AUG 23, 2019 – TGIF! Because it’s been a trying week, and everyone seems to know someone who’s grappling with something, we thought we’d show you some support & encouragement cards today. And as a little incentive to stop and consider what good you might do ~ whose spirits you might soothe with such cards ~ let’s say that one support & encouragement card will be FREE in orders placed before September 1st.

The design above is from our new Pretty Words line, left blank inside for a message all your own. Released just two months ago, it zoomed to the top of our best-seller list. Even though the expression has long been a favorite of mine here on Miami Beach — and we know many of our Cardies live in coastal communities — we were still surprised by just how many people would prescribe sorting life out by the sea. That said, our many distinct Support & Encouragement cards show that we all seek solace and clarity in different ways …

I’m remembering one evening, two decades ago now, sitting in the lobby of a retirement home waiting for my mother to come down for dinner. After months of non-stop challenges, Mom was in a good place … and I was completely drained from managing her health care, finances and living arrangements, on top of the demands of my own still-startup business. If you’ve ever made yourself into a stretched-too-thin human, you might relate: I felt tired, torn and confused. And I felt sad, bewildered and frustrated that my life seemed no longer my own — I’d let my obligations completely take over.

Waiting there at my wit’s end, I picked up an old issue of Travel & Leisure magazine, and was drawn to a piece on The Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in South Dakota. The story and all the pretty pictures of gorgeous horses running wild through 11,000 acres of pure prairie, hills, trees and streams absolutely captivated me. “That’s how I want to feel again,” I mumbled to myself. “FREE!”

That was Saturday evening. By Tuesday afternoon, I was bouncing along in the back of a pickup, trailing those wild horses around the sanctuary. Because it was still in the nonprofit’s early days, it turned out that — on those 11,000 acres — there were just two two-legged inhabitants: The sanctuary founder and me! Dayton Hyde was a western fiction writer, conservationist and teller of tall tales, so it promised to be quite a week. I’d arrived after dark Monday night, so was led by flashlight to my teepee.

I learned that the movie Dances With Wolves had been filmed there, and the teepees were left as guest quarters for future visitors. So there I was, lying on my little cot, pre-cell phone, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in a stunner of a thunderstorm, with the smoke from a warm fire billowing out the hole in the top of my teepee. My nightlong “What was I thinking?!” was quickly answered in the morning, when I woke to the happy whinny of horses slurping sparkling water in the creek just a stone’s throw away. Oh, that week worked wonders! The sense of not being immediately needed, the sight and sounds of the horses under the eternal South Dakota sky, restored my energy and faith in me.

Haha, reading a draft of this story, Cardthartic’s Creative Coordinator, Liz, said, “Not in a million years … horses do nothing for me.” And we laughed that that is why we make cards for such a wide range of sensibilities. Cards filled with hugs, prayers, laughter — whatever message you sense the recipient needs to lift their spirits at the time. But if there is a moral to this story, Cardies, be it that sometimes it is we who need the message on the cards we choose to send. So take good care of yourselves, and I will try to do the same.

jodee stevens
founder & chief creative

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