This is the story behind our very first sobriety anniversary card — the one that started Love & Recovery.
I was driving to San Diego for a business conference when the words came to me.
Not a vague idea. Not something I had to sit down and wrestle with later.
The words just… came.
So I did what any responsible adult would do.
I grabbed my phone while driving and recorded them into my notes app before they disappeared.
Please do not try this at home.
I had no idea that little voice note would become the beginning of Love & Recovery.
I knew this story because I had lived it
At the time, I was in recovery myself.
I knew what it meant to have a date that divided your life into before and after.
I knew that getting sober wasn’t simply about putting down a drink. It was about surrender. Courage. Asking for help. Learning how to live differently. Slowly becoming someone you could trust again.
And I knew how hard it was to find a greeting card that could hold all of that.
Most cards didn’t sound like recovery to me.
They were too generic. Too polished. Too cheerful in that weird greeting-card way that can make a life-changing experience feel like you just got a promotion at work.
I wanted something real.
Something that honored the magnitude of what had happened.
So somewhere on the road to San Diego, I spoke these words into my phone:
On this day, you surrendered.
You mustered up some courage.
You asked for help.
You began a new way of life.
Those words became my first recovery greeting card.
Then I found an artist
I had the words, but I needed someone to help me bring them to life visually.
So I found an artist and worked with him to turn my little voice note into a real, tangible card.
A card someone could hold.
A card someone could give.
A card that might say the thing they couldn’t quite figure out how to say themselves.
Then I did something that felt both exciting and slightly ridiculous.
I put it up for sale.
And people bought it.
Then more people bought it.
And more.
Today, more than 3,500 On This Day cards have made their way into the world.
Honestly, that still blows my mind.
I still wonder about every single one
This may sound strange after thousands of sales, but I still think about the people behind the orders.
I think about the person searching for the card.
Maybe it’s a wife celebrating her husband.
A mother celebrating her daughter.
A sponsor celebrating a sponsee.
A best friend who remembers exactly how bad things got.
Someone celebrating one year.
Someone celebrating twenty.
Someone who knows that the person they love came very close to losing everything—and somehow found their way into a new life.
Every time the On This Day card sells, I wonder about the story.
Because with recovery, there is always a story.
The little girl who loved paper
There is another piece of this story that makes me smile.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved stationery.
Beautiful paper. Pens. Cards. Little notes written to people I loved.
I dreamed of owning a stationery store someday.
Life took me in approximately nine thousand other directions first.
But somehow, all these years later, I found myself in the greeting card business.
A stationer extraordinaire, if you will.
And I couldn’t be happier about it.
One sobriety anniversary card became Love & Recovery
That first card was created in 2015.
Since then, Love & Recovery has grown into a collection of greeting cards, Pocket Pick-Me-Ups, mugs, notebooks, and gifts made for the real experience of recovery.
The hard days.
The big wins.
The fresh starts.
The messy middles.
The holy shit, I actually did it moments.
Some things we make are tender.
Some are funny.
Some have swear words.
Because recovery contains all of that too.
But no matter what we create, the heart of Love & Recovery is still the same.
We make things that help people say:
I see you.
I’m proud of you.
I know this wasn’t easy.
Look how far you’ve come.
And it all started with one voice note
More than a decade later, I still think about the people on both sides of every order.
The person who searched for the card.
The person who opened it.
The story between them.
Love & Recovery has grown since that first card. But in many ways, it is still exactly what it was that day on the road to San Diego:
A few honest words for someone whose life is a big damn deal.
Shop the On This Day sobriety anniversary card that started it all, or browse the full collection of recovery greeting cards.