Finding Beauty in Chaos: Mexico, Family, and Cantera Opals
Mexico was chaos, and I loved it.
From the moment I landed, there was no mistaking it—this wasn’t the kind of place that waited for you to get comfortable. The streets were loud, crowded, alive with motion. Cars swerved and honked in ways that would give any traffic cop a nervous breakdown. Vendors in the street or the market called out from stalls that seemed to appear overnight, music poured out of doorways, and the air itself was thick with spice, heat, and the constant hum of people moving, living, hustling.
At first, it felt overwhelming. And then, it felt familiar.
Because I grew up in chaos.
Not the bad kind, not the kind that leaves scars, but the kind that comes with a big, extended family where there’s never quite enough space at the table and always way too many opinions flying around. Family gatherings weren’t quiet affairs. They were everyone talking at once—grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles—all competing to be heard. Someone was inevitably retelling a story wrong, someone else was disagreeing just for sport, and at least one kid was running wild while a chair creaked ominously under the weight of too many people sitting on it.
It was loud. It was messy. It was never organized.
And I thrived in it.
So when Mexico offered me its version of chaos—heat, color, unpredictability—I felt strangely at home. There’s something freeing about being in a place that doesn’t try to hide its rough edges.
That’s when I discovered Cantera opals.
Unlike polished stones that are cut, shaped, and made “perfect,” en cantera opals don’t play by those rules. They stay locked in their host rock, fire and color flashing from veins and pockets inside rough stone. They’re half-hidden, half-revealed—wild little sparks of magic peeking out from the earth that birthed them.
And to me, they looked exactly like Mexico.
Chaotic. Unexpected. Beautiful because of the mess, not in spite of it.
When you hold an en cantera opal, you’re not looking at a stone that’s been tamed into submission. You’re holding raw beauty in its natural habitat—color breaking through earth, fire tangled with rock, order colliding with disorder. It’s not “refined.” It’s alive.
And that’s what drew me in.
Because beauty doesn’t always come dressed up and polished. Sometimes it comes loud, messy, a little overwhelming. Sometimes it crashes into your life like a family argument over who really makes the best stuffing at Thanksgiving. Sometimes it buzzes around you in a city where no one follows the rules of the road and somehow no one crashes.
That’s what Cantera opals are to me. Not polite, not predictable—but full of fire, full of life, and unforgettable.
Mexico was chaos. My family is chaos. En cantera opals are chaos.
And if you’re someone who can see the beauty in the wild and untamed, then maybe these stones are for you, too.