Our friends in St. Vincent and the Grenadines have asked for our help. And we're asking for yours!

GoFundMe: Help send urgent provisions, shipped in rain barrels, to St. Vincent

Why is this so important to us? 

Chris and I spent our engagement and the beginning of our marriage on Mustique Island in the Grenadines, a private island and luxury paradise staffed by expats like us and locals from neighboring St. Vincent.

We worked on an estate called Gelliceaux, as part of a small artisan labor team hired from Cranbrook Academy of Art, where we’d met a couple years before.

The people I got to know best there were the cooks, the housekeepers, the groundskeepers, the fishermen -- the ones who made things run in the background, who provided the care and attention that kept the estate running for others, while their own families lived one island away, on St. Vincent.

I sat at the massive stainless steel kitchen island with Clothilda while she cooked saltfish and breadfruit. I went out on the water with Arthur and brought home dozens of fish for dinner. I’d sit in the backseat of the car when Celine, Celitha, and Geva drove around the island to visit other housekeepers and cooks on Sundays. We shared our different ways to say grace over big dinners up on the hill, and I passed on my grandmother’s recipes for zucchini bread while soaking in countless unwritten recipes.

Our Vincentian friends were the first people we told when I was pregnant.  Shortly after, when I was two months pregnant, we spent a weekend on St. Vincent and climbed the La Soufrière volcano all together.  At the top, we ate and drank, looking into the sleeping volcano - it was covered in rolling bright green grass at the time. 

Now, Celitha and I both have ten year olds.  And there are many new children and grandchildren among the people we loved ten years ago and still love today.

The pinecone collection you already love, and the sea fan coral you have seen us use in dozens of pieces of jewelry, both exist because of the bounty and beauty of this magical place -- home to so many people we love.  

Now they need our help. And we want to give them as much as we can.  

Thank you so much for being part of this relief effort.  The road is long for St. Vincent, and we are on it, in a small way, together. 

See the pieces dedicated for Vincentian Relief here.