Staff photo / Ashley Fox Tuesday evenings are designated for a group of eight lifelong friends — the Positarian Sisters — to making bracelets that are handed out for free. Together, they eat, drink and laugh while they assemble the bracelets, which include a cross and peace sign. Pictured clockwise from bottom right are: Nancy Grapevine, Marilee Pilkington, Kelly Tkach, Barb Kamensky, Patty Meehan, Daria Travaline and Barbara Murray. Not pictured is Lisa Perry.

LOWELLVILLE — There’s a house in the quiet countryside of Lowellville filled with conversations and laughter every Tuesday night.

Multiple discussions flow from the time the first person arrives until the last person leaves. Somehow, everyone is able to keep up with every conversation.

The group is the self-named “Positarian Sisters,” eight women who have grown up together: Nancy Grapevine, the meeting host, sister Marilee Pilkington, and friends Kelly Tkach, Barb Kamensky, Patty Meehan, Daria Travaline, Barbara Murray and Lisa Perry.

The women, in their 50s and upward — some retired and some still working — meet at a potluck-style dinner to make “positarian” bracelets.

Nearly a decade ago, Grapevine was shopping on Black Friday when her daughters, Ali and Gina, found bracelets for a bargain.

They purchased all of those in stock, and spent time afterward handing them out, Grapevine said.

The word “positarian” is one that Grapevine has said forever, and the name for the bracelets stuck.

After a hiatus with the bracelets, due to not being able to find any, last year Pilkington suggested making them.

“We couldn’t find the bracelets, and I had all of these beads,” Pilkington said. She took one of the last original ones apart, and from there, they put their own spin on what is now the Positarian Bracelet.

The orders picked up during the COVID-19 pandemic, Grapevine said, which led to the eight friends — more like family — meeting at Grapevine’s home each week.

“People really needed them this past year,” Grapevine said.

At the start of the pandemic, most of the group met in her garage to allow for social distancing.

There was also an uptick in the bracelet requests during Lent, Grapevine said.

The group uses smaller beads and incorporates a cross to make the “humble” bracelet, Grapevine said. They purchase their own beads and strings, along with anything else they need.

When someone compliments the bracelet, or appears to be down, the person wearing the bracelet takes it off and gives it to that someone in an act of kindness, Grapevine said — in an attempt to spread positivity and joy.

Over the course of the year, the women said they’ve “made a ton” of the bracelets, which have spread to the United Kingdom and around the United States. In a typical Tuesday meeting, they make between 20 and 25.

When one of the women gives a bracelet to a stranger, the feeling is incredible.

“I had the best day of my life after that. It makes you feel so good,” Murray said, after giving a bracelet to a clerk at a local convenience store. “I didn’t even know her.”

Adding to that feeling, Grapevine said, is when one of the Positarians is out, and they see a stranger with a bracelet. “We know it has to be from one of us, or from somebody else” that was given a bracelet by one of the women, she said.

The women have not only grown up in Lowellville together (with Travaline the only one living in nearby Struthers nowadays), but they were also in each others’ weddings, and some of their children have married each other, making them truly a family.

They even all belong to the same bocce team.

“We’re with our besties,” Meehan said.

Most of the time, the women are laughing and enthusiastically talking, but sometimes the women vent or lean on each other. “We cry sometimes, too,” Meehan said.

Grapevine said during a discussion with her husband, John, he thought of a way to best sum up the Positarian Sisters: “When there’s a 30 percent chance of rain, the ladies think there’s a 70 percent chance of sun,” Grapevine said. “We’re spreading positivity one wrist at a time.”

You can find the Positarians on Facebook.