This is a story about thousands of people turning darkness into light.

It’s a story about the pull and the power of human connection. It’s a story about the world evolving toward love.

And it’s a story about my childhood friend Sarah Bach.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a campaign to send holiday cards to LGBTQ folks who’ve been shunned by their families — who aren’t invited home, who’ve been cut off from the warmth of tradition — because of who they are or who they love. The campaign was launched by Carolyn and Molly Pinta, co-creators of the Pinta Pride Project, an organization that raises awareness and support in suburban Northwest Chicago communities for LGBTQ people. Pinta Pride Project was born in 2019 when Molly Pinta, Carolyn’s daughter, organized a pride parade in Buffalo Grove — its first, and now an annual event for the Chicago suburb.

The card-writing campaign launched the day after the Club Q shooting last month in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Pinta was inspired by Home for the Holidays, a 12,000-strong Facebook group that serves as a safe space for LGBTQ people who can’t, actually, go home for the holidays. Pinta started a spreadsheet with addresses of members from the group who wanted to receive holiday cards from kindhearted strangers. She set up card-writing parties and added information to the Pinta Pride Project website (buffalogrovepride.com) for others who wanted to take part.

“More than ever, those of us who feel safe to do so have got to open our mouths,” she told me. “Because people are hurting.”

As soon as my column published, I started getting emails from people who wanted in. Pinta started hearing from high schools and youth groups and grandmothers and her state senator, Adriane Johnson — all of whom wanted in. Her kitchen table quickly filled with cards for her to address, stamp and mail.

When I checked in with her 10 days before Christmas, she had collected 2,134 cards.

A hundred of them were from my friend Sarah.

Sarah and I grew up together, though we haven’t seen each other since middle school. She finished high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, went on to study music in college and graduate school and landed a gig playing the French horn in a South Beach, Florida, orchestra.

“Like Triple-A baseball for classical music,” she said.

We reconnected through Facebook a few years ago. So I know she’s living in California now, and I know she has two sons, and I know that one of her sons, Lincoln, has osteosarcoma, a rare type of cancer that starts in the cells that form bones. Lincoln’s began in his tibia when he was 10 years old.

I know Lincoln has had 12 surgeries. I know his cancer was in remission for 2½ years, and then it returned in March. This time in his arm. I know he just started high school.

And I know Sarah’s heart, like Lincoln’s heart, has been through the wringer. Her heart knows fear and despair and the cruelty of cancer. They all sit there, taking up space, next to love and hope and joy.

She read about the card-writing campaign on my Facebook page and found room in her heart, too, for kindness. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have 200 Christmas cards in the garage like the good Midwestern hoarder I am,’” she said.

She grabbed a pile and started writing. She filled out 100 and posted a photo of her stack before putting it in the mail to Pinta.

“I sign them ‘Sarah from California,’” she told me, “So people know they’ve got support from all over, from people they don’t even know.”

Lincoln also gets cards from strangers, mostly through a couple of cancer groups they belong to. One neighbor writes him a letter every week.

“When he was first diagnosed when he was 10, we’d get cards with a cat hanging out like, ‘Hang in there!’ We’d read them and chuckle together,” Sarah said. “Now he’s a hardened teenager. My hope is they still get in there, show him people are thinking about him.”

“There,” meaning his heart.

She hopes her stack of cards gets in someone else’s heart. Someone who’s feeling the sting of sorrow or cruelty or loneliness or whatever specific, unique mix of emotions sets in when you don’t know belonging and acceptance at home.

“I hope they get oodles of cards and I hope it gives them a good-old happy cry,” Sarah said. “Happy cries are the best. I hope they have a moment where they feel hopeful, even if it’s just a moment.”

She hopes people hang on to them.

“And look back at them,” she said, “when they need a boost to keep going in life.”

She knows, better than many of us, that a card is not a cure.

But it’s a point of light, and we need those to guide us — back from despair, back to hope, back to each other. Which is always where we belong.

Heidi Stevens is a Tribune News Service columnist. You can reach her at heidikstevens@gmail.com, find her on Twitter @heidistevens13 or join her Heidi Stevens’ Balancing Act Facebook group.