NixRay Began In A Dream
NixRay began in a dream I had one night in 2012
I had been feeling growing concern over my two kids’ constant exposure to RF, Radio Frequency waves.
Phones were always in their pockets, hands, or next to their ears. Laptops were on their bodies and in their beds, as they gamed, studied, talked , texted and slept.
That sense of unease must have been percolating beneath my consciousness, because in my dream that night, I designed products to shield the body from RF fallout from the devices we love and need.
I began to search for ways to manufacture bags and cases for cell phones and laptops with provable shielding technology.
I knew I needed a company that built RF protection for the U.S. military.
That’s when I met Gloria. Her company was under government contract to produce Mil/Spec materials, and I worked with them to develop NixRay’s protective ability to the highest testable degree.
From the beginning, until long after I had moved to smaller production houses, Gloria continued to guide and support me.
Through the years, as our friendship grew, she was always my cheerleader, helping me grow through my mistakes and to move into the future with a better product. She was always my ally.
R.I.P. Gloria. I couldn’t have done it without your knowledge, your wit and your light. I will never forget you.
Gloria. Customer service rep for our supplier of technical fabrics. Since 2012, when Christy first dreamed of merging science based Radio Frequency protection with style, body conscious design, and exciting fabrics, we called you whenever we had a question, or were stymied by what felt like an insurmountable problem. Every time, you turned our frowns upside down.You told us that our concept was just exactly what was needed in the world. Somehow, we found ourselves laughing, our viewpoint having shifted from confusion and hopelessness to expanded possibility, and we had renewed confidence to realize our visions. We found ourselves buoyed up by your extraordinary gifts of penetrating intelligence, light, and joy.
Of course, everyone who met you was lit by your glow, and charmed by your humor and intelligence. Like Christy, you were a single and self supporting mom, a gardener, and a nature lover, at home with horses. You took on the job of customer service in your family’s technical fabric business, knowing nothing about its complex scientific products and in no time, you absorbed a vast body of detailed knowledge, doling it out to everyone who needed a mystery solved, a question answered, a function fulfilled. You were always last to leave the office, working late into the night, yet whenever your family needed you, especially your adored daughter and grandchildren, you dropped everything.
You were tough, persevering, somehow managing to never push anyone aside, yet never taking “no” for an answer. Your power was always guided by your keen intelligence, laughter and kindness. Your grandparents owned general stores and restaurants, and you were born and raised with the ability to meet strangers with a hospitable warmth and charisma that dissolved imaginary barriers. You could keep a room of serious RF engineers in stitches. It makes sense that you were once personal assistant to George Carlin, as your combination of caring for others, seeing deeply into the heart of humanity, and your willingness to laugh at yourself, gave you the magical ability to light up a room with contagious good humor.
Your family says that humanity was your craft. And that you plied your craft to make your company grow, doing so with kindness, heartfelt engagement with others, and your desire to motivate all whom you touched with the will to be their highest self and the confidence to achieve their best dreams, by holding onto the long view and dismantling barricades one at a time.
Sometimes life gives us teachers in unexpected ways. Christy made a customer service call. She had technical questions. She expected business as usual, and found a whole new kind of business, business from the heart, the kind of business that she knew she wanted to create for NixRay.
From its beginning, when Christy had so many questions about the science of real RF protection, she and NixRay got a customer service rep who became so much more than a disembodied and impersonal phone voice answering technical questions, but rather, a co-creator. Lucky us, we got you, Gloria. You truly listened to and understood Christy as a single mom trying to venture into manifesting a novel idea that had come to her in a dream, motivating Christy and NixRay with your kind magic to take the leap into becoming larger.
It is so important to pay attention with both head and heart. Sometimes our most important teachers are disguised as the people we seem to randomly encounter in the course of business, mired in the mundane struggles of getting things done, and making a buck. We might overlook a remarkable human, one who beams out more love and more light, and says, like Gloria, ”Laugh with me. Let me really get to know you and your needs. We will create more energy, connected. Let’s put our brains to it, and we can do this thing together, and make it even better.”
This energetic connection is real magic, because although we feel such loss that Gloria is no longer with us, we continue to hear her nudging us along, her easy warmth and contagious laughter lighting our way, urging us to forge ahead, even when it’s daunting, inspiring us to personally engage in heartfelt and soulful connection with other human beings, in whatever capacity we might meet them, and to keep working together toward the greatest good, the highest value for all, in the business of life.