117: How Ashlie’s Embrace Is Helping Stillbirth Families Get More Time With Their Babies

Erin Maroon, the founder of Ashlie’s Embrace, a nonprofit that donates Cuddle Cots to hospitals across the U.S. Erin shares the heartbreaking story of losing her daughter Ashlie to stillbirth in 2015 after what was considered a healthy pregnancy. From the shock of those devastating words “Your daughter is dead,” to the raw, confusing hours that followed, Erin opens up about what it was like to hold her baby—and then be told that time was up.

Through her own grief, Erin discovered the Cuddle Cot, a simple but powerful device that helps families spend more time with their babies after stillbirth. What started as a way to see Ashlie's name on something meaningful has grown into a mission that has placed nearly 400 Cuddle Cots in hospitals across the country.

If you've ever wished for more time, or wondered how you could make a difference after your loss, this conversation is for you. It’s honest, emotional, and filled with purpose.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What a Cuddle Cot is and why it matters
• Erin’s personal stillbirth story and the heartbreak of not having enough time
• How Ashlie’s Embrace started (and exploded)
• Why giving parents time can change the trajectory of their grief
• The role of partners, grandparents, and even hospital staff in the grief journey
• How you can support families and hospitals through advocacy and donations

Resources Mentioned:

• Ashlie’s Embrace: https://ashleysembrace.org
• Connect with Ashlie’s Embrace on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• Cuddle Cot information: https://www.ashliesembrace.org/

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Transcript

 I'm here with Erin Maroon today, and she is from a non-pro. She has formed a nonprofit organization called Ashley's Embrace in honor of her daughter Ashley. So welcome, Erin.

I am so excited to learn all about Ashley and. Uh, really dive into what you have taken this too, and it's, it seems like it just keeps growing and growing and growing and the way this, the ways that you are helping stillbirth moms. So welcome. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So if you don't mind, maybe we'll just start out with your story.

What, tell me all about Ashley. Sure. Um, about 10 years ago, right now, I was pregnant with our very first baby and I felt incredible. Loved every second of being pregnant, and I felt better pregnant than not pregnant. And I had no issues, no red flags, no complications, nothing to be concerned about. I went to my doctor at 41 weeks in a day at the end of October, 2015, and my doctor told me that Ashley was fine.

She said she looks great there. Like, I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna let you stay pregnant, uh, for a another week unless she comes before that. And I looked 

 my doctor in the eye and I said, am I jeopardizing either one of us if I wait? And she said, no, but I'm not going past 42 weeks. I said, okay, great. I, I trust you.

And, um, I went home, went about my day and made some dinner later that, that afternoon and was relaxing on the couch and I felt a huge kick. And I grabbed my stomach and I was like, baby girl, what was that? And then I didn't think much about it and I kind of drifted off into sleep. I had been upset all day about the possibility of being induced and I just wanted her to come on her own.

And, um, so I was just exhausted and I was done being pregnant and, um. Then my husband came home from a meeting and he said, is Ashley okay? And I said, yeah, she's fine. And he said, are you okay? And I said, yeah, we're we're good. I just, I fell asleep. He said, okay, 'cause something just doesn't feel right. And he had told me that as he pulled in the driveway, that he just got chills, like head to toe, like something was not okay.

And so I realized that she hadn't moved in probably about 30, 40 minutes. And so I jumped up and down, ate some Tootsie rolls, drank some orange juice. We called triage and they said, how far along are you? Yeah, you should probably come in. And so we flew to the hospital and I think my husband knew the whole time that something just was not okay.

And I kept grabbing my belly and he kept saying, is she moving? Is she moving? And I said, I don't know. You're driving so fast, like these bumps. And like, I, I just, I don't know. And um, when we got to the hospital, they hooked me up and tried to find her heartbeat. Three different people tried to find her heartbeat and could not, and I remember the, they had brought in the appending physician.

He turned the ultrasound screen to face us and Ashley's back was highlighted on the screen and my mind said, they're looking for the flicker, but there's no flicker. And probably about two seconds after my brain made that connection, he turned to us and he said, your daughter is dead. Oh. Just very matter of fact.

Um, just. Like as casually as we spilled a cup of coffee or something. And, um, my husband collapsed and I remember I was chewing gum and I chewed my gum a couple more times and I thought, huh, was I gonna be a bad mom? Did I sleep on the wrong side? Did I, should I not have had that sandwich for lunch? You know, all these things.

