TACOMA, Wash. — When Savannah O'Malley paints in the kitchen of her Tacoma home, she brings bright color to blank canvas. She also brings hope to mothers who have had what's supposed to be the happiest day of their lives turn into the worst day of their lives.
"Cards of Hope is this project I started, where I take my paintings, and I turn them into postcards, and I send them to mothers who experienced a NICU stay or a traumatic birth,” she said.
The women O'Malley sends her art to are complete strangers - but she has a bond with them.
"When I was 24 weeks pregnant, I gave birth to twin boys. They weighed about a pound and a half. And everything in our world completely stopped when that happened," O'Malley said.
Despite the odds, O'Malley's twins survived. She still has a tiny diaper and blood pressure cuffs, reminders of their 100-plus days in the NICU. She was so focused on her son's survival that the stress of the experience didn't hit her until they were about 2 years old. "It was debilitating," O'Malley said.
After sharing her own traumatic birth story on social media, she heard from hundreds of moms with similar experiences.
“It just kind of hit me out of nowhere that this is what I can do. I can take my art and I can gift it to other moms healing from birth trauma," she said.
She had always been an artist, but after the birth of her boys she had put the paintbrush down to take care of them. She picked it up again to begin helping others.
She gifts Cards of Hope to anyone who requests one. She paints bright scenes, always with a small symbol of hope.
“I want it to represent hope and positivity and light and life,” O'Malley said.
She then makes her paintings into postcards and handwrites notes on the back, reminding strangers that they are not alone. So far, she’s sent out nearly 500 cards to places all over the world to anyone who asks for one. Sometimes, these strangers share their birth stories, and a connection is always made. She has a notebook full of them.
"Sometimes I feel fatigued, like how am I gonna keep this going. But I get submissions every day in my inbox, and when I read stuff like this, this is what I needed years ago and it just truly keeps me going," O'Malley said.
Sarah Butts of Puyallup had premature twins. A Card of Hope kept her going.
"It just creates this bond, almost like a trauma bond. She just connects in such a beautiful way it almost makes you feel like you're part of a family, and there is hope, there is hope that things will get better and things definitely have for my family so I got really blessed,” Butts said.
Today, her twins, Brooklyn and Emerson, are doing well.
And O'Malley's twins - Lochlan and Lex - are six. They've graduated from tiny diapers and blood pressure monitoring cuffs to bikes and trikes, and they like to race with their big sister, Poppy.
Living proof that trauma - and joy - can go hand in hand. And that hope always helps.
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