Why MAHENDI Exists

The symbol came to my partner first.

Savitri Cole was running a nonprofit called Himalayan Outreach, supporting maternal and child health in Nepal. The symbol — an ancient talisman of protection — found its way to her. We met through my work with Bead for Life, where I was speaking about women lifting themselves out of poverty through the jewelry they made by hand. We saw the same idea from two directions: a symbol that meant something, a way to fund the work it stood for. Himalayan Outreach became MAHENDI, and we made the first pieces together with an artist in Nepal.

Soon after, Savitri felt called in a different direction. We closed the nonprofit. I trademarked the symbol and held it until the time was right.

Years later when I relaunched MAHENDI, five women rebuilt it with me — my daughter, my niece, my sister, and two daughters by choice. Each has since followed her own path. I have stayed. But MAHENDI would not exist without them, or without the many who have believed in this work since. Every piece we make funds the protection of those who carry life and the bonds between us. The cause changes with the need,  this year, Every Mother Counts and Red Rover; last year, prenatal and postnatal nutrition. The need shifts. The mission stays.

Before we relaunched, the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women found us. In 2019, they invited us to Sarajevo for their first global gathering of grantees. It was life-changing and affirming at the same time. A confirmation that the work was real, and that it mattered beyond me. I carried that into the years that followed.

I have always thought of myself as the temporary keeper of MAHENDI. Building it, defending it, holding the symbol through the years it was quiet, rebuilding it. That has been the work.

Somewhere in the rebuilding, I came to understand that the relationship runs both ways. The symbol I have been protecting has also been protecting me. It has given me purpose. It has given me a reason to wake up. The four points — clarity, wisdom, strength, grace — are not a brand mantra. They are how I check whether I am on the right path.

MAHENDI has its own way of welcoming what it needs through the door. The right people arrive. The right work presents itself. I have learned not to force it, and to recognize what is offered when it comes.

I am in service to MAHENDI. The mission is larger than I am. My responsibility is to care for it, to protect it, to not tarnish it — and to pass it forward.

Our store is a portal. A sanctuary. A place where someone can step out of the world for a moment and into ours, to breathe the scent, to hold the symbol, to feel the weight of what we make and why. The website is where you find us. The store is where you meet us.

This is a brand of love. The pieces we make are talismans in the oldest sense: small objects that protect what matters and remind the people who wear them of what they protect. A piece of jewelry will not save a life, but it can sustain a person who is trying to.

— Tera