Did I do this to her? You just said she was fine. Like what happened? And my husband said, we have to tell our parents. And he called my dad and my dad answered. And I heard my dad on the other line. He said, Tony baby. And my husband said, no, Rick, we lost the baby. And it was in that split second that my mind realized the, the reality of the situation of we have to bury our daughter.

And I asked my doctor, or the doctor, I said, what do I, what do we do now? And he said, well, we're gonna induce. And I asked him for a C-section and I said, I'm, I am not strong enough to labor for this baby. Like, can you please just get her out? And he said, no. We're gonna, we're gonna have you labor, uh, it's better for your body and all of that.

And so I labored for 24 hours. I had two epidurals. Um, and she was not moving. Nothing was happening. And finally my husband said, just get her out. And so, um, she was born later the next day and she was beautiful and pink and plump and warm and everything that you expect your brand new baby to be, except the operating room was quiet.

And they asked if I wanted to hold her. When she came out of me, she was, her neck was wrapped three times in with her cord, and then it was also around her foot. And so we're just assuming that that's what happened. Um, and they handed her to me right away. I did not go to recovery. I was wheeled right back to my room where my friends and family were waiting.

A photographer took some photos and I thought. I was gonna drop her because I was shaking so violently from the anesthesia and the exhaustion and the shock and all of that. And so I handed her to my mom and I fell asleep. And then the next morning when I woke up, I asked my husband where Ashley was, and he said, well, I'll go get her.

He brought her in and what can best be described, described as like an Easter basket, and Ashley was a big baby. She was eight, 13, almost 23 inches long. So there was a lot of her. And she, she loved ice cream. Um, but she was, was shoved in this Easter basket and as he took her out of the Easter basket, I could feel just the frigidness coming off of her.

She was ice cold. And the hospital had told me that they kept her in the cold room. And when he handed her to me, she was very, very different from the baby that I had seen the night before, and I had not been made aware that any of that could potentially happen. And I held her and I kissed every feature I could see.

My husband asked me not to un swaddle her because she had changed so much, and my nurses had said, well, you can keep her as long as you want. I didn't know what that meant. There was no bassinet in my room. Do I hold her? Do I sleep with her? Do we like, what do we do in this situation? And so I took a couple of grainy cell phone pictures of her little features, and like I said, kissed when I could see.

We buried her, said we were gonna bury her in the outfit that we were supposed to take her home in. And um, that was it. That was the last time I saw her. I gave her back to my husband. I held her for maybe 20 minutes in that second day, and that was all I got with her. It was less than an hour from start to finish from the night before to that day, and I Googled how to come home to an empty nursery the day that I was discharged from the hospital.

And I read an article that referenced a Cuddle Cot, a device that keeps baby cool instead of frozen. Allows families more time. And I was so angry. I was, I felt so slighted. Like we are the most advanced medically like nation in the world. And I got less than an hour with our daughter and we knew we had to make a change.

And so Ashley, uh, about three weeks after her memorial service, I just. Felt I was just overcome with like, I know what we're supposed to do with this. And so I ran downstairs and I told my husband, I said, we are supposed to start a nonprofit. And he said, we're supposed to do what? Um, we're both still in the throes of grief and I had never felt more clear about anything in my entire life, and still to this day have not.

And, um. So we started Ashley's embrace, and so that's a little bit about how that all came about to date. Uh, we have donated almost 400 cuddle cots. We have one in every state. Uh, some multiples, some hospitals have multiples, but we have a son now. Um, he is eight and we got a second chance. So many people do not.

And so those moments in the hospital are all they may get with any baby. And so we wanted to provide that choice because we didn't have one to give families the gift of more time. So that's our story. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for that. Was I, I have chills for so many reasons. I. A lot of your stories feels familiar, rings familiar, which I'm sure it will to a lot of the moms listening and, and yet, yeah, I just can't, Ugh, the, the doctor.

The doctor, yeah. The anger and the frustration with that I'm sure had to be really hard to, to navigate. Yes. And we, we asked him not to come into our room anymore. We asked for someone else. Oh yeah. To come in. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And I'm sure you did not see him again for your second child. We did not.

Which hospitals switched doctors? All of it. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But oh, the Cuddle Cot is So that was something that was not in existence when I had my stillbirth 25 years ago. And just what you said like. They, they did bring the babies in after, right after. And they said, it'll take as much time as you need.

Here's a disposable camera. 'cause we'd also didn't have cell phones at the time or anything that, you know, that could, they took hospital pictures and I was handed a. Disposable camera and they said, take as much time as you need. But then there was the part of me that's like, well, what does that mean?

