Our story
Linda & Lilo
Named for my two moms.
Two mothers
Lilo was my birth mom. Linda raised me. She was everyone's mom: the family's, the neighborhood's, anyone who walked through the door. Our home was where the holidays happened, and nobody gave a gift like Linda. She chose every one like it meant something, because to her it did.
I lost them both to cancer. This brand carries both of their names.
San Juan, 2021
It started with a yes.
In 2021 I was about to turn 30. I was tired of corporate life, I'd tried to leave more than once, and I didn't know what I wanted if I did. So I booked a solo birthday trip to Puerto Rico, where my grandparents were born.
Walking through San Juan, I smelled incense, the same incense from my grandmother's house. I followed it into a small beading shop. The bead strands took me straight back to the glass-bead curtain in her doorway: walking through it meant birthdays, holidays, everybody home.
I picked up white faceted beads and a heart pendant. The young man who owned the shop helped me choose. Then his mother asked if I wanted to make it into a necklace.
The shop in Old San Juan, 2021.
I said yes.
That necklace is how Linda&Lilo began.
Wearing it the next day. Castillo San Cristóbal, Old San Juan, PR.
The first pieces
Then I kept going.
How it's made
Made the way Linda gave.
Every piece is beaded by hand in Chicago, one stone at a time, with an intention in mind: the strength to start, to come back to yourself, to stay grounded.
And every one arrives the way she would have wanted: gift-ready, with a handwritten intention card.
The Beading Practice
Then we started making them together.
What began as Bead and Sip concept in Atlanta is now The Beading Practice: a table of stones, a room of people, and time to make something that means something.
Why we give
Every year, Linda&Lilo gives to cancer research in honor of Linda and Lilo.
Still saying yes.
To new stones. To new people. To whatever comes next.
Wendell Santiago, founder