Hi, I'm Alex L and I write books for a living.

The Hey Girl Podcast was created with sisterhood and storytelling in mind.

Hey girl.

Hey girl.

Hey girl.

Hey girl. Hey girl.

Join us as we journey through sharing together.

Hey girl. Hey girl.

How are you, Emily? Thank you for being here. I am great, you know, how are you? I'm doing pretty good today. Before we get started, can you please let the Hey Girl listeners know who you are and what you do? Yeah, absolutely. So I am a writer and illustrator and I founded a brand called Emily McDowell and friends back in 2012 and we make greeting cards for the relationships we really have.

So the brand was born of an observation that I would go to stores and I wouldn't be able

to find cards that reflected my own relationships and my own reality. So I started

baking them. I had been a creative director in advertising in my prior career and I

started out with an Etsy shop and it grew really quickly from there.

We are probably best known for our empathy cards,

which are our answer to traditional sympathy cards.

I had cancer when I was 24, 20 years ago and the sympathy card selection at that time was definitely lacking and one of the things that I really learned in that experience was how difficult it is for people to witness someone they know and love going through a major illness and that people don't know what to say. And so I wanted to make some cards

that really helped bridge that communication gap and helped people who were going through the thing

feel seen and heard and understood and help give people who wanted to

communicate with them an opportunity to be able to say some of the things that maybe

they couldn't have come up with on their own. That's one of the things we've become

really known for over the years is that space.

Well I've been a customer since your Etsy shop so it's really awesome.

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