After college, McDowell worked in advertising as a writer and creative director but grew frustrated with the industry and left to pursue her writing and art in other ways.
[4] While searching for her next venture, she noticed that the sentiments in classic greeting card did not reflect the real-world experiences of the people she knew particularly surrounding difficult subjects like grief, loss, and illness.
[6] McDowell's first book, There Is No Good Card For This: What To Say and Do When Life Gets Scary, Awful, and Unfair To People You Love,[7] co-authored with Dr. Kelsey Crowe, was released in January 2017.
She has stated that one of the most difficult parts of her experience was “the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn’t know what to say, or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it.” [8] Her experience as a cancer patient combined with the experience of losing a close friend to cancer [9] inspired her to create a series of greeting cards known as "Empathy Cards" which is her most popular line to date.
[6] Empathy cards are designed for people dealing with grief and loss using frank, and often humorous language.