It began, as many good things do, with a
trip to Michaels.
Alison Rizzuto had been given several
religious medals since she came into the Catholic Church a few years prior, and
she wanted a way to wear them. “I wanted something kind of funky, something modern,
and I couldn’t find it,” she said. “So I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just make it.’ ”
She put her daughter Charlotte on the back of her bike and they rode down to
the nearby craft store.
What started as a hobby has become Humble
Mission Beads, an Etsy shop where Alison has sold more than 1,000 pieces of
faith-inspired jewelry and other products. The platforms it’s provided and the
sales she’s made support another passion of hers: helping women through the painful
experience of losing an unborn baby.
Alison’s jewelry collection ranges from
chunky, 10-bead rosary bracelets to delicate silver and gold necklaces, all
featuring a dangling religious medal. The medal often sets the tone for the
piece. The Our Lady of the Snows bracelet is made with pearls and white stones;
the St. Francis of Assisi bracelet has wooden beads; and a Holy Spirit bracelet
has beads meant to be dipped in essential oils so the fragrance can linger for
hours.
Many pieces features tassels, which in
Numbers, God commanded the Israelites to wear as a reminder not to go “wantonly
astray after the desires of your heart and eyes.” Lines from the Litany of
Humility appear often, too as humility was on her mind when she named the
store. “There’s something about humility that is the key to all of this
experience here on earth,” said Alison. “You have to get humiliated to get
humble, that's the part we don’t like,” she said with a laugh.
All the Humble Mission items have one
thing in common — “God gives me a story for every piece of jewelry,” said Alison.
“The idea is a gift. It’s definitely inspiration that I get.” For example, after
visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche in St. Augustine, Fla., she began
to make necklaces with medals of a nursing Jesus and Mary, paired with an oblong
pearl bead that almost looks like a drop of milk.
A friend from church trekked the Camino
de Santiago in Spain and returned with medals for Alison. Her mind swirled with
the image of footsteps on an earthy path leading to a heavenly destination, so she
created anklets with a shell, the symbol of that pilgrimage.
After seeing how much her daughter
enjoyed wearing bows that matched the color of the liturgical season, Alison
worked with two more friends from her parish, St. Leo the Great Church in
Fairfax, to make a graphic of the liturgical calendar and hair ribbons in each
color.
The inspiration for new products and the
materials needed to create them come from all over. “It’s not all my ideas. I’m
just the instrument,” she said.
Alison always was interested in the
arts, but for many years she preferred singing to precious stones and golden
chains. When her Florida high school discontinued its arts program, she got her
GED certificate and began college at the nearby performing arts school. “I
still couldn’t drive so my parents had to drop me off every day for college,”
she said. She later transferred to the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, N.Y.
and graduated in 2007. In between undergraduate and graduate school, she
studied in Rochester, N.Y., where she met her future husband Tony, who was
stationed there with the U.S. Air Force.
Alison Rizzuto makes an Interior Castle bracelet for her
online shop, Humble Mission Beads, while her children play around her. ZOEY MARAIST | CATHOLIC HERALD
Tony’s witness eventually brought
Alison, who was Protestant, into the Catholic Church. “When we were just
friends, we would sit up and talk and we would always have these very
interesting conversations. I was always seeking, and he was too,” she said. “I
made the choice to go to RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) and I
didn't tell him (at first). I wanted it to be my decision.
“But then as time has gone on, I realize
that God works through people and God used him and his witness of the faith to
open my heart and my eyes to what's true,” said Alison. “What better reason
than love to draw someone deeper and closer to God?” Alison entered the church
in 2011 at St. Leo a few months before the couple married.
Alison was on the faculty of a medical
school, working to help singers who had injured their voices get back into
performing, when she decided to leave the singing world altogether. “I felt
like I was being called out of that work. It started to feel like, it’s time,”
she said.
Though she wasn’t sure why at first, Alison
now believes God was preparing her for something else. A few months later, she
was pregnant with their second child. Then they learned they were going to lose
the baby at 12 weeks gestation. It changed their family, and her business,
forever.
“We had to explain (the miscarriage) to (our
daughter) Charlotte because she was at the appointment for the first ultrasound
and there was no heartbeat. We sat down and said, ‘God has decided that
everything this baby was meant to do on earth, it has done. And now the baby is
in heaven and our job as a family is to try to get there so we can be there
together again someday,’ ” said Alison. “Our family had a mission because of
that baby. All of a sudden it was like, we’re going to heaven and we’re going
to drag along everyone with us that we can.”
Alison was able to give birth to their miscarried
child, Francis, at home. A few months later, she miscarried baby Claire. Through
the organization A Mom’s Peace, they buried both babies at the St. Benedict
Monastery in Bristow. Since then, they have had another child, Leo, who is 2.
Once again, Alison began to create, not
with beads but with boxes filled with the things to help a woman retrieve the
remains of her child and get through the miscarriage spiritually, emotionally
and physically. The bereavement boxes, which are now available on her Etsy
site, include Epsom salts, pads, gauze, tea, twinkling lights and a prayer card
with a quote from St. Zelie Martin — “We shall find our little ones again up
above.”
She mails one or two boxes out a month
to women free of charge and funded in part from the shop sales. Some families have
volunteered to purchase supplies that cover the rest. “We’ve received messages
from women and families that it’s been very healing for them to provide for
other women who are going through this,” she said.
Alison’s losses not only inspired the
boxes but the jewelry, too. There’s a necklace inscribed with the St. Zelie
quote as well as a necklace featuring St. Catherine of Sweden, the patron saint
of miscarriages. “People want something to help them remember their little ones
and their beautiful family,” she said.
In some ways, that’s what her little
shop is all about — providing lovely, wearable reminders of the holy men and
women who have gone onto heaven. She’s seeking to encounter God through the
saints while stringing together bracelets in her children’s playroom/bead
studio. And she’s praying she strings others along with her.
“Tangible, beautiful things can really
orient our hearts to (God) because he is good, true and beautiful,” she said.
“That’s what I strive to do with my jewelry.”