For eight summers, I returned home from university in Vancouver to work in home care nursing for Fredrikstad Municipality. What began as a student job became a profound education in humanity. From administering medication to sitting bedside as patients transitioned from this world, I witnessed the quiet power of presence, story, movement, and shared meals. Though my parents hoped I’d become a nurse, I knew deep down this chapter was not my destination, but a sacred foundation for something else. The care, the listening, the intergenerational wisdom I absorbed would later be a key ingredient shaping the soul of my work with Sumati.

We often don’t realize the weight of a moment until years later, when its quiet lessons return to shape our values, our work, our mission. In this first entry of No Step Wasted: Gratitude for the Journey, I return to a formative chapter at Pyrrha Design, a Vancouver jewelry studio where I first touched the sacred link between handwork and heritage. What began as an internship became a blueprint for the kind of life and leadership I strive to embody today: intentional, ancestral, and artful. This is a story of silver, symbolism, and the subtle ways purpose reveals itself, one crafted piece at a time.