Get Well Book

Someone you care about is sick, or hurt, or in the middle of a recovery that's taking longer than anyone expected. You want to do something, and you've already sent the flowers. A get well book is the next thing. You reach out to the people who love them and ask each one to write a letter: their family, their friends, the people from work, the ones who would be at the hospital if they could.

Some write a few lines. Some write a page. Some tell an old story, some make a joke, some just say the thing they've been meaning to say. People include photos, too. We collect all of it and print it into a hardcover book that gets delivered to the person who needs it.

We've been making these books since 2009. When someone opens one in a hospital bed or on the couch where they've been stuck for weeks, what usually happens is this: they read the first letter, then the next, and somewhere in there they start crying, and then they keep going. Then they read the good ones out loud to whoever's in the room.

Being ill is lonely and boring in a way that's hard to explain to people who aren't going through it. The fear comes and goes, but the long stretches in between are just empty hours, alone with your own worst thoughts. Visitors can't stay forever. Texts pile up and you don't have the energy to answer them. Flowers die in a week.

A get well book is company that stays. It sits on the nightstand and it's there at 3am when sleep won't come and there's nobody to call. The person can pick it up on a bad day and hold actual proof, in their hands, that a whole crowd of people is thinking about them and pulling for them. That's worth more than it sounds when you're stuck in a bed counting ceiling tiles.

And the letters can be funny. A sick person does not need one more carefully worded "thinking of you." They need their college roommate reminding them of the dumbest thing they ever did together, or a friend promising to settle the score on the tennis court the second they're cleared to play. The right joke does more for someone in recovery than almost anything else you can send.

A get well book fits almost any kind of recovery, but a few situations are where it really earns its keep:

• A long hospital stay or a stint in rehab, where the hard part isn't any single day but the sheer number of them. A book gives them something to come back to when the hours drag.
• A chronic diagnosis, where treatment stretches out over months and the early flood of support thins out. The book is there for the long middle, after the casseroles stop arriving.
• Someone recovering far from home, away from their usual people. Letters from back home close that distance in a way a phone call can't.
• A friend group that wants to do more than send another fruit basket. Split the work, round up everyone who knows the person, and put it all in one place they can actually keep.
• A kid or a teenager facing a hard stretch, where letters from cousins, classmates, and teammates can carry them through it.

People go blank when they sit down to write to someone who's sick. They worry about saying the wrong thing, so they end up writing "get well soon" and leaving it there. You don't have to fix anything or find the perfect words. You just have to show up on the page.

Tell them about a day you had together that you still think about. Remind them of something hilarious, even if it's a little inappropriate; especially if it's a little inappropriate. Tell them what you're looking forward to doing with them once they're back on their feet, and make it specific, so they have something to aim for. If you're scared, you don't have to write about being scared. You can just write about them.

It doesn't need to be long. A few honest sentences from each person add up to a book that says, plainly, you are not going through this by yourself. That's the whole point, and every letter that's true helps make it.

You set up a book on our site and pick a deadline. Then you send a link to everyone you want to contribute, and they write their letters and add photos right there. You get a dashboard that shows who's submitted, which matters here, because when someone's sick you usually want the book finished sooner rather than later (and you will be reminding people; everyone means to write, almost nobody does it on time).

Once the letters are in, you personalize the book: choose a cover photo, write the title, and put the letters in whatever order feels right. We handle the design, then we print and ship a hardcover book to you or straight to the person recovering.

Printing and shipping take about 20 days, so don't wait until the last minute, especially if you're racing a discharge date or a treatment milestone. Start collecting letters early. Give people a little time and they'll write something the person can read again and again on the days that are hard.