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Emily McDowell makes fantastic stationery of all kinds, focused on telling the truth about life. Today, she released seven new empathy cards to help people who are suffering from illness or grief…
“When you are very sick, or someone close to you has died, it’s really lonely,” she told me on the phone. “The irony that I found is that not many greeting cards spoke to those situations. There are a million and one for your birthday. But when you really need a card — and a card can be really, really helpful when you’re going through super terrible — there were very few that I personally related to. The cancer cards that existed when I had cancer always seemed to be written by someone at Hallmark who got an assignment to write a cancer card. It seems like what someone would THINK would be good for someone with cancer, but actually wasn’t.”
The cards above came out today, but Emily released her first eight empathy cards last May — cards that talked about cancer and illness the way she would have wanted when she’d had lymphoma at 24 years old. They immediately went viral. “I was blown away by the global level of response,” she said. “This issue wasn’t just a cultural issue, but a human issue. We got more than 15,000 emails from people sharing their stories.” Below are the eight cards from last spring, if you’d like to see…
Thank you so much, Emily, for all you do. And sending a big hug to anyone who is fighting a hard battle right now. xoxo
P.S. How to write a condolence card, and the power of empathy.
