Walking for Nolan

This year, Nolan Thomas would have turned four.

Nolan was our firstborn — the older twin brother to his little brother, Leo. We lost Nolan shortly after birth. It happened suddenly, without warning, and it was the most traumatic thing our family has ever lived through. There was no time to prepare for goodbye when we hadn't even finished saying hello.

We think about Nolan every single day. He is woven into our family in ways that don't show up in photographs — in the way we talk about "our boys," in the space he holds at every birthday and holiday, in who Leo is and who Leo will become as a brother to someone he never got to meet.

This September, our family is participating in the Circle of Stars 5K — the very first one of its kind — to honor him. It's an experience built for families like ours: parents who carry a baby they didn't get to raise, siblings who carry a brother or sister they didn't get to grow up with, all of us carrying love with nowhere left to put it except forward.

We want to do this with our family and friends beside us — not because we need anyone to fix what happened, but because we want the people who love us to know Nolan's name, to say it, to remember him with us. Every step of this race is for him.

Every dollar raised also goes toward supporting other bereaved families walking this same impossible road — the ones just starting it, and the ones who, like us, will carry it forever.

Thank you for walking/running with us, for donating, for simply reading his name.

Nolan Thomas. Forever four. Forever loved. Forever our first.