Things & Stuff: The Blog of Em & Friends

We put so much pressure on ourselves to say the perfect thing, don’t we? That’s one of the biggest hurdles in trying to be there for someone during a difficult time. But when your life is falling apart, there’s no magical phrase to make it all better. In fact, there’s really nothing you can say to someone to make it hurt less or feel OK, mostly because the person suffering doesn’t actually need you to talk. They need you to listen. To be present. To be okay with silence if they don’t feel like talking.

I really like doing these little comic-style illustrations, and if I could clone myself, I'd love to do a page-a-day visual diary as a passion project. Without further ado, I give you January through March of 2015! 

Dear friends, Please excuse the extreme delay between my last post, introducing our Empathy Cards, and this one, talking about the insane trip tha...

July was wholesale gift show season again, and I went to Atlanta, then to my mom’s induction into the Quilting Hall of Fame in Indiana, and to Columbus to visit my friend Allison at Igloo Letterpress, then came back to find out our totes and towels were delayed again.

I have a lot of heart for this piece -- it's one of my favorites even though we've recently discontinued it.

Since about 2005, I've been doing this thing where at the end of December, I look back through my email/facebook posts/spotty memory and write down...