After the death of her daughter, Ashley was looking for support in the depths of grief and struggled to find helpful tools. She found a lot of books that shared other people's stories, and she found blogs that tried to set realistic expectations, but nothing told her what to do to help her heal in grief.
Surprisingly, photographs became her daily support. At first, when the pain was too much to bear, Ashley turned all the framed family photos face-down because her heart couldn't face the reality her daughter was gone. But then, as days turned to weeks, Ashley missed seeing those big blue eyes and rosy cheeks. One by one, she turned the photos back up. Ashley would sit with them, ugly-cry, tell Skylar how much she missed her... Over time, those photos created the safe space and freedom to feel. They gave her a way to hold Skylar when she wasn't here to hold. Ashley learned that feeling is healing and photographs are an incredible support tool in grief.
Love Not Lost
With just her own personal experience, she thought others might find photos helpful as well. With just a camera, she showed up to photograph the Hill Family—a family facing a stage 4 melanoma diagnosis that she met through church. Ashley had the honor of photographing Kevin, Rachel, and their two kids throughout the year, and ended up capturing their last day together before Kevin died. Knowing how much the tangible photos helped in grieving, Ashley created a beautiful photo album for Rachel to have as a support.
Little did she know what happened next would change everything.
Ashley got a phone call from Rachel, who wanted to share what the album had meant to their family. Since Ashley gave it to Rachel, she was expecting to hear how it's helped her as a new widow. But Rachel called to share a story about her kids, specifically her daughter, who was incredibly young. Rachel said that whenever someone new came to the house, her daughter would take them by the hand, walk them into the living room, sit them on the sofa and open the photo album to introduce them to her daddy.
Ashley's heart broke wide open. She knew it could be a helpful tool for adults, but truly hadn't even imagined the healing tool it could be for kids! Rachel went on to share they used the photos all of the time to talk about what happened and remember the love they still share with their dad. Because of that impact, Ashley kept offering portrait sessions to anyone facing a terminal diagnosis that came across her path. Not having enough money to give everything away for free, she ended up creating a nonprofit so that others could help her show up for families facing loss to gift them love and support.
Love Not Lost was born. And that named served the organization well for seven years. But as the organization evolved to offer more grief support services and an online community, we recognized that not all loss has loving attachments. As we served more families who didn't speak English as their first language, we also realized how challenging it was to translate and understand Love Not Lost. So to be more inclusive and cover the expanding services, we made the decision to change names to Momento Foundation.
Momento Foundation
Memento means "remember" in Latin and Momento is "moment" in Spanish. Life happens in the present. Healing happens in the present too. But our memories happen in moments. Not days, but moments of love, moments of pain, moments of joy that are all worth remembering and make us who we are today.
Through our Preserving Memories Program, we help people remember the love shared and the life enjoyed, moment to moment. We gift families treasured mementos and keepsakes that support them in their darkest times and help them find love and joy when it feels lost. Not only did Ashley's experience photographing over 100 families show photographs were in fact helpful in grief, there is scientific research showing it too!
Through our Community Support Program, we give people helpful resources to get them through the tough moments and remember that healing is possible. We have a book club that meets every quarter in addition to free education accessible 24/7 through our online community, The Momento Collective. Please join us if you haven't already!
We are so excited to expand our corporate partnerships, community, and services under our new banner of Momento Foundation. Thank you for being here.
