Making Friends

I am regularly amazed and inspired by people I encounter who find ways to make a difference in their communities or in the broader world. Sarah of Dolly Donations is one of those people. She hit upon a wonderful idea to share some handmade love and found a way to make it work. I wish I remember how I came across her blog. As soon as I saw it, I knew I'd be making dolls for an orphanage in Haiti. And so I mentioned it to a few friends. And those friends inspired and overwhelmed  me with their willingness to create and to give.

This week, just about every time we saw friends, I was handed bags with small gifts of love, gently sewn into rag dolls. And this weekend we are sending out 37 dolls to the Abundant Ground Foundation who will deliver them to Haiti and into the hands of the children they were made for. The gifts are both humble and profound, made by children sitting on the laps of adults as they sew and stuff, or by mamas who tucked their own children into bed and then stitched together some hope and love for children living a world away. As I embroidered smiles on small brown faces to make friends for children I will never meet, I was thinking that what all of us really want is to make their world right, with a mother to tuck them in safely and sing them to sleep. The dolls are a small substitute for that love but hopefully they will bring some smiles and comfort into the world of those children. I think my friend Joanna said so it beautifully. 

I am not kidding myself that this will change very much in their hard lives. I know, though, that if my little ones ever found themselves without me there to care for them, I would be overcome with gratitude if another Mama, somewhere in the world, shared a little bit of her hand made love with my children.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
~ Henry David Thoreau