We know loss.
Not the kind you read about. The kind that drops you to your knees on a Tuesday and dares you to get back up. The kind that stacks. One thing after another after another until you stop asking why and start asking what now.
On March 13, 2026, my son Dylan was killed in a car accident. He was 17. An identical twin. Gone. Just like that. The air left the room and hasn’t fully come back.
Two weeks later, our family dog died. Eleven years of loyalty. Eleven years of that dog pressing his body against ours when the world got too heavy. He grieved with us, and then he left too.
But this wasn’t our first rodeo with devastation. On December 23, 2020, our house burned down. Days before Christmas. Everything we owned — photos, memories, the physical proof of our life together — gone. I lost my horse. Stepped on a nail. A freak, senseless tragedy. The kind that makes you want to scream at the sky.
Here’s what I know. Grief is not the enemy. Grief is proof. It’s the receipt for love. You don’t grieve what you didn’t cherish. So yes, we know grief. Which means we know love. And love is the whole point.
I have five kids. Dylan’s twin just received the 2026 Courage Award from the Cincinnati Enquirer. Let that land for a second. One twin is zooming around heaven. The other is carrying the torch down here. Fierce. Brave. Unbroken. He’s not surviving. He’s honoring his brother with every breath.
That didn’t happen by accident. I raise eagles. Not kids who play it safe. Not kids who stuff their feelings down and perform for the world. Eagles. Kids who love hard, forgive fast, and know how to regulate themselves when life gets sideways. Because it will get sideways. That’s not pessimism. That’s just Tuesday.
Faith got us here. I won’t apologize for that. God didn’t cause our suffering, but He walked us through every single second of it. Our family didn’t fracture under the weight of it all. We fused. We chose each other. We chose love when bitterness was the easier road. We chose forgiveness when anger felt completely justified. We chose to keep showing up — messy, broken, and still standing.
People ask how we do it. How we keep going after everything. Honestly? We don’t have another option that aligns with who we are. Quitting isn’t in our DNA. Hiding isn’t either. We are loud about our pain and louder about our purpose.
Here’s my unpopular opinion: you cannot raise resilient kids from a place of comfort. You raise them in the fire. You model what it looks like to fall apart and put yourself back together with grace. You let them see you cry. You let them see you pray. You let them see you choose love when hate would be so much easier.
Dylan is gone from this earth. But he is not gone from this family. He never will be. And the love we carry for him — for our dog, for our horse, for the home we rebuilt from ash — that love is the fiercest thing about us.
We don’t just endure. We soar.