I get to know a little about one stranger each week for all of 2024

Sometimes you meet a person with a great story, a story that stops you in your tracks. Breanna Jackson has a story like that.

Breanna told me her story about family, a great love, and finding a way to remember and honor lost loved ones.

I met Breanna at her booth at a farmer’s market in Palm Springs, where she was selling candied pecans made from her great-grandmother’s recipe. Her great-grandmother was an important person in Breanna’s life, and Breanna decided to use the recipe to create a business and share her candied pecans with the world as Nana’s Candied Pecans. (Aside: 10 out of 10, they are delicious, highly recommend!)

When she wasn’t busy helping the droves of customers at her tent, Breanna told me the story of her tattoo. She showed me the hummingbird on her arm, brightly colored with green, red, and blue. She got her tattoo in remembrance of her great-grandmother — hummingbirds were one of her great-grandmother’s favorite creatures. And mixed in with the ink in that tattoo on her arm are the ashes of her great-grandmother and great-grandfather.

I listened to Breanna tell the story of how her great-grandparents were married young and spent their entire lives together. And now, embedded in the delicate lines of her hummingbird, they are together still within the body of their great-grandchild. Breanna said that she will always carry them with her now.

I’ve heard that grief is just love that doesn’t have anywhere to go. And I know many people feel that when a loved one dies, they must leave that person and continue on in their life without them. But I think Breanna found a way to channel that love and bring her great-grandparents with her into her everyday life instead of leaving them behind. 

She will always carry them with her.