Good morning and happy birthday angel. As usual, this date brings a complicated mixture of feels for me, your dad, you brother & sister, and your grandparents, and maybe even for some who had the honor of knowing you.

Things for Tangerine Owl have been on hold as over the last three years I’ve been focused on school, but I’m proud to tell you that in just a few short months I will be graduating with my Masters in Social Work. This is all because of you. With it, the Tangerine Owl Project be able to go so much further in helping the families and mamas who are navigating their own losses, traumas, and healing from situations that have broken their hearts in hopes of helping them find a way to gather them back together. The organization will be able to move from providing peer support to enabling the education, resources, and most importantly space for women to bring forth unashamed the anxieties, fears, grief, and all the other words we’re supposed to keep silent simply because our wonderous bodies have the capability to bring new life into this world. it’s no small thing, that ability but recognizing that not all women feel rainbows and butterflies at this thought – sometimes the terror of what it means to be a mother can be overwhelming. Sometimes that loss that occurs no matter how much you love your child can be debilitating. So showing the support, respect, and love for women in all aspects of pregnancy and postpartum time period is where i’ll be in the trenches with them.

i am so proud to have had the chance to spend a month with you and it still hurts to know we’ll never get to see who you were to become. This is the pain and struggle each year and I doubt it’ll ever leave. You have always been and always will be my inspiration. You have given me a gift that is nearly impossible to ever show enough gratitude for. To experience such unspeakable pain but from it to gain such extraordinary growth and opened up an understanding of the world in ways that could have never happened otherwise. I can’t wait for you to see what comes next.

I love you dearly. Always. We miss you so much, and you are never far from our thoughts. I hope that you can feel that, wherever you are. XO