What does that mean? How, and, and I think they did warn me that as they cooled and that, you know, things would change. And so it was almost like, take as much time as you need, but you won't wanna take too much time. Right. So, as you know, a 29-year-old woman, what do you do? Like I just. In the middle of this whole scene that no one ever imagines themself in, how do you know what to do?

So the cuddle cots are so important, and I love that you, I love that you knew that this is what you needed to do. Mm-hmm. That was your sign. Yeah. Yeah. We did not have one. And a, a friend had asked us after we delivered, she had her baby two weeks prior and said, I had heard about these things called a Cuddle cot.

You got one right. And I said we did not. And so, um, they had just been introduced to the US the year prior, and so there were one-off families donating them after loss. But um, we really wanted to take it bigger. And at first we thought, well, let's just do, we're located in Ohio and we thought, well, let's just get 10 by her first birthday.

Like, that would be, that would be great. And have chills just. Mm, how quickly and how large it has grown from. Let's just get 10 by her first birthday. Um, and as word spreads, it is just, it's such a humble reminder. We started Ashley's embrace selfishly so we could see her name on things. But now, 10 years later, it's not just about Ashley, it's about the willows and the miles and the.

The Seths and the Melees and all of the babies and the families that we have connected with. Mm-hmm. That's why we keep doing what we do. That's amazing. Mm-hmm. And you've done it for 10 years now? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. Well, first I wanna talk about, so your grief, so this, so this was your healing.

Absolutely. This was part of Absolutely. Your healing is knowing that you could make a difference for other families. Mm-hmm. Because you couldn't, you couldn't have your Ashley's, but that, or your moments that you wish dreamed about with Ashley. But they could. Right. And then so how do you even begin to, so you had this idea, you ran down the stairs,

I don't know how that just came out of this, but, okay. I love him. I love that he is, um, and I, they, the best husbands are the ones that entertain our crazy ideas. Right. And so then, what was your first step? What did you, how did, who did you reach out to? How did you know what to do? We reached out to friends and family.

We had had an incredible amount of support through our pregnancy. A a little bit of piece of the story that I usually forget to tell is that my husband and I had been married for almost 11 years, and so we had gotten the question repeatedly of when are you gonna make babies? When are you guys gonna be parents, when you, and so when we finally did get pregnant.

I mean, it was like world news and people were so excited and they followed, and I chronicled my pregnancy journey and bump picks and all that on Facebook. Um, so people were invested in Ashley's arrival, and when it didn't end the way we all thought it would, people were already invested. And so we were able to take that.

Support and we were able to turn that into, okay, this is our story now. Can you come be part of this, part of the story? Yeah. Ooh, yeah. Um, and so that's where we got a lot of our support was, was friends and family initially. And still to this day, a lot of our support comes from people that are already in our life.

And know what we have walked through. And, um, I also learned a lot about setting up a nonprofit organization. You did. Thank you Google for answering all my questions. Google is the best. Yes. Well, so for someone who doesn't know what a Cuddle Cot is, or someone like me who never had the luxury of even being offered it, what, what is, tell us what it is.

What does it do? It is a simple machine, probably about the size of a laptop that you put distilled water into, and that distilled water is cooled by a fan, and that water goes through a hose into a flexible plastic pad, and it helps cool baby. So the water stays around 46 ish degrees and it keeps baby.

Refrigerated instead of frozen or at room temperature because either of those extremes is not good, which I didn't know all these things until it happened to me, and um, you don't really wanna think about it. But that preservation allows families more time before things start to change. So babies still looks like the baby that you envisioned or the baby that you gave birth to the night before.

It helps slow those natural changes. So the pad can be wrapped around the baby, um, and the parents can hold it or, um, it can just sit on the pad. It gives family members time to come in from out of state if that's how your family wants to handle it. Siblings to see the baby. Um, just the option of do you want to bathe your baby?

Would you like to baptize your baby? If, if you believe in that. Um, all of those things and. There's a choice instead of just you have an hour, go live an entire lifetime of memories in minutes. Yes. And try to do it through your shock and your tears and your, and your anesthesia and your grief and your, because I also had a C-section and it, and it's just different.

Mm-hmm. You know, you just, yeah. You, I, you remember that silence of the operating room and then. Well, when do I get to see them? But I, I really don't want to, I didn't, I was, I didn't want to even, you know, but, um, but then, and, and some families don't want to use the Cuddle Cot, and that's fine, but that's their choice.

