About Us : The Story Behind the Hematite Bracelet

I created Haima for the woman I was at 44: tired, with reassuring test results, and weary of brands promising miracles. So we designed the bracelet I would have dreamed of. Genuine hematite, no magnets, no batteries, no applicator, and no clasp, because my grandmother never took hers off. We don't claim it treats or cures anything. It's a piece of jewelry, created by people who prefer to share their observations rather than promise a result.

Here is the story behind it, by Christina Andreou, founder of MyHaima.

The Word Was “Budget”

I was forty-four, standing in front of a conference room of people I’d managed for nine years, and I lost the word budget.

Not a hard word. Not a technical word. A word I had said ten thousand times. It was right there, and then it wasn’t. I stood there smiling while twelve people waited, and I said “the… the money plan,” and someone laughed kindly, and I wanted to disappear.

That night I sat on the stairs after the kids went to bed. I didn’t go up and I didn’t go down. My husband found me twenty minutes later and asked what was wrong, and the honest answer was: I don’t know who I am anymore.

I wasn’t sad, exactly. I was empty. Running on fumes by two in the afternoon, every afternoon. Snapping at my daughter over things that didn’t matter, then lying awake at 3am replaying it. I looked at a photo from my son’s birthday and didn’t recognize the woman in it.

“Your Labs Are Fine.”

I did what you’re supposed to do. I went to my doctor with a list. Everything came back normal. “You’re forty-four, you have two teenagers and a full-time job. Honestly, it’s normal to be tired.”

Then she offered me an antidepressant. I told her I wasn’t depressed. I was depleted. Those are different things, and I knew the difference, because I knew myself.

The Drawer of Supplements That Didn’t Work

So I did what every woman I know has done. I fixed it myself. Magnesium gummies. Ashwagandha, which made me anxious. Iron supplements, which made me nauseous and did nothing else. A $300 set of grounding sheets I had to plug into the wall. A sleep tracker that told me, very precisely, every morning, that I had slept badly.

By the end of that year I had a kitchen drawer full of half-empty bottles and a very specific kind of cynicism. I read the 1-star reviews first. I still do.

My Grandmother’s Hematite Bracelet: To Aima, “The Blood”

My yiayia grew up in a village outside Chania, on Crete. She came to Chicago at nineteen, raised five children, and I never once saw her without a bracelet of heavy black beads on her left wrist. As a little girl I asked her what it was. She said to aima. The blood. The women in her village wore it “for the hard years.”

When she passed, my mother gave me a small box. The bracelet was in it. It sat in my jewelry tray for two years. Then one night, in the middle of the worst of it, I put it on. I think I just wanted to feel close to someone who had been strong.

The first thing I noticed was the weight. Cold, and heavier than it looked. It felt like being held by the wrist.

What Is Hematite? The History Behind the Stone

I’m an operations person. I don’t take things on faith. So I started reading.

Hematite is an iron oxide mineral, about 70% iron by weight. Its name comes from the Greek haima, “blood”, because the stone leaves a red-brown streak when you scratch it. It was described by ancient Greek and Roman writers on stones, and it has been worn as jewelry and carved into seals and beads for a very long time. My grandmother wasn’t being superstitious. She was being Greek.

I also read that during perimenopause, iron isn’t always the issue. Some researchers point to how the body regulates and moves iron as hormones shift. I’m not a doctor and I’m not going to pretend to be one. I only know that my bloodwork came back “normal”, and I still didn’t feel normal.

What I Noticed (and What I Can’t Promise)

I’m not going to tell you it changed my life. I’m going to tell you what I noticed.

One Tuesday in March, I got through three o’clock without a second coffee. I stopped rereading the same email four times. I laughed at something my daughter said at dinner, really laughed, and she looked at me a little surprised. I was sleeping through more nights than not.

Was it the weight reminding me, forty times a day, to slow down? Was it a ritual I’d chosen for myself? I don’t know how to separate those things, and I stopped needing to. What I know is that a few months later, I felt like myself again.

— Christina Andreou, founder of Haima