When the pandemic hit, I was one of the "lucky" ones who got to keep my job in retail when many were laid off or furloughed. My job was already demanding, so it wasn't long before the additional workload caused me to crash-land in burnout. My breaking point came one day while working from home and trying frantically to hit a deadline. I heard my 3-year-old son playing in his room, and something he said caught my attention. I got up and peeked around the corner to watch. My son had set up his stuffed animals around his table. He made a computer from paper and pretended to work just as he saw me do daily. After a few moments, he turned to his stuffed animals and yelled at them to be quiet. He said, "I'm on an important call and need to finish my work." I cried. My heart was broken. This was not the example I wanted to set for my children, and I knew something had to change.

I didn't know what that change was, so I started with therapy. Little did I know then that those therapy sessions would change everything. One of the most significant discoveries was that I had been neglecting my passion for giving back. Before having children, I volunteered my time to several charitable organizations. Life had become so busy that I no longer had time to volunteer.

I started to buy gifts for my friends and family that supported charitable organizations as my way of giving back. The gifts became conversation starters about important issues and a way to learn about different nonprofits. However, it often took a lot of work to uncover and learn about the nonprofit benefiting from my purchase, and the giveback was often vague. As a product person, I didn't always love the merchandise offered. There had to be a better way. I decided that my many years of retail experience and love of helping others put me in a unique position to tackle the problem head-on. I set out on a mission to make giving back and supporting important causes easy when life is busy by incorporating giving into the things we do every day, like buying gifts for our friends and family. I launched The Kindness Cause on March 31, 2022.