning of Om is beyond language and is a sacred and universal sound vibration, and gold is one of the highest vibration metals that exists. 

Being a born-and-raised New York City girl, a mother, a Yogi, a writer, a Jewish Hindu, an intellectual and philosopher, a liberal, and someone with very expensive taste and a single mom budget, all of these aspects have informed the work that I jump out of bed to do every day now, and despite how hard much has been over this last year, that makes me happy. My jewelry was an opportunity to express myself authentically, both in wearing it and in designing it in a way that feels true to me. 

There are so many things out of our control these days, yet creativity is always a channel universally available for us to reconnect with ourselves. Thank you for letting me share with you. My hope in sharing is to inspire you to connect with this opportunity for yourself, both to wear my story-driven creations as a reminder of my journey and the chance you have to always find what lights you on fire – of course, from a place of OM.