Getting Started.
Let’s go back to March 2021. I started having intense abdominal pain and “lady issues” on top of already dealing with progressively debilitating Rheumatoid Arthritis. I had been working from home as a step in client service representative since March 2020 at the hospital that I was once so active in. While trying to keep myself safe and alive I had lost my main purpose of helping and sharing love. What I had enjoyed most was being in the hospital helping animals, and I felt the page turning; maybe even a chapter.
After scheduling surgery to hopefully address my abdominal pain in April, in my heart I had two choices. 1. Continue to work and take a couple weeks off to recover and continue putting my health second. 2. Change everything I knew and give myself the biggest chance ever. To fully devote energy to healing and radical self love. So after putting in my notice, I started dabbling in resin earrings , giving gifts to family and loved ones. This gave me the confidence to open an Etsy shop and start selling to stangers! I can’t even begin to describe how it felt when I saw the first sale come through from a non familiar name, double, triple checking that this was actually real! My first real sale.
I have fond memories of when I was a little kid, being at the Tanner Gun Show with my dad and his business. I would go to each booth and proudly show off my “vendor” sticker to the adult vendors. As with any show, there is typically jewelry somewhere, and your girl always gravitated towards it. My dad bought me a gorgeous sterling silver and turquoise cuff made by an Indigenous female artist that I wear still on my fancy days. I would go back home and be sure to go to my nana and grandpa’s house that was two houses away to show off my new bling! My stoic indigenous grandpa would put his glasses on and examine the work. Nice, he would say. His jewelry was and still is none to rival with. For now (;
He mainly collects work from a female Zuni artist, Effie Calavaza. I was so impressed in the details of her work, from belt buckles to money clips to rings. He has it all. I would trace the stamped Effie C. Zuni on the backplate of her work and daydream about this little lady working with a torch and metal. Longing to be in the wilderness with lots of animals and a cute little house and studio, creating for the world and creating to support myself just enough, (As I’m writing this, it’s bringing tears to my eyes. I see this dream coming into fruition at present and it makes me believe in magic.) I couldn’t help but see her as an inspiration.
What I admire most is that at all stages in my self learning, I am always trying my hardest, always giving it my all, no matter the step or stage. I remember when the name occurred to me, Wild Lobo, for my business and everything just felt like it was falling into place organically. I get asked what the biz name means and it comes from my last name, Lopez, and love for all things wild and free. 