The woman who aspires to sell 10,000 cookies is the brave kind.

The kind of brave that believes some ideas are just crazy enough to work.

But on a recent February day, this woman was afraid to make a Facebook post.

Ashley Greeno was afraid to tell people that her story, the one thousands of real friends and internet friends had followed from the beginning, won’t have the happy ending everyone wished for.

But people were asking and she was finally ready to tell them. It was only fair since she invited them along on this journey.

And it’s been a journey.

That is Greeno’s go-to way of describing the last four years of her life. When she says “journey,” she emphasizes the last syllable in a way that makes the word sound longer and layered. She’s hinting at the way things went.

It’s been a journey. It’s been long and layered.

It started with hope and sprinkles. In a heart emoji-filled Instagram post in April 2018, Greeno announced something exciting. Her family wanted to adopt a baby.

“There’s just one little catch… adoption is not cheap,” she wrote.

So she announced something else exciting. Greeno, a longtime baker, wanted to sell her cookies to help with the expenses.

She and her husband, Hunter, had crunched the numbers. They needed to come up with an extra $35,000 or so. They brainstormed ideas, like driving for Uber or getting another part-time job.

Greeno’s idea? She’d try to sell 10,000 cookies.

Comments called the idea “awesome” and “super creative.” People probably also thought it was crazy.

“It did seem crazy,” Greeno, who lives in Colorado Springs, said. “It seemed very wild and out there. But it sounded way more fun than just asking people to give me money.”

She’s the type of person who seeks out fun. Even amid struggle.

About three years into their marriage, Greeno and her husband found out they were having a baby. The young couple counted their daughter, Lily, as a “big wonderful surprise.”

Two years later, they started trying for another baby.

“We weren’t sure what to think when we didn’t get pregnant after six months,” Greeno wrote years later in a blog.

Tests and procedures followed. As did an explanation: Secondary infertility.

Realizing they wouldn’t be able to get pregnant again, they started looking into adoption.

And Greeno started selling those cookies. She created a website and social media pages to help spread the word under the moniker Ten Thousand Cookies.

“We really think we can make it at least halfway to our goal with Ten Thousand Cookies,” she said in the same blog, as she introduced her family’s story.

Greeno didn’t expect what she’d be saying in the next blog, which is why she titled it “WOW.”

She sold 2,000 cookies within six weeks. People drove miles to pick up cookies from her house. People from across the country wanted to know if she could ship cookies.

“From the first day we announced it, we got nonstop orders,” she said. “I never imagined it would be like that.”

It was like that because people connected to her family’s story. Greeno heard from so many others about infertility struggles and adoption experiences.

“We were willing to share and create that space,” she said. “And cookies are really fun, so I think the combination made it really special.”

And made her little cookie operation really get cooking.

“I started a business sort of accidentally,” Greeno said.

She didn’t forget why she started it, though. By July 2019, just 18 months after launching this goal, there was an update: “WE DID IT!”

There was more happy news. At that time, the Greeno family had gone through most of the steps of their adoption process. They were almost to the final step: Waiting to match with a child.

Then came the waiting. The constant flipping of hope and disappointment. They were so close that they had a bedroom ready. There were so many close calls. Like when one expecting mother changed her mind. The pandemic added its own complications.

Greeno kept the faith. And she kept making cookies, because they were still selling.

Her gluten-free sugar cookies are popular for a reason. They come with eclectic and colorful decorations for occasions ranging from baby showers to National Ice Cream Day. Greeno makes cookies inspired by her favorite books and TV shows. She makes them to resemble plants, wine bottles, frogs, llamas and cheeseburgers.

The buzz from Ten Thousand Cookies allowed her to make “Cookie Lady” a full-time job. She has a monthly cookie subscription service called Cookie Crate and teaches baking and decorating classes.

That’s the kind of happy stuff Greeno posted about for a while. She didn’t post much about adoption stuff because, behind the screen, she was just sad.

That’s what she told followers in early 2021. And then this: “So I have an update.”

Her family decided to foster three little ones, “more kids than we ever said we would consider,” Greeno said.

When the kids moved on after a few months, the Greeno family was just three again.

Together, they decided that maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.

They decided not to renew their adoption and foster care licenses.

“It was such a big, complicated, heavy decision, but one that came with so much peace,” she wrote on Facebook. “Simply put: it was time.”

After eight years of waiting and wanting another baby, Greeno and her family were exhausted.

“We were ready to not be in this waiting limbo anymore,” she said. “It felt hard to share that with everyone after sharing this whole big story and not having the ending we wanted. I am in a place now where I think it just wasn’t meant for us.”

Other things were meant for her.

Like a thriving cookie business, which allows Greeno to pay it forward. She donated some of the money raised from Ten Thousand Cookies to other adoptive families. And $1 from each cookie subscription box is donated to an organization called Together We Rise, which supports foster care and adoption.

The journey didn’t go as planned, but it gave her an online community she loves. And it gave her a few hard-learned lessons.

“We’re always worried about something not going like we hope it will,” Greeno said. “It rarely does and that can still be great.”

Bravery, after all, is about taking chances. Not about what happens next.