16/07/2025
✨Story Time ✨
This past weekend, I was sitting at my booth at the fabulous Lavender Festival, and a girl came up and started looking at my signs. Suddenly, she burst into tears and the other girls she was with started comforting her. I just sat there, trying to mind my own business, but not sure what to do. Then she came up to me and said she recently lost her baby girl. She had other babies that grew up healthy, but not this one. So this sign hit her hard. The sign she was looking at had this quote on it.
I wasn’t sure what to say to her, except I’m so sorry. But I felt dumb. There is absolutely nothing you can say to help someone who just went through that. I wanted to give her a hug. I’ve never lost a baby, and I hope I never have to endure that nightmare. But I felt so deeply for her. Being a mom myself, my brain just can’t even fathom what that pain would be like.
I wanted to chase after her and just give her the sign. She clearly needed it way more than I needed the money. But she was lost in a sea of people and I’ll probably never see her again. I’ve been thinking about her ever since.
As I’ve been pondering this interaction, I’ve come to realize, this is why I do what I do. Hand lettering. It’s such a beautiful and lost art. It’s more than just frilly handwriting. It’s a way to express words that brighten our days, and touch our souls in times of grief. It fills me with so much joy when something I make is exactly what a person needed in that moment.
Countless times, I think ‘no one is ever going to buy this’ as I make something. But then eventually it always finds its way into the hands of someone who really needed it.
This business of mine has taken me through such a crazy roller coaster ride. I’ve shed so many tears, endured countless nights of lost sleep, and let it get the best of my self-esteem. It hasn’t always gone the way I’ve wanted it to, and it still hasn’t. This is something I have to fight for, everyday. And sometimes it’s so exhausting I want to quit.
I have to stop and remind myself so many times of why I keep doing this. I do it for the joy it gives other people.
✨continued in comments✨