Hi, friend

This month marks a milestone we could scarcely have imagined when we began: five years of The Flower Letters, and more than three million letters mailed to homes around the world.

When we started, it was just the two of us at our kitchen table — Hannie illustrating late into the night, me stuffing envelopes and carrying them to the post office. We had no idea whether anyone would want what we were making. We only knew that we believed in it: the simple, almost old-fashioned idea that a handwritten story, arriving in your mailbox, could mean something in a world moving very fast.

Three million letters later, we know the answer. You've told us — in thousands of notes and reviews and messages — what these letters have meant. You've read them to children at bedtime. You've saved them in keepsake boxes. You've waited by the mailbox. You've passed them between generations. You've let our little stories become part of your family's story.

That is the part that still moves us most. We make the letters, but you give them meaning. A story is only ever half-finished on the page; it becomes whole in the heart of the person reading it. For five years, that person has been you.

So this is, more than anything, a thank-you letter. Thank you for five years. Thank you for three million moments at the mailbox. Thank you for trusting us with your evenings, your children, your traditions.

We're only getting started. There are so many more stories to tell — and we can't wait to keep telling them, one letter at a time, with you.

With all our love and gratitude,
Michael & Hannie