Our Story
The vision for Love Not Lost came from Ashley's Story. Having a daughter with a terminal illness, and being gifted portrait sessions, Ashley wanted to pay it forward and started offering free portrait sessions to anyone she met with a terminal diagnosis. As she donated more and more sessions, she realized that something greater was taking shape.
As this shape was forming into a non-profit, Ashley asked three key friends to join her on the board of directors. Trey Boden, the friend who gifted Ashley and her family the portrait session, was the first member. Austin Grigg, another cherished friend who consistently helped walk through their journey and loss, and Marie Nicole Wedekind, a valued friend who came along after Skylar died. Ashley knew these three friends would have not only the talent, but more importantly, the heart, to get Love Not Lost off the ground with her. Since then, our board, our staff, our volunteers, and our heart to serve has continued to grow.
Our driving question for everything we do is:
How can we love people better?
Love Not Lost is on a mission to revolutionize the way we heal in grief. We started by photographing people facing a terminal diagnosis to capture beautiful memories for those they love. The more we showed up for families, the more we kept hearing similar stories: sometimes we were the only ones showing up. Friends, family, communities were disappearing leaving these people feeling alone, unloved, and abandoned by the ones they thought they could count on for support.
As Ashley would speak at events, people would continually come up to her saying things like, “My co-worker just lost a baby, what do I do?” or “My friend’s dad just died, how can I support them?” We saw a community of people who wanted to help and show up for the people they loved who were hurting but they didn’t know how. This inspired us to launch our community support program as well as our corporate care program.
Whether it's the people we serve through photography, their loved ones, our staff, our photographer volunteers, our donors, or the community we are a part of, we are continually looking for ways to love people better.
We believe the absence of love is suffering. So when someone is suffering because of their circumstances, the last thing they need is to feel unloved or abandoned on top of their existing struggles. Not only do we want to show up for people facing grief, but we want to empower and equip you to show up and love them better too. Our hope is that we can revolutionize the way we heal in grief so that everyone feels loved and cared for when they are hurting.
The world we envision is one where we can show up in the midst of suffering and choose to be courageous in the face of fear regardless of circumstances—where we meet pain with love, to transform hurt into healing.
We would like to invite you to join us to love people better and support people in grief.