Grit Diaries
Sarah De Jonge · 38 min
Born on Valentine's Day and abandoned by grief at four, Sarah De Jonge turned a mother's absence into a global kindness movement — one hand-stitched pocket heart at a time.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Sarah De Jonge was born on Valentine's Day in northern Tasmania, but when she was almost four, her mother developed anorexia and eventually moved to Athens to seek her own healing, leaving Sarah and her two older siblings behind. What remained across the distance and grief were handmade gifts: dolls and purses sent from Greece that taught Sarah something she wouldn't fully understand until years later, that something made with love creates connection even when bodies are separated.
In 2015, working in psychology and nonprofit, Sarah made a handful of pocket hearts to give to friends. Their reaction changed her life. She launched A Thousand Hearts in 2016 with a single goal: to stitch a thousand hearts and offer them freely, with no cost and no agenda, just kindness from one person to another. Ten years later, those hearts have reached people in the US, UK, Kazakhstan, Japan, Paris, Mexico, and Greece. Sarah built a business model around staying true to that original promise: an online shop selling kits and materials funds volunteer artists and free community hearts, so no one is excluded by cost.
But the real story is what Sarah learned along the way. She discovered that kindness works on our brains like antidepressant medication, increasing serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin. Self-kindness is not self-care; it is a daily practice of treating yourself the way you would treat someone you love. And kindness is not the same as niceness. Kindness means saying what needs to be said, but delivering it gently enough that it can be received. Her father once told her to stop pushing the river. Sarah is still learning to let things flow, to say no when she needs to, and to trust that looking after herself is how she looks after the people she loves.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
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