Finding Light in the Darkness: Lessons from Loss and Resilience

There’s no preparing for the moment when your world collapses, when the unthinkable happens, and you lose something you never thought you could live without. In the same year, my wife Christine and I lost two sons, Tristan and Cameron. What followed was grief unlike anything I could imagine, but it was also a journey of resilience, love, and, ultimately, transformation.

Christine and I spent five years trying to start a family. We tried every holistic approach we could find—Mayan abdominal massage in Belize, a host of other holistic treatments—and even a few medical interventions. Nothing worked. We finally made the painful decision to give up. That’s when adoption found us.

In a record-setting eight days, we were blessed with our first child, Eliana. She was perfect, and the adoption process felt like a miracle, a gift that arrived exactly when we needed it most. Ten months later, the universe surprised us again—we found out Christine was pregnant. We were stunned. After five years of trying, this felt like another miracle.

Just four weeks later, the surprises kept coming. Eliana’s birth mom called us to let us know she was also pregnant—this time with a baby boy, due in just six weeks. We were going to adopt him, and his name would be Tristan.

We were going to have three kids under 18 months. I literally went out and bought a minivan.

The day of Tristan’s birth, we drove to his birth mother’s home in Cleveland, picked her up, and took her to the hospital. What should have been a joyous day quickly turned into a nightmare. Because she was on Medicaid, she was made to wait for hours and ignored by the hospital staff. Then, everything spiraled. She screamed in pain, and it became clear that something was terribly wrong.

It was a placental abruption, a catastrophic complication. Tristan was gone before he could even take his first breath.

We barely had time to grieve. With Christine now pregnant, we focused all our energy on her and the baby. We threw ourselves into doing everything right—every appointment, every vitamin, every test. It was a perfect pregnancy in every measurable way.

But life has a way of shattering perfection.

On the day of Cameron’s delivery, something was horribly wrong. Christine was in labor for 14 hours before we learned the unthinkable: there was salmonella in the womb, an infection so rare that it’s virtually undocumented. It had taken our son before he could meet us.

Cameron was born still. And as if that weren’t enough, the infection spread to Christine. She went into septic shock, her body fighting to survive. She spent a week in the hospital, battling complications. Later, she told me she had seen the light—and made the decision to come back.

Coming home was surreal. Eliana was waiting for us, her bright smile cutting through the darkness. She was the only spark in what felt like an endless tunnel. Somehow, her light kept us moving forward.

Most couples don’t survive a loss like this. Statistically, the grief is often too much. I understand why, but somehow, we made it. We leaned into each other, finding strength in places we didn’t know existed.

And we weren’t done.

Over the years, we adopted four more children, each one bringing their own magic into our family. It’s taken years to make peace with what happened—not to be happy about it, but to understand the beauty that came out of our pain.

Cameron’s life, though brief, was a gift. He gave us the experience of carrying a child from inception to birth. He was with us for nine months, and then he was gone. That heartbreak led us to the family we have today—a family we couldn’t imagine any other way.

Adoption gave us a path forward when everything felt lost. Each of our children, adopted straight from the hospital at just days old, brought us new hope. Cameron bridged the gap between our dreams of biological children and the beautiful reality of the family we’ve created.

No matter what you face in life, there’s always a path forward. It doesn’t erase the pain or make it easier, but with time, you may find meaning in the unthinkable. We did.

I want to thank Ben Laws for inspiring me to share this story. Ben recently shared his own journey of unimaginable loss and resilience, and the nonprofit he and his wife, Jenna, founded to honor their son, Benny. Their foundation, 16 Days , is dedicated to giving the gift of time to NICU families by removing financial barriers that prevent parents from being present with their babies.

Every donation made to 16 Days between now and December 31, 2024, will be matched by Ben and Jenna, up to $50,000. If you feel moved by their mission, I encourage you to donate and help turn Benny’s ripple into a wave. Visit www.16days.org to learn more and contribute.