For a great many of us, the holidays bring back childlike joy and the comfort of familiar traditions. But for those who have lost someone they love, this same season can feel impossibly heavy. Chances are, someone in your life is carrying that weight right now, and you may be unsure how to acknowledge it, so you say nothing at all to avoid saying the wrong thing. Stader Richardson knows that silence all too well, and he’s created a way to overcome it. His company, Shades of Grief, creates cards that speak of, and to, grief itself, helping people show up for one another and break the silence grief can create.
Stader is no stranger to the weight of grief. After he unexpectedly lost his wife, Frances, in 2022, he felt a pull to turn his grief into something positive. Still, the idea didn’t fully take shape until the following year, when his college roommate passed away. Having spent most of their lives as close friends, Stader wanted to reach out to his friend’s wife and find a sympathy card worthy of the depth of such loss. What he found instead was that commercially available cards fell far short; they felt almost impersonal, and their messages were shallow. So, he decided to create his own, one that spoke honestly to the grief she was facing. When she called to tell him how much it meant to her, he knew he was onto something, and thus, Shades of Grief was born.
The line of cards that followed thoughtfully acknowledges the many forms grief can take, from the loss of a loved one to life transitions, heartbreak, change, and the quiet emotional experiences people often carry privately, and provides a beautiful way to remind someone that they are not alone.
Fittingly, maybe even ironically, Stader and Frances’s love story also began with a card. The two grew up together in Louisiana and reconnected in 2012 after Stader mailed her a card offering prayers when her husband passed. That card led to their reconnection and, four years later, to their marriage. It was a beautiful love story, and the mention of Frances’s name makes Stader light up.
“There is a commonly held misconception,” Stader relates, “that when a person has lost a loved one, mentioning their name will bring up sorrow. It’s simply not true, and virtually every person suffering alone will say the same thing. That name brings up the greatest happiness, especially since those in the grief community rarely, if ever, get to hear it spoken. And the cards give us all that opportunity!”
So, with Stader’s and the cards’ insightful words, wrapped in a beautiful linen, we all receive the opportunity to come up with words that few outside the grief community can.
“One of the most poignant traits of our line of cards is to dispute that old saying, ‘There are just no words,” Stader said. “There are words. Hard to find perhaps, in that you almost need to have lived through great loss to feel them, but they are there. And they mean so much to those millions of people suffering mostly alone once the world starts up again for everyone else.”
“Unfortunately,” Stader continues, “at least for me personally, I feel the words.”
But for the rest of us, everyone who has yet to become a member of this largely unspoken community, these cards provide a beautiful opportunity to open, or reopen, communication. To say that name aloud to someone starving to hear it. And all we have to do is put on a stamp and write, “Thinking of you and [Name].” People spend a lifetime with this name; that's part of who they are. And to hear or read it makes such an impact.
Rather than following a formula, Stader writes from his own experiences, putting pen to paper when the emotions are closest to the surface. He wrote most of the cards in the collection himself. Some of the most beautiful artwork comes from pencil illustrations by his niece, Boyce Leigh Powers, an attorney in Kentucky with a love of art.
“I write what I'm feeling in the beautiful moments,” Stader said. “It tends to translate to other people in the same situation. The emotions are not unique to my loss, and most seem to hit in deep, meaningful ways. Some folks have told me, ‘those are really beautiful,’ and I appreciate that. But there's a whole lot of difference between seeing something beautiful and having tears come to your eyes.” There are just so many of us that see the cards in a much different light.
The cards are available on the Shades of Grief website, and on Saturdays, you can find Stader at the Franklin Farmers Market selling them in person. In the few months since Shades of Grief launched, they’ve sold roughly 1,000 cards, and the impact is already evident, as people nationwide have reached out to thank Stader, both senders and recipients.
For Stader, that name will always be Frances, and through every card he writes, he makes sure it’s never left unspoken.
For more information or to purchase cards, visit their website.
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