Radical Joy Revealed is a weekly message of inspiration about finding and making beauty in wounded places. We hope you'll enjoy these doorways into places that are both familiar and surprising, and we welcome your suggestions, stories, and photos. Click here to subscribe.

Tapestry of Grief and Healing

Paperbead tapestry by Iroquois and Kenyan artists showing grief and its healing. Photo by Dolores Elliott.

When Cayuga beadworker Sam Thomas visited a village in Kenya in 2005, shortly after the death of his mother, master beadworker Lorna Hill, he worked with local women to make this tapestry. The left side of the face is distorted with grief. In the center, wampun beads wash away the tears. On the right side of the face life, balance, and perspective come together again. The piece is made of paperbeads, a process of
cutting paper into thin strips and then rolling them into beads.

Thanks to Iroquois beadwork expert Dolores Elliott for this photo and story.

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Make Beauty
for a Place You Love

On June 20 people around the world will go to wounded places to share their stories of what the places mean to them, spend time getting to know the places as they are now, and make a simple act of beauty there: a bird created out of materials found on site. Join the world in making beauty for the Earth for the 6th annual Global Earth Exchange.

To see the photos of the 2014 Global Earth Exchange, visit our website. To read the stories click on the little "pins" on our world map.

Radical Joy for Hard Times is a global community dedicated to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Reconnecting with these places, sharing our stories of loss and despair, and making acts of beauty there, we transform the land, reconnect people and the places that nourish them, and empower ourselves to make a difference in the way we live on Earth.

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