These Are Our Roots

There is a little room in Nervi, Italy, where an old window opens onto the Mediterranean.

On the sill sit a ceramic dish, some fruit, and a glass of water. Beyond the window, the sea stretches to the horizon, interrupted only by a weathered rock rising from the water below.

It is a simple place. But for our family, it is something more.

My mother’s family came from Nervi, a village on the Ligurian coast just outside Genoa. My grandparents came to America, but our family’s connection to that place endured.

Today, my mother’s cousin Mario still lives there, in a home overlooking the sea. Next door stands a cottage we call the Baracca — Italian for a hut or shed. It is an unassuming name for a place that holds so much meaning for us.

I remember visiting Mario there with my mother. I have stood in that room, looked through that old window, and gazed out at the same sea our family had known for generations.

It is a remarkable feeling to stand in a place that connects you to those who came before you.

Years later, my daughter made that same journey.

She spent eight days in Italy and took nearly a thousand photographs. Beautiful photographs. Moments she wanted to keep and share.

And in that room in the Baracca, overlooking the Mediterranean, she sat down and wrote a postcard by hand.

Then she brought it home.

She had written the postcard. She had the photograph. But she didn’t know how to send it.

That small, unfinished act of sharing a moment became the beginning of Cartolinda.

A Name With Roots

The name came from the language of the place where the idea was born.

Cartolina is the Italian word for postcard.

Linda is the Spanish and Portuguese word for beautiful. It is also a name that runs through our family: my mother’s, my cousin’s, my niece’s. In Cartolinda, cartolina is transformed by Linda into something beautiful: a postcard made personal.

It is a name rooted in family, place, and the simple desire to share something meaningful.

Why a Postcard?

We can share a photograph in seconds.

We send texts, post pictures, and scroll through stories that disappear almost as quickly as they arrive. Sharing has never been easier.

But then you receive a postcard.

You can hold it in your hands. It can rest on a mantelpiece, hang on a refrigerator, or find a place among treasured things.

A photograph captures a moment. A handwritten message gives it a voice. And sending both to someone says something that a passing notification rarely can:

That is what we want Cartolinda to make possible — the beauty of sharing an experience, and the joy of giving someone a memory they can hold.

From Our Roots to Yours

Our story begins with grandparents who left Nervi for America. It continues through a family that kept its connection to the people and the place they came from, a daughter who stood at an old window above the Mediterranean, and a postcard that never made it into the mail.

That postcard reminded us of something worth bringing back: the simple, enduring pleasure of sending someone a real piece of your world.

And so Cartolinda was born.