Remember to Live
There are some pieces of jewelry you wear because you like how they look. And then there are the pieces you wear because they mean something.
Our collaboration with Dawn Roth of @Dressing_Dawn began with that idea: jewelry as a way of carrying a story with you.
Dawn came to us wanting to create something inspired by her experience with cancer—she wanted to make meaning from something that had fundamentally changed the way she looked at life.
The result is a collection of four double-sided coin charms, each built around a different symbol and Latin phrase: Amor Fati, Memento Vivere, Memento Mori, and Carpe Diem.
They explore mortality, courage, love, pain, presence, and the choice to fully inhabit the life we have right now.
At the center of all four is a simple idea: Remember to live.
Jewelry as Community
For Dawn, jewelry has always been about more than adornment.
"For me a huge part of jewelry is community," she says. "We get our first pieces usually gifted from people who love us. We buy class rings to celebrate community and milestones. On and on through our lifetime the pieces tell the stories of our communities." That idea immediately resonated with us at Brave Daughters.
Jewelry has always been a way of marking the things that matter—relationships, milestones, accomplishments, turning points, and the people who were there for them. A piece can become a physical reminder of a moment long after the moment itself has passed.
Dawn saw that same sense of connection in the Brave Daughters community.
"I see this reflected in the Brave Daughters community and just knew you’d help me tell this story in a beautiful compassionate way."
Why Memento Mori?
The collection sits within the long tradition of memento mori jewelry: objects and symbols designed to remind us of mortality.
The phrase memento mori translates to “remember that you must die.”
At first glance, it sounds bleak. But the tradition has never been only about death. The reminder of mortality can also be a reminder of the preciousness of life. If life is finite, then the present matters.
For Dawn, that idea isn't abstract.
"You learn a lot quickly having a stage IV diagnosis," she says. "Mortality is something I’m looking at daily."
She had also long been drawn to the visual language surrounding mourning jewelry and the symbolism found in traditional tattooing.
"The origins and use of mourning jewelry were always intriguing to me. The symbolism is also something that’s very recognizable in traditional tattoo. It was so fitting for this collaboration."
Those references gave us a visual language to work with: symbols that have carried meaning for generations, but could be interpreted through a much more personal lens.
The four coins became a way to hold different parts of that experience.
Jaguar + Amor Fati
Amor fati is a Latin phrase that translates to "love of fate"—an embrace of life's experiences, including the ones we would never have chosen for ourselves.
For this coin, we paired the phrase with a jaguar.
The jaguar carries associations of courage, strength, power, and moving through darkness. It felt especially fitting for a collection rooted in confronting the unknown. It isn't meant to suggest that every difficult experience has a neat silver lining.
To love fate isn't necessarily to love everything that happens. It's to meet the life in front of you with courage.
Pierced Heart + Memento Vivere
Memento vivere means “remember to live.”
Of all the phrases in the collection, this one might be the simplest—and perhaps the hardest to forget.
We paired it with a pierced heart, a symbol that can hold many meanings at once: pain, love, vulnerability, survival, and continuing forward.
A heart with a wound in it doesn't pretend that nothing happened.
It carries the evidence.
But it keeps beating.
That's the feeling behind this coin: acknowledging what hurts without allowing pain to become the only story.
Memento vivere is an invitation to keep participating in your own life—to make plans, love people, find beauty, celebrate things, and stay present for the ordinary moments alongside the extraordinary ones.
Skull + Memento Mori
The skull is perhaps the most recognizable memento mori symbol of all. It's also the one Dawn knew had to be part of the collection. "The skull is a classic and I knew we’d include it," she says.
Paired with Memento Mori—“remember that you must die”—the skull confronts the thing at the center of this entire collection: life is finite. But that doesn't have to make the symbol morbid. It can make it meaningful.
A memento mori isn't necessarily telling you to fear death. It can be telling you not to sleepwalk through life.
Don't wait forever to make the trip.
Don't save the good jewelry for someday.
Don't assume there will always be more time.
The skull becomes less a symbol of an ending and more a reminder to pay attention to the time we have.
Sun + Carpe Diem
And then there is the sun. Bright, energetic, alive. The sun represents life, energy, renewal, and the beginning of another day.
Paired with Carpe Diem, or “seize the day,” it brings the collection back toward possibility.
If Memento Mori asks us to remember that life is finite, Carpe Diem asks what we're going to do with today. Not tomorrow. Not when everything is perfect.
Today.
Together, the four coins create a conversation between mortality and living: accept what life brings, remember what matters, acknowledge that time is finite, and make something of the day you're in.
