Riverdale artist finds healing and connection through monthly mail club

Editor's note: A previous version of this story stated Stacey Natal's  mother has muscular dystrophy. She has multiple sclerosis. 

Stacey Natal sat at her kitchen table in the Riverdale apartment she’s lived in for the past 18 years, and ran her fingers over a pink envelope. Inside was a vibrant art print, a postcard, a letter typed in a font made from her own handwriting, a card with a tailored affirmation and a set of journal prompts.

Natal is an artist and the founder of the Life Happens Now monthly mail club — named after a mantra that became crucial to her years ago after a cancer diagnosis, and gained new significance during her mother’s recent health challenges. The club launched in February, and each month, Natal draws from her personal life to create unique, themed experiences for members to look forward to.

Natal, 60, said amid junk mail and bills, she wants members to feel inspired when opening up her carefully curated envelopes. It’s a moment only for the recipient, she explained, and every detail is intentional.

“I want them to feel it’s something special,” Natal said. “As a mom, I don’t want to share. I have to share everything — my space, my time, everything. But this is just for the person that’s the member.”

A mail club is a subscription-based service usually run by artists who deliver physical items like postcards, letters, bookmarks, stickers and prints. It is often personalized, and appreciated as a way to encourage real-world connection in an increasingly digital world.

Natal’s monthly prints are inspired by photos she’s taken, then drawn using the art app Procreate. She has been promoting the club on social media, as well as emailing contacts she’s built over the years, and so far has garnered 12 subscribers. She charges $12 a month.

She started the club after what was described as a life-changing last year and a half. Her time was dedicated to caring for her mom, who has multiple sclerosis and suffered a bad fall in late 2024. Amid doctors appointments, a stalled Medicaid application, managing home nurses and spending the night at her mom’s to save money on additional care, Natal said she became burnt out. To take her mind off things, Natal would scroll Instagram, and started seeing other artists’ mail clubs.

Curiosity turned into action, and in a few short months the mail club became an outlet for Natal. She said she feels calmer, more relaxed. Just as she tailors the envelope’s content to create a moment solely for the recipient, the time she spends creating it is solely her own.

Natal’s experience with her mom inspired April’s theme, “April Showers Bring May Flowers.” The image on the month’s print shows a woman in a flowing skirt walking through the city, umbrella in hand. Pink flowers bloom from the umbrella, spilling over its rim.

“Somewhere on the other side of it all, I realized I had grown into a stronger, more capable version of myself than I knew existed,” Natal wrote in the club’s April letter. “Whatever storm you’re walking through right now, I want you to know that’s happening too.”

About a decade ago, Natal consciously adopted a positive mindset, which stemmed from a habit of journaling and studying personal growth. This was the first time Natal coined Life Happens Now, renaming her blog and starting a virtual club to spread self-help advice.

In 2018, she was diagnosed with human papillomavirus-related throat cancer, and underwent surgery that same year to remove a small tumor on the back of her tongue, as well as lymph nodes from her neck to see if the cancer had spread. During treatment, Natal said she put her energy toward the things she could control.

Natal was born and raised in the Bronx, and moved to Riverdale when she was 14. Growing up, she always gravitated toward the arts, but was influenced by family to choose what was considered a more lucrative career path. At the State University of New York at Albany, she studied to become a computer programmer, and did so for several years, later pivoting to software training. But, the urge to do something creative was always present, and Natal said she frequently embarked on side projects while she worked her day job.

In her late 20s, Natal had a gift basket business, where she found a knack for personalizing things, including handmade bows, curated food and tasteful packaging. Once she was a new mom, she channeled her creativity into making felt hair accessories for her daughters. Her passions kept growing, from cake decorating, to blogging, to capturing it all with her camera. Once the family returned to Riverdale in 2008, Natal immersed herself in the photography business.

Every venture contributed to the mail club — a culmination of skills built and lessons learned, Natal explained, adding that “all the pieces of what I’ve been doing kind of came together.”

Recipients have felt the impact. Judith Satosky, a longtime Riverdale resident, started following Natal online a few years back for her photography and Life Happens Now content. They later met at the Riverdale Y Sunday Market. Satosky said she finds the mail club exciting and reminiscent of a pre-digital age.

“Today, nobody writes letters,” Satosky said. “People just text. This is the old fashioned way.”

For others, the letters represent something more intimate. Hope Silverman, a figure skating coach based in Long Island, is a childhood friend of Natal’s. Now, the two only see each other once a year. But Natal’s mail club helps keep their connection alive.

“I can remember her signature from school,” Silverman said, referencing the handwritten signoffs at the end of each letter. “It just reminds me of her, I feel close.”

In Natal’s workspace, she has a teal board where she prints out and pins testimonials from subscribers. As Natal works, they serve as reminders of the impact a simple envelope can carry. Though Life Happens Now mail club is still in its early stages, Natal believes it is fostering a meaningful sense of connection already.