And at least the Cuddle Cot allows a family a choice. Or we've also heard stories of families who say, no, that's, we're not feeling that right now. And then. Six hours later, they're like, wait, is it too late? Can I, can I still see my baby? And in a traditional setting, it is probably too late. But with, if the baby has been on a Cuddle Cot, it's not too late.

What, what do you want the hospitals to do with them in that situation? Because if they say no, are you advocating for like. Put, put them in there anyway. Yes, absolutely. And let the, yeah, because it might come back as a grade. Yes. So, um, hospitals, there are a couple of, there's hospitals that are dead set against even having one at all.

Mm-hmm. Um, and then, and then there are hospitals that use it as a, they're standard of care. The family doesn't even get asked, this is just what you get if you experience a loss at that hospital. And it doesn't matter whether there's socioeconomic disparities or geographic disparities or whatever. Um, we find that some hospitals are, are really good at offering it and others are just not.

Um, and it could be personnel, it could be beliefs, it could be their own personal beliefs. Um, I want a hospital to have a cuddle cot. I want you to have it there, and I want you to know how to use it. It's a very simple tool. You click it, you put water in it, you turn it on, done. Um, and I, I want hospitals to know that that single choice that they make, mm-hmm.

And literally change the trajectory of a family's grief journey. Okay? Yes. Their one choice can change someone's life. And I'm not being dramatic about that. Oh, I know you're not. I, I, because. Yeah. Studies show that lack of time can really make a difference in how well or how quickly someone heals from this type of loss.

Mm-hmm. Um, and that regret is forever. I have so many regrets that I've pushed past because I'm giving other families a chance, um, to not have those same regrets. But there's never enough time. But if we could give you six hours instead of 60 minutes, it could make a difference. I had older children, they were five and three, and I didn't have them come in because I just didn't, I didn't know what, what the condition was be.

If I had had more time, I could have, and we didn't have our parents in. We, you know, I mean, we made a lot of decisions that I, now, I don't, I don't know that I regret 'em. I just wonder if I would've made a different choice. Um, I, I, I do believe you make the best choice you can at the moment for what you know, because none of us, even if there was a book on how to prepare for still birth while you're pregnant, no one's reading it.

Right. I skipped that chapter. You don't think it's never gonna happen to us, right. Right. Mm-hmm. So I do believe you have to make peace with the fact that you did the best you could with the information you had. Mm-hmm. And the resources that you had. But yeah, I, I, so every hospital needs at least one, depending on the, that's how we feel.

Mm-hmm. Amount of birth. Maybe two or three, or four or four. However many they can have. Yeah. And they, and they would ideally use them? No. No matter what the parents' wishes are, the minute they have a still birth, it's going, the baby's going in right now. If the family says, Ooh, we don't really love that idea.

Then baby can come off then. Okay. Right. But, but, and they're reusable. They're reusable. So it's not just a one and done and you're throwing it away. So they're cost effective from a hospital standpoint. Um, I, I don't know. There are other devices out there that do similar things and, um, we love the team that we work with.

They wanna make a difference. They are. Flying here and we're hosting them for dinner in our homes, like our board of directors. And like we, we believe that they really wanna make a difference and we feel comfortable with that partnership. Um, and we don't make it, we don't make the Cuddle Cot. Um, I, I did not do this on my own.

There have been thousands of people that have walked with us through this journey. Yeah. And I just think it's so cool that I get to talk about her every day. Love it. I love it, and through my grief, I get to maybe influence someone else's grief. You definitely are, which is super powerful and really humbling.

So, so important, yes. How much is a cuddle cut? How much do they cost? A Cuddle cot from us is 3,500 and it includes. We put memorial plaques on it. So a family that sponsors a Cuddle Cot is able to put a customized plaque on that. Um, it includes shipping from the United Kingdom where they're manufactured, all the taxes, the, you know, the, the government things, red tape, um, all of that.

And then it also helps support us for training visits too, and making sure that the, the hospital has, if something breaks or spare parts, we cover that. And so it's an ongoing relationship with the hospital about taking care of these things. That's actually less than I thought it would be. Mm-hmm. It's really, that's really, it just blows my mind that they're, that not every hospital has one.

I mean, we're making huge strides. Right. But why do you think a hospital would be resistant to get one? Um, training, it's one more thing to keep track of one more thing to make sure that the nurses know about, um, one more thing to track. It. It, things have changed I think since COVID, um, nurses are taking on so much more with so much less.

It is just, it is just one more thing for them to deal with. And if you don't agree with it, it's hard to get. Your, your people on board, right? But then there's other hospitals that say, we heard, we get emails all the time weekly. We heard about what you're doing. We need this. We've been asking for one for years.

