Meet the woman who inspires your Mother's Day cards
Writer Melvina Young told ABC News she's inspired by her mother, Sadie.
— -- Finding the right card to express your love and appreciation for mom can be difficult. Still, writer Melvina Young is one mom who pens Mother's Day cards for Hallmark, making it just a bit easier for all of us.
Young, 53, who has worked at the card company for the past 11 years, said she's inspired by her own mother, Sadie, who raised her in the segregated South.
The writer would often watch her mother return home to her and her two siblings at their home in Lepanto, Arkansas.
"My mom is a deeply giving person," Young told ABC News. "And so my mom might come home from chopping cotton all day and make the choice to make me, from scratch, the cinnamon raisin muffins that I love so much."
"Even though she was dog tired, she made them for me," she continued. "Love for my mom is not just a feeling that you have. Love for my mom is an action."
Those actions help Young pen cards for all moms on Mother's Day. She, along with approximately 30 other writers, also write cards for other holidays, along with religious and sympathy cards.
Young is also inspired by her late mother-in-law Laurel Streich, who passed away in 2015 from ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the spinal cord, leading to loss of control over muscles and eventually death.
"I have been incredibly lucky in having both of these women as role models for ... not just motherhood but humanhood," she said.
Their example has also helped her mother her own 19-year-old daughter, Sage Young Streich.
And although Young's mom has helped inspire dozens of Mother's Day cards over the years, she herself doesn't celebrate Mother's Day as she's a Jehovah's Witness and its religious custom dictates that they don't observe holidays.
Young, who considers herself "secular," finds it ironic. She still sends her mother the cards she writes, but crosses off the "Happy Mother's Day" part.
"She doesn't celebrate it and I want to respect her," she added. "She knows I celebrate her every day. I celebrate her as the woman she is. And I celebrate her as the continually loving mom that she is."