Saturday, Oct 4, 2025

These aren’t greeting cards;

they are mini portals to carry your heart.

They are designed to bring delight and hope to your people.

They are my way of turning pain into joy.

And it’s almost too good to be true — but we have a nearly 100% 5-star rating in our online store.

These reviews aren’t just “These cards are printed on great paper.”

But it’s reviews about how these cards added meaning to life:

“I had just broken my hip, and I wanted cards to write to the people in my life and tell them how much they mean to me.” 

“I needed a card to send to the beneficiaries in my mother’s will, and I couldn’t find the right one for months, until I came across ‘holding you in my heart all the time’.” 

Tiny and Snail is a way to bring more life and light into the world.

They are illustrations about the awe and wonder of life.

It’s a mindblowing-mystery, is it not?

….

When I almost died when I was 29, it completely changed my life to say the least.

It rewired my brain.

And our greeting cards.

.

My sister and I had started a greeting card company together only a year before.

Grace was hand-painting quirky cards and selling them on Etsy. (She had always loved snail mail, as a teenager putting Mary Engelbriet illustrations onto card stock for her card-writing stash.

Meanwhile, I went to 4 years of college for painting but was having trouble supporting myself with my art .(I had always been a fan of Marjolean Bastien and Lisa Frank when I was a kid. They were my idols. Some girls wanted to be famous actresses, I wanted to be a famous illustrator -- since the age of 5. :)

So we decided to team up, as we had in our childhood, and start making greeting cards together. 

….

Grace and I always loved doing projects together when we were kids.

I have vivid memories of screen-free days in the 1990s— playing in our Dad’s mud pond and writing plays together.

We loved flipping through catalogs and reading the product descriptions, inspired so much that we decided to write our own.

We also sold magazines, wrapping paper, and chocolates door-to-door for school fundraisers.

We somehow grew up having amazingly complementary skills.

She is so much better at organization than I tend to be. And she's more decisive.

My happy place is alone in a studio, losing track of the hours writing and painting.

When I was a kid, this happy place was our guest bathroom. The closet in the bathroom contained our art supplies, and there was a sink that I could wash out my brushes in.

I’d spend many happy hours, standing next to the counter, painting butterflies, drawing portraits of celebrities, drawing dogs, and creating mini-master peices. Emerging, holding the drawing in my hands to show to my family or send in the mail.

I’ve always loved getting my moments of reflection and creativity.

Supporting myself and my family through my art is a childhoood dream come true.

…

We live in weird times.

The past two decades we’ve seen a technological revolution greater than perhaps any other revolution in the history of humankind.

It’s made us all mentally ill in many ways. There have been dozens of studies about our rapidly declining collective health in correlation with the technology with which we surround ourselves.


(I’m not saying that technology is all bad —

I feel 100% wildly and enthusiastically grateful that I get to type this on a computer and share it with people I wouldn’t otherwise be connected with. 🤩)

I'm just saying we definitely need creativity, beauty, nature, and connection outside of our phones if we want to survive and thrive. 

…

I said to my mom yesterday, “Mom! I’m finally getting paid to write!”

She was and is our biggest fan. She’s one of the biggest supporters of the arts I know actually — going to several plays, musical performances and art openings every month.

Mom fostered creativity in her own life and in ours too.

She’s an avid photographer. She loves to photograph clouds and plants. I inherited a lot of my awe of nature from her. 

…

Interestingly, awe of nature has been proven to improve our resilience.

It’s one of the things that carried me through the 29 days in the ICU.

…

At one point in the ICU I couldn’t even have flowers in my room. Nature was a distant view of a busy street 5 stories down.

I was surrounded by everything artificial.

I know, I know — I needed a very bacteria-free environment so my wounds didn’t get infected. I was on oxygen, and I needed around-the-clock care.

But the first days of fall are always my favorite, and they will always remind me of rehab at Craig Hospital in Colorado. On my first day of physical therapy, my nurses and PT rolled my bed outside. The sunlight hit my face, and I cried. It was such a small thing — air and sky and warmth — but it felt like proof that I was still alive.

That moment is what I try to paint into every card: the reminder that even in the dark, there’s light waiting to touch your skin again.

Someone asked me recently why I’m writing this daily blog.
I think it’s partly to process my life, and partly because I want to leave a map— a record of what I’ve found most helpful in finding happiness again.

I know firsthand that we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow to say the things people need to hear.

And because of skin issues and infections, paraplegics have shorter life expectancies than the general population. I have two kids. I want to leave behind something for them — a written guide to the light if I should go early.

If I don’t call my free writes “good enough,” they’ll never help anyone.
I no longer want to hoard them in my Notes app.

I’ve learned that people don’t just enjoy my writing — they seem to crave it.

Because in the end, that’s what I needed to get me through the ICU, and it's what we all need: reminders that life can be rough and wild, but beauty and love carry us through.