Grace Berbig turned the pain of losing her mom to leukemia at age 11 into a cause that sends support and joy through the mail to patients in children’s hospitals.
During her illness, Berbig’s mother found strength from the handmade cards and other artwork she and her sisters would make for her.
“I have the happiest memories of visiting my mom, running up and piling on her hospital bed with my sisters, and showing her all of our cards. She would look through each one with a gleaming smile, give us kisses on the head, and put them on her wall right in front of her bed,” Berbig said.
After her mother died, Berbig vowed to help people who were fighting battles like her mom.
She created her first Letters of Love club in 2018 at Orono High School in Minnesota where she was a student. The members made and mailed cards to children diagnosed with cancer and other serious illnesses.
Today there are 314 Letters of Love clubs at high schools and colleges across 42 states. These volunteers have supplied more than 425,000 handmade cards, letters and artwork to hospitals.
Berbig credits the employees at her local Post Office in Long Lake, MN, with helping her from the beginning and supporting the organization’s growth.
“I know all the Long Lake postal workers, and they have watched Letters of Love truly grow from filling up one P.O. Box to collecting carts and carts of our mail and lots of packages,” she said.
Berbig says her organization sends between 100 and 700 cards in bubble mailers to hospitals and uses USPS for all its mailing services.
“I think what she does is fantastic, and it makes us here at the Long Lake Post Office feel honored to help such an incredible organization and be a part of the relationship Letters of Love has with the people they connect,” said Santos Mejia, the local postmaster.
Elizabeth Hernandez, president of the Letters of Love chapter at the University of Iowa, said, “It gets people off of their phones. It gets them interacting with real, tangible messages that another person can open and read.”
More information about Letters of Love can be found on its website.
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