Choosing Love Over Fear

Every single person born on this planet has faith. We have faith that the sun will come up every morning as it has as long as we’ve been alive. We have faith that our in-breath will have the oxygen it needs to thrive. We have faith when we get in a vehicle, plane, or train, it will arrive safely at its destination so we can keep living life despite the accidents we know happen every day.

We have to have faith to keep going and we have to have faith in order to face our fears. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t live. We wouldn’t leave our homes. We wouldn’t love.

At Love Not Lost, we have faith in humanity that we can unite and rise together though this crisis.

The Love Over Fear campaign exists to be a guiding voice as we learn to heal, grieve, and be present in hard things.

We believe that every day, in every moment, we have the choice to choose love or fear. And when we do, it sends a ripple into the world around us. People can sense it in your body language. They can hear it in your voice. It’s visible through your actions. We all affect each other at every level, with every choice we make.

What are you sending out into the world? Love? Or Fear?

Whatever it is, it’s infectious. This pandemic is a perfect example of that. The stock market dropping. The empty shelves. People stealing and hoarding medical supplies. That is fear.

But the people who are leaving their families and sacrificing physical contact with them to serve others in hospitals and medical offices around the globe… that is love. Companies pledging funds to help feed people without food and partnering with people like Goodr to make it happen. Nonprofits like Love Beyond Walls putting together portable sinks to help those experiencing homelessness the ability to wash their hands. Individuals delivering groceries and medication to their at-risk neighbors to help keep them safe. That is love.

Love is the source of our connection to others… and ourselves.

Fear is screaming at us to help protect us. It’s not bad, but it’s also not always true. We can acknowledge it’s purpose, thank it for the awareness, and choose love instead. We can be safe and still choose love. We can be smart and still choose love. We can be kind and still choose love.

It’s time to be intentional about the decisions we’re making.

It starts with what we choose to allow in to our bodies, hearts, and minds. There is no judgement here, but we MUST be aware of our choices. Are you surrounding yourself with negative or positive people? What messages are you allowing into your belief system? Is the food you’re eating moving you towards healing or illness? Who are you learning from?

The positive or negative inputs affect the way we function internally and with the world around us. We have to guard and choose what we are allowing into our bodies, hearts, and minds. We are all connected.

We don’t have to let fear control us.

We can choose love instead.

Stay tuned on the blog, instagram, facebook, and twitter for more information as we share tools, resources, and support throughout this collective grief we are experiencing. You can follow along with the hashtags #lovenotlost #choosingloveoverfear #standingalonegrievingtogether. If you have stories or moments you’d like to share of choosing love, witnessing others choosing love, or experiencing grief, please use the hashtags to join our conversation online.

If you want to help us fundraise as a part of this campaign and get fun perks along the way, please visit our campaign page here. Thank you.

Pandemic Updates

Right now, we find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic. It’s crazy really. Toilet paper is flying off the shelves because of a flu-like virus that doesn’t even cause diarrhea. Collectively, we are making sacrifices to self-isolate to prevent the contraction or spread of the virus and hopefully help hospitals and medical professionals care for patients better and survive.

We believe every decision comes down to love or fear.

This is a serious virus that causes deaths, hospitalizations, and sickness. It’s important that we know the facts and take precautions every opportunity we have. But it is also important to not let fear rule your decisions and your life.

We turned to the question that drives everything we do: How can we love people better?

In order to keep people safe, we cancelled our photographer retreat planned for March 13th and postponed our Snapshots of Love gala until the fall.

We will miss seeing all of the wonderful people who make up the Love Not Lost family on Friday, but it will make it that much sweeter in September (if all goes well - date TBD). We will have a special message for you Friday night on our social channels (@lovenotlostorg) and here on the blog.

Many of you have asked if we will be okay financially. We have $10,000 already invested in the event, and we can use all of that for our fall event, so none of it is wasted… it’s just not in our bank account anymore. Our event typically brings in 1/4-1/3 of our annual budget and helps us serve families and support people through the summer, so we will have to find another way to raise funds to keep operating.

Others have asked if we are still serving families… We have a handful of photographers who have committed to showing up for families who don’t have the luxury to wait out the virus during this season. We are taking every precaution possible to make sure our photographers and the families we serve are safe. We’ve communicated all of those details with our photographers, hospital/hospice partners, the family applicants, and all involved. Otherwise, sessions will be postponed as much as we are able to postpone them.

Several of you have asked how you can help. Right now, the biggest gift you can give us financially is to sign up as a Foundation Builder and donate any amount you can on a monthly basis. If you are not in a position to give, we completely understand. Other ways you can help will be announced on Friday.

If you find yourself unemployed or struggling to meet basic needs due to the virus, please check out FindHelp.org to find resources in your area.