It's not in the budget. Well, that's another podcast. Um, and can you help us? So there's a need. Great. So that's good. So I'm glad you do have, you definitely have. There is a need. Absolutely. Yeah. There's so many. When daily, when you, about every small town hospital even that could be delivering babies on, on daily.

That's a lot. It's a lot. One loss is enough losses to have a code on site. Yep. Mm-hmm. So how do you raise your money? I heard you, I know you have a found your foundation is doing a fundraiser in October. It looks amazing. Yes. We have our annual, uh, friend raiser gala in October every year. Obviously pregnancy and infant loss awareness month.

My birthday and also Ashley's birthday is October 28th. And so, um. It's a very important month for our organization. Uh, a lot of our fundraising comes from that. It's our largest actual fundraiser of the year. Um, and we're celebrating 10 years this year, so that's exciting. But the majority of our funding actually comes from families who have, um, experienced loss.

Maybe they got a cuddle cot and they wanna pay it forward. Maybe they didn't get a cuddle cot and they wanna make sure no other family has to walk through it that way. And so we have a fundraising platform that we offer that families can say, here, network, this is what I'm doing and I'm raising money.

Will you help me? And so then we, we make every effort to place those cuddle cots where the family has requested, okay. Regionally specific hospitals, whatever. That's how so much of the word has spread. It is. I did not know that this group of people existed. Um, a friend of mine from high school had posted pictures of her son when he passed away, and I remember thinking, I don't, I don't know if I would publicize that.

You know, I've. I hadn't been pregnant at that point. Mm-hmm. And afterward, it's like that's all I wanted to do was share her with people. And I know some people don't want that, and that's okay. But it blows my mind how far we have come and how many people this touches. Lost touches. The numbers are staggering, Jennifer.

And you know, I mean, you know that almost every person we talk to about Ashley's embrace. Has a story, whether it's their story or their sister or their next door neighbor or their cousin's grandma. They know someone who's been touched by loss and it's just like, but it's so quiet. I know, but no one talks about it.

Isn't it so interesting? It's something that I think as generations of women who were. Taught to either not speak of it, they were sent away. Like who know, who knows what went on and Right. And I do think when, when you're talking about, you know, cuddle cots and holding our babies, I think I do think about the women from years ago who were never allowed to see them.

They were never allowed. They were put out during the delivery and they, you know, were supposed to never have a memory of them. So we, we have come a long way, but we have so far to come because you're right, there is so, so, so many, yeah. Our photographer that took our photos, um, for Ashley, she had experienced a loss at 20 weeks.

And to this day, she does not know if it was a boy or a girl. They would not tell her no. And she said, that's why I do what I do, because no one could be there for me. And so we have so many stories like that, men and women alike. We did a booth just a couple weeks ago and a grown man came up to us in tears and said, my daughter's best friend, we just buried her five day old baby.

Thank you for this. Um, and so it's not, and it's not one specific group of people. It touches everybody and we've gotta start talking about it. And we've gotta normalize this grief and this, this stuff we're all carrying. Sorry, I'm just No, do not be so, no, it's just, I'm here for it all day long. It's given us a platform that, um, we didn't know.

That we would ever love does. It's weird to say we love it, um, but I always tell people that we could have died with Ashley or we can do something about it. And if I'm gonna be here for who knows how long I'm gonna try to do something about it. And so is my husband. And so are all the people who are with us and supporting us, we're, we can't change what happened, but we're gonna try to make it different for the people who go through it next.

I, so, I so agree, and I think, I think sometimes people look at me and it, it's been 25 years since my loss, and they're like, I can't believe you're still talking about this. But it's because I, I know looking back, I can see the places where it has touched every single area of my life. Mm-hmm. There is a direct line between before and after my loss.

Absolutely a hundred percent who I, who I am, how I am in my marriage and my parenting, and all of the things my whole entire life has changed. Yes. There are gifts from that. Mm-hmm. There are gifts. I know it's, I, I, I never like to say that to new newly lost moms, because it's hard to see that for a long, long time.

But looking back, there are, and yeah, I mean, it just, there is so, so much of it and why there's a stigma and a shame around it is, I, I don't know. I think, I think we are making strides, thankfully. Absolutely. Social media, we are. You're seeing women that share their babies now, and you see women that are talking about it, but mm-hmm.

