Moodr Health is excited to announce our first official partnership with another wonderful maternal mental health advocate! Sharing Solace, (co)founded by Crystal Webster - whom you might remember from a previous post for also joining our advisory team, is a small business with a BIG mission. They empower grievers to grieve and lovers to love their griever through technology-elevated pass-along-able gifts wrapped in a community of strength and support so you will always ‘Remember. You’re not alone.’
Crystal never had any intention of being a ‘touchy-feely’ girl, as a trained tax accountant and former residential real estate team leader she enjoyed facts, figures, and numbers. It wasn’t until her only child - her daughter, Madelyn Elizabeth - died in her arms just 8 hours after she was born did Crystal really even realize feelings were a normal part of life and needed to be expressed.
From the depths of her ‘grieving hole,’ she felt completely alone in her sorrow and isolated herself from everyone. She found knowing the statistics (you know, being a numbers girl and all) gave her the courage to understand she wasn’t alone and found a community of other loss mamas. Further into her grief journey, she found the tangible gifts that had been given to her at Maddie’s funeral no longer brought the comfort they once did - they now memorialized the pain of Madelyn’s death. Not knowing what to do with them - she packed them all up and they still sit in a cheap cardboard box in the corner of her dark basement to this day…
Knowing perfectly well this is not what these gifts were intended to do - or where the gifters wanted their loving presents to end up - Crystal went looking for a better alternative for ‘the next time’. When she didn’t find it she decided to create it herself. But, to say she created it herself is a huge lie.
The only way to explain the revelation of Sharing Solace is to say it was Madelyn’s idea that she held onto until her mama was ready to hear it. Maddie (being the sassy pants she is) then berated her mother with the concept until Crystal took notice {Imagine Crystal screaming into the skies ‘FINE! I HEAR YOU! You win, I’ll do what you tell me!” like any mother of a 5-year-old who’s been beaten down by their preschooler.} From that point forward Crystal became the Energizer Bunny working to bring Sharing Solace to life.
Sharing Solace intends to be so much more than a ‘bereavement gift company’. They believe if it can be lost it can also be grieved. All grief is valid, worth expressing, and should be allowed space for. Their signature gift - the Locket + Token sets - offers a marriage of the technology and the tangible.
When the griever receives their Locket + Token they register their token on SharingSolace.com and keep their piece near their heart as long as it brings them comfort and courage. At some point, the piece will no longer bring the same comfort it once did - it symbolizes you’re ready to release your heavy, all-consuming, debilitating grief. That’s when you remove the inner token from the outer locket, place that inner token into a new locket, and pass that new locket onto another as they go along their own grief journey. By registering your token on the Sharing Solace website you immediately get to see the journey of your token, through our Token Tree technology, and are offered countless resources and community-building options - which are available to you as long as you continue to use them. By adding yourself as a ‘leaf’ on the Token Tree you can follow your token as it moves from person to person and connect with others while sharing your uniquely similar experiences. As the Token Tree {which looks more like a spider’s web} continues to grow so will the community and connections.
Sharing Solace, as the new {and best} way of offering sympathy gifts and bereavement support, began to move throughout the community Crystal had the opportunity to share her story - plus her irreverent and honest take - on grief. Her best-selling book “Confessions of a Griever: Turning a Hot Mess into an Haute Message {Laughable Lessons for When Life Just Sucks}” was born from those experiences and published on May 19, 2020 - on Madelyn’s 10th birthday.
The pages speak to not only Crystal’s story, but present a layman’s advice on grief support and mental health - all while offering the reader the option to ‘pick a path’: flipping around the book from chapter to chapter. Reading the book resembles the journey of grief itself: it is a roller coaster; it can be up and down, forward and backward…and just when you think you’re about ‘done’ you get transported back to the beginning wondering what just happened to you.
Rounding out their offerings is a hand-assembled gratitude journal - stemming from the first effort Crystal used to find her light again; and a sympathy card + reflection journal - allowing lovers to send their love and grievers to begin to process their thoughts and feelings.
With grief in the grand scheme of things ‘just’ being a subset of mental health as a whole, Sharing Solace is very excited to partner with Moodr Health to offer a new, personal {and maybe a little snarky} take on maternal mental health.
