Why Breast Cancer Awareness Dreamcatchers?
Because in 2005, breast cancer claimed the life of one of my oldest friends in her mid-thirties. Because my mother-in-law is a survivor...
Because in 1998, my business partner became a single parent of three children after losing his wife to the disease and her Native American dreamcatchers and Mexican Indian creations provided models and inspiration for much of my early work. The name, Cyña (pronounced sin'-ya) is something I came up with using a combination of her name and mine, Cynthia and Donna. I liked the sound of the word as well as its simplicity.
$1.00 from each pink dreamcatcher is donated to:
The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation
A couple of years into our business venture, we inadvertently discovered that cyna was an actual word and the common name for a species of butterfly indigenous to Mexico called Zizula cyna. What was so amazing was that not only had Cyndi's heritage been Hispanic in origin -- a factor of significance throughout her life, but that it was the name for, of all things, a butterfly! -- a universally accepted symbol of metamorphosis and radical change. More specifically, a metaphor for the journey of the Soul as it leaves the physical plane to return to its Source.
I am firmly convinced that we are spiritual beings involved in a physical experience and that our spirits do indeed carry on once our work here on Earth is done. Likewise, I am certain that the seeming coincidence was Cyndi's way of communicating approval of the business endeavour that had been inspired in large part by her creative energy.
Cynthia Yanez Gaskins
Devoted wife and mother
1959-1998
