Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has offered a kind word, made a donation, or shared their baby’s short and beloved life. Since beginning this fundraiser, the miles have felt softer somehow. Sunrise runs arrive quietly with a pink gold burst of light over the lake, meditative in their rhythm, giving me momentum for the day. Longer afternoon runs are a place to share my love: for family, for friends, for the babies whose names travel with me.

This week, I cradled these babies in my heart:
Frankie
Cairn
Baby Podewils
Caleb
Elizabeth and her living siblings, Jacob and Phaedra

On my longest run this week, Sunday, I crossed paths with dozens of common yellowthroats. It is peak migration season, and these little black masked yellow birds had paused in Milwaukee on their long journey north. They flickered through the low branches and rose from the grass as I passed, small lives moving toward something together. They reminded me that long journeys are meant to be shared, that when you’re going a long way, go together. 

Thank you all for coming along with me on this journey.

I was dreading Mother’s Day, so Charlie and I made a plan. I got my long run done the day before, thinking about the couple who just joined our support group and their son, Frankie. I set an alarm for the morning to send out this appeal, then put my phone away.

We went birding. We foraged. We fished. We made garlic mustard pesto and pasta. We spent the day honoring the life we would have loved to share with our son.

When I turned my phone back on, you all brought me to tears — the happy kind. The kind that comes from feeling deeply loved and held by your community. We doubled the fundraising goal on the very first day, which I absolutely did not see coming. 

Above all, it means the world to me that you took a moment yesterday to think of our son, Twinkle Gabriel. Thank you for helping make Mother’s Day a little more bearable. 

So I guess now I really do have to run a marathon.