We look forward to sharing more with you on Friday and in the days and weeks to come. We are all in this together and we want to foster a community that chooses love over fear. We hope you will join us.

Honoring the Thakare Family

In September, we received an application from Daulati, who applied on her husband’s behalf. In April 2016, Niranjan was diagnosed with a rare form of brain tumor: Anaplastic Astrocytoma Grade III – a rare and malignant brain tumor. In September of 2018, it became Grade IV. Daulati concluded her application with, “As it may be evident due to above truly emergent and dire circumstances, I request you to please grant me a photo shoot, where I and my girls can capture every moment when their dad is still with us.”

Because of our donors, we were able to show up and capture those requested moments.

The girls had so much fun working the camera and showing off their outfits. We took photos at their home and then walked to their neighborhood lake along with the girls’ friend and aunt who joined us for the session. Niranjan was so strong throughout the whole session, smiling through any discomfort he felt, and made some really sweet memories with his family.

Daulati told us that day the photo session had brought excitement and joy to their lives, especially to the girls, in a time that was otherwise difficult. We truly had so much fun during our session - my face hurt afterwards from smiling so big!

Just weeks later, Niranjan passed away. And yet the moments we captured together were full of love and joy. Daulati and the girls will have these memories forever.

Thank you to our supporters for believing in the work we are doing. Thank you for allowing us to say yes to families who apply for a session - to celebrate life, preserve memories, and support people in grief. You are making an impact beyond what is possible to communicate. Hopefully you can catch a glimpse of your impact in these photos.

To the Thakare family - thank you for inviting us into your lives and sharing these beautiful moments and incredible amounts of love with us. Our hearts are with you. We are so honored to have met your family and send you peace and comfort in the days, weeks, and months ahead. You are deeply loved.

Introducing Sionnie!

We are so thrilled to introduce our new full-time Key Relations Manager, Sionnie Lafollette.

If you’re curious how to pronounce her name, it might help to know her first name is of Filipino origin and her last name is of French origin. The “Si” is more of a “Sh” sound, so Sionnie is pronounced Sho-nee.

Sionnie is an incredible woman and we are so excited for you to get to know her. She brings some valuable skills and talents to the Love Not Lost family, but more importantly, she brings a huge empathetic heart. With her permission, I want to share a piece of her cover letter here so you can see what I mean:

My formal education, professional experience, and personal journey have shaped a skill-set and created a resilient tenderness I believe would be a valuable contribution to Love Not Lost and the path forward. With an undergraduate degree in counseling, formal photography training, years experience managing teams, businesses, and now myself as a freelancer, I’ve developed a keen people-service sense, quick creative problem solving, a love of systems and efficiency, and am continually honing the remote work-life balance; I find it exciting to see how my aggregate-self align with the needs of Love Not Lost as outlined; I truly cannot recall another job description that made me as excited to show up, give, learn, and grow.

After three rounds of interviews, we were excited to invite her to join the Love Not Lost family. We’ve had some great training so far, including Sionnie joining us at our booth in the marketplace at Plywood’s ATL Ideas Festival at the beginning of the month. If you didn’t get to meet her there, don’t worry! We’ll have plenty of opportunities and events throughout the rest of the year (check out the events page).

Loving Better

We’re excited to have a full-time staff member that will double our capacity to love people better!

I want to leave you with Sionnie’s words she wrote for you…

“Growing up in Southern California, I have collected a catalog of childhood memories that revolve around water; my heart feels an understanding of “home” when near the ocean, and often it becomes a metaphor by which I make sense of life. Grief has been no exception. Having lost my brother and two friends in my adult years, I have likened the process of grief to a rising and falling tide. At times, it has laid waste to my shores like a tsunami and other times it merely laps upon them quietly.

In the last few years, a personal photography project about loss became a cathartic space to continue to evolve within my own grief. In capturing and telling other’s stories of loss and remembrance, my hope has been to inspire conversations and connection around grief; with one another and with our own grief journeys.

Now, in stepping into the role as the Key Relations Manager, I’m excited to give, learn, grow and serve in the work and mission of Love Not Lost to celebrate lives and to revolutionize the way we grieve. Thank you for your collected effort and gifts that have made this next step of growth for Love Not Lost possible. I look forward to partnering with you, our Love Not Lost family and supporters, as we continue to strive to love people better. It truly is an honor.”

Thank you for your support and love to get us to this huge milestone. Your gifts, connections, and support make a difference. We look forward to posting stories and more exciting developments soon!

Celebration, Grief, and Love

We’ve been silent on the blog because we’ve been busy caring for families, adding more photographer volunteers, developing new resources, building a new grief support program, and hosting a successful auction celebration (raising $50,000!). As a direct result of that, we have enough funding to bring on a full-time staff member to help serve the Love Not Lost community and grow our programming. We are currently taking applicants here.

