Caring Causes: Girls Love Mail

In 2009, writer and founder of Girls Love Mail, Gina L. Mulligan, was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time Gina was working on an epistolary novel, a novel that is made up of all letters. While undergoing treatment and writing letters for her novel, she started receiving letters and cards filled with well wishes. Gina received over 200 letters, many from people she had never met. "Letters were all around me, and I realized letters are a precious gift with the power to heal," says Gina. She wanted to give back and started Girls Love Mail with the goal to get a letter to every woman diagnosed - that's 250,000 letters each year.

The mission of Girls Love Mail is to give the gift of hand-written letters to women going through breast cancer treatment. Since August 2011, they have handed out over 120,000 letters – that’s 120,000 women across the country encouraged by kindness anyone can do. Letters come in from around the globe and go out through 160 cancer centers across the country, and the numbers are growing. 

With Miles of Mail 2017 their goal is to collect 26,000 letters this year (by the beginning of Oct they had 20,000 collected). Letters come from writers all over the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, Korea, Brazil, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and the Netherlands. It's a great family or group activity for people of all ages!

To reach more women, Girls Love Mail has just released a gift book of letters.  Dear Friend: Letters of Encouragement, Humor, and Love for Women with Breast Cancer (Chronicle Books). This beautiful collection of 100 handwritten letters offers strength, encouragement, and comfort to women living with breast cancer. Written by compassionate strangers - many of whom have gone through their own health battles - these heartfelt letters were gathered by Girls Love Mail to deliver words of comfort when they're needed the most.

For more information, visit GirlsLoveMail.com. Media clips available at GirlsLoveMail.com/in-the-news.html.