This summer Erin Thomson is working on her journalism master's degree in digital audience strategy and developing her own line of clay jewelry. Interesting and fairly typical stuff for someone in their early twenties.
But Erin is anything but typical when she was 11, she had a tragic diving accident that left her without the use of her arms and legs, and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Erin has battled through with determination, hard work in her sharp wit ever since.
“I have a really good support system,” Thomson says. “You know, my family is really close knit and they've been supporting me from the start. And I think when you're 11, when something changes so dramatically, you don't actually know what's happening. And that's kind of the way that I look at it. I don't think I had any sort of, I would say like mental health issues or concern about what had happened to me until I got to college. Because I view college as kind of a point of, you know, you're getting your independence and then you see that you don't have the same independence as other people in what they're getting. And so in that sense, I don't think I really had that realization until later in life.”
Despite her parents' initial trepidation, Erin went away to college, to the University of Arizona, where she says she truly learned how to be independent and chart her own course. Since graduating in 2019, she's been back home in the Twin Cities, working on her masters and starting her own online jewelry business called Rolled Clay. Yes, making jewelry out of clay with a pasta maker and her two disabled hands.
“I really started to understand my hands,” says Thomson, who is the daughter of WCCO host Steve Thomson. “I never knew how much I didn't know about my hand movement until I did clay. Any fingernail movement, any false move and you're ruin the piece. And so through the process, I learned how to not only use my hands, but you know, look at tools that can work for me. And so I did a lot of education on, you know, what are able-bodied people using and how can I either use that or change it to work for me.”
Erin's clay jewelry is her passion. Mostly due to the rewarding feeling. She gets from those who choose to wear her creations.
“Knowing that my jewelry is going with people to places that make them feel confident and make them feel a certain way is why I do it,” says Thomson. “For example, there was a woman that had sent me a picture of her wearing her earrings to her baby shower. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, you put your whole outfit together around my earrings for your baby. You know, like that's incredible. Or my sister wore them for a job interview and she ended up getting the job and maybe it was just that extra push of confidence that, you know, made her get the job. It's just thinking about, you know, my little pieces of jewelry are in the world and actually going with people to these extremely important events makes it amazing for me.”
Does it sound like they're magic earrings? Thomson agrees, saying, “Yeah, I'd like to think so.”
You can hear this story and others just like it each Sunday morning at 6:30am on "Laura's Good News" or listen anytime with the Audacy App.