Thousands of encouraging roadside signs have been popping up around the world – and it's all thanks to one woman who felt helpless in the face of mental illness.

Amy Wolff was first inspired to start erecting the inspirational signs after she had a heartbreaking discussion with an acquaintance in May 2017

"We were hanging out with friends when one of them mentioned the suicide rates in our community and I about fell out of my chair," says Wolff. "I felt completely hopeless and ill-equipped to be part of a solution. After all, I wasn't a therapist. I didn't know of anyone suffering with thoughts of self-harm. What on earth could I do?"

Despite her initial feelings of helplessness, Wolff got the idea to start putting up motivational signs in people's yards. For the following two weeks, she and her kids started knocking on people's doors across their town of Newburg, Oregon and asking if they could put up signs featuring messages like "Don't Give Up" and "Your Mistakes Don't Define You".

Wolff then started receiving messages from other people in the community wanting to buy the signs – and within a few days, Wolff had sold over 150 of the yard signs.

The very same night, Wolff's husband designed her a website to sell the signs at-cost.

"The movement really picked up traction when family friends road tripped that summer from Portland to Rochester, leaving a trail of our [messages] in every public bathroom, restaurant, and rest station across this great country," says Wolff.

"Within a year, we had news outlets in Dallas, Boston, Massachusetts, Cincinnati, and Portland cover our movement," she added. "I guess generous love with no strings attached was newsworthy. I guess yard signs were genius."