It's still Yes. So hard work to do. Remember? I felt so Well we, 'cause my husband's in this too. A lot of people forget the man. Um, my husband fielded all the phone calls, answered the door all when I didn't feel like, you know, I, he handled all of that. Um, so shout out to the men also who are grieving. I was thinking that when you said he made the call, 'cause my husband also made the call.

Can you imagine making that call? Yeah, I know. Yes. And I just remember, we felt so alone. We felt like no one in the world had ever experienced this, that no one at the hospital had ever seen this. That's just how we felt. Like none of our friends had lost babies like this. We thought, um, my cousin had her baby the exact same day.

My best friend had a baby two weeks prior. Like their babies came home. What? Why not mine? Why not ours? Um, and we fell alone. And then the messages came in. I'm so sorry. I had a stillbirth at 32 weeks. I lost my baby at 37 weeks. I had a miscarriage at 13 weeks. And we were just like, what? All you people are out there?

Yeah, we had no clue. We had no clue. That's why Yeah, that's why I do what I do, honestly, because I remember, I, I cling, I clung to those messages. Mm-hmm. Like, I loved it when people told me that. 'cause it made me feel less alone. And then I wanted to know from them, like, well, how did you survive it?

Exactly. Like, tell me how you survived it. And that's why I do what I do. Because I think that is, that's those. Looking at the people who have gone through it before you and seeing how that they have survived it, that they have gone on was what you needed because the regular people in your life just didn't get it exactly.

They tried, but they just didn't get it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So I know. So how could someone find out more about what you're doing, donate money for your foundation, come to one of your events, how can they find out more about you and your story and what you're doing? We have a great new. Marketing manager, um, who has beefed up all of that.

You can find us. We're on socials, we're on TikTok, Instagram, um, Facebook, LinkedIn. It's just Ashley's embrace and it's A-S-H-L-I-E-S. Embrace like a hug. Um, and we all, our website is ashley's embrace.org. There is, um, donate on there. You can also buy tickets to the gala. We also have a golf outing in May every year.

And, um, you can also see where all of our cuddle cots are. We keep a running total of by state and which hospital name and all of that. Um, yeah, of course there are lots of updates on hospitals these days, but, uh, we keep that list as up to date as possible with, with all of that. And, um, we just love hearing stories.

And so even if someone isn't in a place to donate money or come to the gala or. We'd love to just hear your story if you wanna tell it, because I think sometimes just having someone who's been there and who knows, just to, just to say it out loud, like, look, we have this in common. The circumstances were different.

I will never tell someone I know exactly how you feel. Yeah. Because I don't, and you don't know how I feel and, but I think just to have a place to put your feelings. Is helpful and healthy. And so we get messages all the time from people who say, I don't, I don't wanna donate a cuddle cut. I just wanna talk.

Hmm. And so we are not a support group. We don't claim to be any of that. Um, but I will read it and I will write back and I will think about you and yeah, it's just such a gift that people can trust us with that. It is because they may be in a world where no one else will listen. Right. Or no one understands.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Oh my gosh. Well, Erin, it was so thank you so much for coming and sharing your story and My pleasure for the work you're doing. It is changing lives. I know that on a, on every, on so many levels, it's changing lives. So I really appreciate you. Thank you. I don't do it alone. No, great team.

Lots of, lots of friends, lots of family, and a great husband and your husband. Whatever you need to do, just do it. Oh, I love that. And I love that too, that my husband, he always finds a way he doesn't go to the cemetery. And, um, we, we know a lot of people, you know, like that his grief was channeled into a memorial pond for our daughter.

It's, it's out, it's in our front yard. And so everyone who walks by our house or comes to our house sees it and knows she existed. And, um, he will work her into every single conversation though, stranger at the grocery store. Hey, so we have a nonprofit organization in our daughter's memory and he'll hand out a flyer the amount of support he's garnered just from mentioning her name in casual situations.

I am so thankful for that man and for all of the crazy that he puts up with. But I think we need to love on our men too and our grandparents. Because they walk through that with us also. And so you're, you're so right. The, the mom gets all the attention. Yep. Because, because, but you're, yeah. They also suffer and have their own path with coping and healing, which I, I don't, I use the word healing very sparingly because I think it's, it's not a end.

It's not an end game with us, it's forever. But, um, oh, I love, I love him. I bet he's got, I bet he has a lot of great things to say himself. He's funny. Good. Well, thank you for the awareness that you spread and for the stories that you tell about people. Um, I think that a lot of us are misunderstood and I don't know, I just, I'm grateful for you and for the work that you're doing too.

Thank you. I appreciate that.