With the addition of our full-time staff member and added bandwidth, we will be working to improve our communication and appreciate your patience during this growth spurt.

There is so much to celebrate - from serving 30 families in 2018 to our partnership with Northside Hospital, we accomplished a lot last year! We have already kicked off 2019 strong with the new support tools we’ve launched like our digital Love Better Support Tool and the development of a new corporate care program (more to come on that later).

But as true for most things in life, with the good, there’s sadness too. We’ve grieved with a number of families we have photographed as they have lost those they love. Outside of death, there is grief with any loss - even a job transition. In bringing on a new full time person, our budget does not allow us to keep Lindsey on part-time.

In the last year and a half, Lindsey has been a valuable team member and a part of our family. When she first interviewed, I could hear her excitement and drive to help Love Not Lost grow - and for the past year and a half, she’s done just that!

LNL Family

You may have met her at events, seen her name on thank-you cards and emails, or interacted with her in getting your year-end receipts. She’s helped our families, photographers, and partners with so much empathy and love. She’s kept me on track and has been a huge help with administrative tasks and building our systems. Lindsey is an incredible woman full of life, energy, and love.

She doesn’t like to be in the spotlight, but I wanted you all to know who has been a part of the heartbeat of Love Not Lost this past year and a half. We’re incredibly grateful for her.

(Photo from our Snapshots of Love event by the talented This Modern Love Photography)

When we had to say goodbye to Kristyn, our first Director of Operations, we were incredibly sad, but knew we would find an awesome person to grab the baton and carry our mission to the next zone. The same is true now.

We don’t know who the next person will be yet, but we do know that they will join into the heartbeat of Love Not Lost to carry out our mission of celebrating life, preserving memories, and supporting people in grief.

Thank you for your continued support as we grow. We will be in touch again soon!

A Tribute: Bravery for Avery

"My 5 yr old daughter was just diagnosed with DIPG, a terminal brain stem tumor. There is no cure. Average prognosis is 9-12 mos. We would love a photo sessions and book for our family, including her twin sister and little brother, to hold on to as we grieve."

Those words are powerful. Sitting in my inbox, holding so much weight, Emily reached out to Love Not Lost in December. My heart broke, as it does every time I read an application that comes through, and I knew we would make this session happen no matter the cost.

At the end of February, Avery was granted her Make-A-Wish trip to Disney and it was a great opportunity to capture some incredible moments. We were able to spend the day with them at LegoLand preserving memories together. It's a day I will never forget.

I was captivated by both Bekah and Avery, twins with so much love for each other. From the first ride on the double-decker merry-go-round, to the train rides, car rides, and boat rides that followed, all three kids were soaking up the fun and fully enjoying themselves. Of course we stopped for lunch and ice cream treats in the middle of it all, and had some laughs as the kids covered their hands and faces with sticky goodness.

Later in the day, as the kids were getting tired, we stopped to watch a water ski show and rest. Some popcorn and frozen pops helped get their energy back for some more fun before dinner. After dinner, I was able to go back to the Give Kids The World resort where we played games and had fun with other families until bedtime.

I wish I could've captured the whole week, but I had to get back for our 3rd Annual Auction Celebration on March 1. When I talked to Emily this month to share some updates with her, I was devastated to learn that Avery passed away on Mother's Day. I watched their video and cried at my desk for a good while. I know that pain. The emptiness and grief as your daughter leaves your arms for the last time is unbearable. "Be brave my heart. Have courage my soul."

Having spent time with the Neill family, I have no doubt they will be loved and cared for through this time. The facebook community through their Bravery for Avery page is amazing. They are surrounded by people who love and care for them. If that's you, I want to encourage you to show up. Even if it's donating to their DPIG fundraiser, taking care of their yard, offering to run errands, bringing them a meal or sending them gift certificates for gas, groceries, or restaurants... don't disappear. They will need you throughout this ENTIRE YEAR. Send cards, offer to help with the kids, pick up the phone and tell them you're thinking of them - whatever you can do, do it. We need to show up and love them well in their grief.

Today, as we celebrate Avery and Rebekah's 6th Birthday, we hold this family close. We hope these photos can bring some peace and comfort to all who loved Avery and joy to the family as they celebrate Bekah & Avery's Birthday today.

Thank you Neill Family for inviting us and trusting us to capture these memories for you. It was an incredible honor and privilege to spend the day with you. We love you all so much.

Thank you to all of the generous donors and supporters of Love Not Lost who made this trip possible. We don't ask the families we serve to pay anything, because they have enough expenses on their plates. Your financial contributions to Love Not Lost allow us to show up and love people well without having to worry about how we are going to make it happen.

You allowed us to say "Yes!" to the Neill family when they asked for help preserving memories and support through the grief. Every gift enables us to serve more families and we are so grateful for your help in making these memories possible. Thank you!

