Thank you for considering First Touch Family as one of your charitable organizations to support. 

Our ministry provides tangible and emotional support for those who are suffering from child loss by walking with families from the initial trauma of child loss, helping meet emotional and/or financial needs, identifying resources, and connecting them with aftercare in their communities. In addition, we send Blessing Boxes to families of child loss as a tangible way to let them know they are not alone, they are not forgotten and neither are their children.

I wanted to first share my story and how we were led to start First Touch Family

In 2016 I lost my firstborn son Christopher in a car accident.  Although I had recently remarried after the loss of my husband in 2011, I was still carrying a broken heart when the rest of my world burned to the ground. Christopher was the first to hear my heartbeat. The baby I carried and the boy I nurtured into young adulthood. I was not sure I would ever find joy again.

It became obvious to me that as a society, we don’t grieve well and often we don’t support those who are grieving well either. There were so many things said by mostly well-meaning people that were more hurtful than helpful. I’m here raising my hand to say, I too have done and said things that were not helpful and I still do sometimes.

When Christopher died, it became obvious to me how important it is to parents of child loss that their children are never forgotten. For years, even when my brain was mush and could not hold a complete sentence in its space of grey matter, I feared forgetting. I feared others would forget. I feared I would forget. I feared Christopher’s life would eventually fade into the background as if he never lived.

I became hyper-aware of all the fun runs, scholarship fundraisers, foundations created for child loss, and memorial gatherings being held in memory of other children.

I had to hold myself back from the desire to run into that space myself. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, they are beautiful reminders of the lives of precious children now in Heaven. I just knew, deep down, that was not how God wanted to use our story to keep Christopher’s memory alive.

My boy’s heart was in the trenches with the homeless, the outcast, the broken, the forgotten, the lost, just like his momma’s heart is. I knew, that however God chose to use our story, He would use Christopher’s life and death and our ashes in those spaces.

Over the next five years I struggled with guilt over not doing “all the things” and not creating new traditions that honored Christopher’s memory throughout the year. In those moments God continued to whisper to my heart “it is bigger, trust me.” Even in my anger at God, I knew deep down that the beauty he was creating from Christopher’s death was so much more than I could imagine.

In October of 2021, I was sitting in church one Sunday when our Pastor asked for prayer for a family who just lost their son in a car accident. I knew immediately I was going to find that mom as soon as church was over. That experience and the following days are when God planted the seeds of First Touch Family in my heart. It made me realize that not all families have a support system like I was blessed with as I walked through the death of my husband and son.  Not all families have a church they can lean on in times of crisis.  Not all families have someone who can hold their hand and help them through the funeral process.  Not all families have people who still lean in and show up after the casket is closed and the casseroles go cold.  We also realized that healing needed to begin community, yet we didn’t know where to look for that community.

We support parents of child loss regardless of the age of the child, from miscarriage to adult.  We desire to help parents and families of child loss find “beauty in the ashes” as they move forward on their lifelong journey of child loss.

We would be so grateful if you would consider supporting us financially, but even if you choose not to, please be in prayer over this ministry, and don’t hesitate to send a Blessing Box to a friend or acquaintance who has lost a child or refer someone you know to us.  We would love the opportunity to love on them and serve them through their grief and loss.

Much love,

Chrissy

Our ministry is founded on the scripture Isaiah 61:3

To provide for those who grieve in Zion.  To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.