Who Was Daisy? The Friendship Behind the Daisy Collection

Some friendships are short and change everything anyway.

Two girls at a hospital school

At Seattle Children's Hospital School, two young girls found each other. Both were there for reasons no child should have to be there for. They became close friends anyway, finding joy in the ordinary rhythm of school lessons and in the plain gift of each other's company.

Hospital friendships are their own kind of thing. They form fast, because neither child has to explain anything. There is no working up to the hard part. The hard part is already in the room.

Daisy

One of those girls was Daisy. She died when she was eight years old.

Eight is not enough time. There is no version of this where that is not the first and last fact about it. But the friendship she made in that hospital school did not end when she did, and neither did what people were willing to do because of her.

The collection her friend helped make

Years later, FindJoy founder Shelby Dutton partnered with the other girl from that friendship, the one whose handwriting became the FindJoy logo, to create the Daisy product line.

That detail matters. The Daisy collection was not designed by a brand deciding to honor a child it had heard about. It was made with her friend, the person who was actually there, and who was still carrying it years later.

The line is a Daisy Tee, a Kids Daisy Tee, a Daisy Crewneck, and a Daisy Journal. You can see all of them in the Daisy collection.

The Daisy Rainbow Toy Program

Daisy's memory also lives on in the Daisy Rainbow Toy Program, which benefits pediatric patients at Benefis Health System in Great Falls, Montana.

A toy handed to a child in a hospital is not a small thing. It is a few minutes where the room is about something other than being sick. Anyone who has sat with a child through a long admission knows exactly how much those minutes are worth.

Why we keep telling this story

It would be easier to sell shirts without saying that an eight-year-old died. We say it because the alternative is a flower logo with no one behind it, and because the whole idea of FindJoy is that joy and grief are not opposites. They sit in the same room constantly. Daisy's friend knows that better than most, and she is the one who helped design the line.

Even the shortest lives leave the deepest mark.

10% of every sale goes directly to children and families battling childhood illness. Read more about the families behind our designs, or see the Daisy collection.