These Empathy Cards Are What Your Hurting Friends Need

When you’re going through the roughest of rough patches in life, sometimes you don’t need or want to be inspired. Sometimes, you really need the sucky-ness to just suck for a little while longer.

But you’ll come to find out that most people are uncomfortable around your discomfort. Therefore, God love them, they will try to fix your sorrows with a slew of feel-good words.

You know the ones:

There’s a reason for everything.

God won’t give you more than you can handle.

God needed another angel.

My dog died one time, and….

Have you tried calming essential oils? They really helped when…..

FOR THE LOVE, JUST STOP IT.

You are not Bob the Builder. You can’t fix it; no, you can’t.

My daughter died, and I can’t tell you how many times someone has said the wrong thing when all I wanted was an acknowledgment of my pain and perhaps an “I’m so sorry” to go along with it.

We know you mean well and we are all mundanely human, but sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is just a glimmer of illumination barely visible to our aching eye. Let us walk through the trenches of our newly found darkness for awhile, would ya?

If you suck at comfort lines and find yourself resorting to these cheesy and awful cliches, have no fear. This new line of empathy cards will put you in the clear. (See, THAT was cheesy. Nobody likes cheesy, so stop it.)

Emily McDowell’s new take on empathy is seriously perfect for your hurting friend’s bruised heart. They are scratching the pretty and fluffed up fancies and replacing it with an “It is what it is, and I’m here for you” type of mentality.

(I’ll be the first to say, Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang would be damn proud.)

My personal favorite of this line of stationary would have to be, “Together we will find a cure for the phrase, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’”

Can I get an a-freaking-men? Because, really, who wants to hear those words alongside their most hated and newest tragedy? I’ll tell you in an obnoxiously loud and operatic song for all to hear: NOOO-ONEEE.

So when your friend is struggling with chronic illness and it seems there’s no one around who cares, try sending them one of these instead of the usual cherub-covered cards you normally do. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with those. But let’s spark some flair in their lives, huh?

Or, if you have a friend who has lost a loved one, like I have, I can’t stress enough the relatability of McDowell’s twist on the five states of grief. And I’m just saying, someone better send me one of these cards the next time I’m hitting a rough patch in my grief.

As I read this one, all I could think was, yep, yep, yep, yep, DOUBLE YEP. She hits the nail right on the freaking head with this. Truth be told, I’ve cried in every single one of those places. And yes, I’ve cried while I’ve been a little bit tipsy too.

Because, well, grief sucks.

As someone who grieves every single day, it’s medicine for my soul to laugh through my pain, and I’d love it if others would help me conquer that pill that’s so hard to swallow.

When #fuckcancer runs it’s course of comfort for your loved ones, there are these relatable chemo cards to get them through the day too.

If you can’t fix our way toward the light at the end of our tunnel, then walk with us along the way. Don’t try to fix it by whatever means you see necessary.

Please, from someone who really gets it, there’s a time to sulk in our pain. There’s a time to acknowledge our pain. And there is a time to laugh through our pain.

But there’s not always a time to fix our pain like you would a loose button on a Liz Claireborne shirt. Sometimes, there are irreparable damages and a lifetime worth of adjustments.

Sometimes, it just sucks.

And if you haven’t realized that and you’ve totally sucked at empathy with a friend lately, don’t worry… these empathy cards have got you covered there too.