Our 3rd Annual Auction Event

I first want to apologize for being silent on the blog this year. We moved up our 3rd Annual Auction event from May to March, so after the end-of-year giving campaign, I went straight into event planning while continuing to run Love Not Lost.

On top of that, I ended up giving myself a concussion setting up for the event, which required me to take a 3-week break from screens. Thankfully, I was still able to photograph, train photographers, and attend meetings while recovering, but it definitely put me behind in book designs, emails, blog updates, and social media updates. I am finally getting caught up on everything, but the book designs took priority. Thank you for your patience!

Our 3rd Annual Auction Celebration was a huge success thanks to our wonderful guests, VIP table sponsors, and event sponsor, Kalon Creative. Kalon Creative builds modern, user-friendly websites and apps for startups, small businesses, and growing companies. They've been a corporate supporter for years and we are so grateful for Kalon Creative's continued support to help us carry out our mission.

The King Plow Arts Center was full of people who've been around since our launch, brand new faces learning about Love Not Lost for the first time, and every stage in between. As people entered the room, one of our Love Not Lost photographer volunteers, Patrick, took photos of our guests which have just been posted to our Love Not Lost Facebook page to easily share. We believe memories are important to capture and life is worth celebrating, whether you're facing a terminal diagnosis or not, so we're really glad people took advantage of the moment to freeze time. Go check out the Facebook gallery!

The room was full of music, conversation, and good times as the cocktails were flowing and all of the unique and fun silent auction items were out on display. Things like a team-autographed Atlanta Hawks basketball, Atlanta staycation packages, flight lessons, beautiful jewelry, a wine tour and tasting getaway, concert tickets, festival tickets, and many other great Atlanta items and experiences that add more to life were getting bid on by the minute. We even had people bidding from home, and if that was you, thank you for supporting us even if you coudln't be there in person! Chris Veal, one of Atlanta's favorite graffiti artists, joined us at the event to paint a beautiful skyline piece as people were enjoying the evening, which was later auctioned during the live portion of the night.

Thanks to Collection Event Furnishings, we had a cozy section of the room where albums were on display for people to enjoy while the cocktails were being sipped and the silent auction was gaining bids. As the cocktail hour drew to a close, we moved into the event room with the most delicious dinner from Bold Events Catering & Design. From fried chicken to braised short rib to honey glazed salmon, it was the type of food that soothes the soul. Every person I talk to from the event continues to bring up how amazing the food was and I have to agree - thanks Bold Events for a memorable meal! Our favorite DJ, Brian, aka "DJ Sires" from Amp'd Entertainment, kept the party going until the very end once again. We are so grateful to all the generous vendors who help make this possible!

During the the main program, I was able to share about the journey Love Not Lost has taken over the past two years and the vision for what's to come.  One of our applicants, Pam Collins, received her album that night and spoke about her experience with Love Not Lost and what it's meant to their family. Here's just a small piece of what Pam shared, 

When Georgia, from Circle of Friends, introduced me to Love Not Lost I was excited to apply for this opportunity. You get busy in your everyday life doing things for your parent and you forget to take pictures or don’t have your camera or phone ready to catch those special moments. To have a book made for you is a dream come true. Moments were created and captured with my Dad and family members that will be forever cherished and adored by all for years to come.

After hearing Pam share about her experience, we introduced our new grief empathy tools to empower and equip you - the greater community - to show up for the people in your life who are hurting. Everyone who attended got to go home with, the very first Love Not Lost support and empathy tools:

• The 1st "Moore Love" Empathy Card
• Gift A Session Certificate
• "How Can I Love You?" Care Card

Photography for the event was graciously captured by Molly Weir Photography.

These are coming soon on our website and we can't wait to get them into your hands too!

We are going to continue to develop resources to equip people to show up for their loved ones who are hurting as well as continue the growth of our photography program.

The week after the event, we held another photographer retreat and added five more photographer volunteers to our team! We also had our first meeting with the Northside Hospital Oncology leaders and have started partnering with their centers across the state to serve their stage 4 cancer patients. Our board of directors is also growing!

This wouldn't be possible without all of the awesome people who attended our event, those who gave generously to help us raise over $25,000, and our valued donors who have supported us throughout the year, especially those who give every month as our foundation builders.

Thank you for helping us grow to preserve memories for those facing a terminal diagnosis and supporting people in grief!

We are looking to host another photographer retreat this summer and will expand our partnerships as well. We have some more events planned throughout the year, so if you missed the event and still want to be involved, check our event page and follow us on social media @lovenotlostorg to stay in the know! If you're a fan of Love Not Lost, you can also be the first to know about things and have the inside look at what's going on by signing up for our newsletter.

Next year's event will be taking place on March 1, 2019 - so SAVE THE DATE!!! We hope you can join us for another incredible night to remember.