In 2014, my son brought home a painting of a sun with a quirky smile. Over the next few months, he created many more, and each one had its own personality. Not all of the suns were smiling. In fact, the ones on darker construction paper tended to have more neutral or sad expressions.

My son is autistic and was mostly non-verbal at the time, so these self-expressions gave us so much joy. 

These bursts of sunlight inspired me to create my own. I wanted to set a goal number that was difficult to achieve, but not impossible. So, I decided on 1,000 - and almost 10 years later I am almost done.