Talismans Help Women Make it Through the Day

Written by Katrina Daniel Sunday, February 14 2010

I wear mine whenever I am scared or nervous or just need the feeling of extra protection and love. I wear it when I need to be reminded that there are good, kind, decent people in the world.

Dana Lyn Hoover depends on hers to give her the confidence to enter a room full of people she doesn’t know and to remind her of her mom and the good advice and protection she offers.

Kathy Sheppard wears hers because it helped her through the difficult time after her husband of 33 years died.

Deb Sofield shows hers off proudly as proof that there is a higher power of life and love.

What are these? They are lucky charms, and we’re not talking the sugary cereal. Lots of people have them. Some athletes wear the same pair of socks over and over again ‒ OK, if it’s a guy, it could be a jockstrap ‒ if they’ve had great success in their games, races, sport, whatever. In fact, some athletes won’t even take the field without their talisman.

A talisman can be anything ‒ a certain color, a special rock, a statue of the Virgin Mary, or even a photo.

“Talismans, amulets, and lucky charms are pervasive throughout the world and are found in agrarian societies as well as complex industrial ones,” says Lisa I. Knight, professor of religion at Furman University.” In a sense, they are a form of magic, though most Americans would never consider them that because we usually dismiss magic as superstition, not supported by science, or even as evil because it suggests that an individual claims to have power that may go against God’s will.

“We use objects like this in our society all the time ‒ the American flag and Statue of Liberty and a plethora of religious symbols like the Christian cross, Star of David, and holy books like the Qur’an or Bible,” Knight says. “These are all symbols that can motivate individuals and groups of people in powerful ways, connecting those people to some higher ideal or cause, and sometimes even motivating people to change the course of history. A lucky charm or talisman does the same thing but on an individual level.”

A practical politician, educator, professional speaker, and executive coach, Deb Sofield disdains anything she calls “woo-woo.” Yet, in her Greenville, S.C., headquarters she proudly displays a photograph of herself taken on her birthday by a dear friend. Sofield was sitting on a boat ‒ all alone on the aft seat.

Her friend Victoria was taking the picture from the front of the boat. And there, in the photograph, over Sofield’s right shoulder, is a large, lighted form, almost human in size and shape. Her friend Victoria saw it right away in the viewfinder, says Sofield.

“She started to take the photo, but put the camera down and looked at me and said, ‘There is a green shadow next to you.’ She only saw it in the camera lens. When we got the photo back, we saw my guardian angel sitting next to me.”

Sofield, a former Greenville City Council member, currently water commissioner and president of the Yale Women’s Campaign School, says today, “Without a doubt I am comfortable in believing that it is one of my guardian angels. Goodness knows I need all the help I can get. I keep the photo in my office in a place where I can see it often as a reminder that, Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deaus aderit ‒ Invoked or not, God is present."

A former community relations director for an upscale real estate community, Kathy Sheppard believes she gets help from one of her two favorite pieces of turtle jewelry.

She has a favorite turtle pin and a ring. Sheppard lost the man she calls “the love of my life,” after 33 years of marriage. John Paul Sheppard died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2003 when he was only 56. All told, that was a terrible year for Sheppard. She lost her mother and her brother that same year.

Afterward, she wrote a book, I Lost My Husband, Not My Mind, as a way to cope with his passing, but what helped bring her back to life, she says, was a ring with two turtles.