After a deathloss or shadowloss, grief sweeps in to help us heal. Grief itself is intangible. You can’t see it, touch it, hear it, taste it, or smell it. It’s invisible, yet can also be all encompassing. The “I’m Grieving” button can be a meaningful tangible memento during an intangible experience—a tangible reminder of your grief experience and of support itself.

While moving through the grief response, it can be hard to scrape together a little extra emotional bandwidth, or find more compassion for ourselves. Grief is stress, after all. Customers have long reported that our grief buttons save emotional labor—it lets a griever let the world know (on days when they want to, of course) that they are open to a little extra—a question, a chat, a hug, or just acknowledgement.

After Cole’s sister died, she needed a way to signal to her support network the days when she was open to a little extra love. Living in a small community meant seeing shop owners, neighbors, and friends on a daily basis. And as grief goes—some days you need to ignore it, and on others you embrace it. Cole’s first “I’m Grieving” button was a DIY success, and the text on them today is the same exact text that appeared on that very first button.

These buttons connect to a long tradition of physical, tangible forms of mourning.