In my heart and mind, I'll forever connect the birth of Cardthartic with the death of my dad ... this incredibly good guy passed away in the summer of 1992, and the condolence cards people sent were amazing. Actually, the cards themselves were dreadful. It was the personal messages people penned that were so touchingly beautiful. And, because they were written by ordinary people ~ not professional writers, I mean ~ they were all the more extraordinary to me.

Like it was yesterday, I remember sitting on a closet floor back in my Chicago apartment, willing myself to tuck the stack of sympathy cards away in the box dedicated to such keepsakes. There I sat, reading and crying and smiling all over again at the things admirers had written about Dad. Next I went through a lifetime of missives and mementos from my alive and kicking Mom. I grinned over gushy letters from long-lost boyfriends, and giggled at the notes scribbled in cards from crazy college friends. Taking in all the great and different ways people had of saying, in essence, “I see you,” the marketer in me couldn’t help but wonder, “Why don’t card companies publish real-life messages like these?!?” Having months before sold my first business, I was free to say, “Hey! Why don’t I?!?”

An exhilarating sense of purpose kicked in then and there. Culling through the scores of saved sentiments, I could see that they applied to many more people than just me. In the days that followed that night, I was on a roll. I figured my PR career had given me the opportunity to represent some of the world’s most successful product marketers ~ McDonald’s, Miller Brewing, Motorola ~ so how hard could launching a fresh new product in the out-dated card market be?!?

I reached out to a friend who, in the 20 years since we’d gone off to college and lost touch, had become a well-respected landscape photographer with several books to his credit. Larry Kanfer was game. It was an honor and a pleasure to look through his body of work and find images to pair with the 48 initial messages I’d found (and finessed a little). Cardthartic was ready to launch its PASSAGES line. Well, almost.