Greeting Cards Are Getting Really Real, and We’re Here For It

For a long time, if you wanted to send a card to someone who was sick, all the options were frustratingly optimistic. They would unfailingly offer wishes of “get better soon,” or “healing thoughts and prayers.” Those cards fit the bill if someone had surgery, for example, or was dealing with the flu. But what about people with a terminal illness? Where were the cards that expressed the conflicting emotions that often accompany end-of-life matters?

Back in 2014, Hallmark made a ground-breaking shift to reflect the cultural zeitgeist by offering a new take on sympathy cards. Spurred by research conducted with grief counselors, they created cards for tough times and extended illness, cards that acknowledge a parent’s Alzheimer’s, and the lingering grief that extends long past the memorial service. This new line of cards helped fill a void for people who were going through something that hadn’t been previously acknowledged in this way.

Credit: Durga Design Studio, from Etsy

Since then, more and more greeting card companies have jumped on board, and it seems like you can find a card for just about anything. In a society that tends to treat matters like death and terminal illness as taboo subjects, it’s refreshing to see all kinds of greeting cards available for expressing the full gamut of feelings that go along with grief. Some offer the expected hokey poems and sappy phrases, but others are downright hilarious. 

Why We Still Need Greeting Cards

In this digital era, you might be wondering why greeting cards are still even a thing. Why send a card when you could bombard a loved one with funny GIFs or reach out in a zillion different ways that would connect you instantaneously?

Greeting cards are for those times when you can’t seem to find the words yourself; when expressing a sentiment feels too big, too onerous or too hard. Even then, a greeting card may not even touch the depths of your emotions, but at least it will get you started.

Greeting card intended for a hospice patient, available here
Artist: Amy Hadden

They also serve as a tactile reminder for the recipient that someone cares. Someone cared enough to go out and select that card, and took the time to write a little note in it, and either braved the potential embarrassment of hand-delivering the missive, or went that extra mile by finding a postage stamp and mailing it. All of these little steps indicate that that person was thinking of you … and that means something. And once you’ve received a card, you can physically hold it in your hands. You can keep it in a drawer, to read again whenever you need a reminder that you’re not alone. The sentimental value of a heartfelt greeting card never fades, but a digital text will get buried under newer missives until it’s altogether forgotten.

Facing Grief with a Sense of Humor

Some people prefer to side-step around their discomfort by discussing topics like death and disease through humor, and the greeting card industry has finally caught on. Tapping into the dark kind of humor popular with Gen X and Millennials, these cards have found a way to express sympathy, solidarity and hope in truly hilarious ways. Sometimes, when you’re in the depths of despair, a card that makes you smile can make all the difference. 

Sympathy card by Bablira, available on Amazon

One site in particular, Em & Friends, really demonstrates a good understanding of what people go through when dealing with a terminal illness. The creator of Em & Friends, Emily McDowell, was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 24. Although she has been in remission for many years, she’ll never forget how so many of her friends and family struggled to find the right words to help her. “The most difficult part of my illness wasn’t losing my hair, or being erroneously called “sir” by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn’t know what to say, or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it.”

Here are a few of our favorites:

Em & Friends isn’t the only one really nailing this corner of the market, though. Be sure to check out PrettyAlrightGoods’s line of sympathy cards, which includes gems like this one:

Greeting card from PrettyAlrightGoods.com

And Etsy has quite a few unique offerings as well:

From Etsy site Kellyannco