Once upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a little girl that dreamed of becoming a mom. She held onto this dream through adolescence into adulthood. She met the man of her dreams, got married and assumed it would be easy to fulfill her dream.

She never imagined it would take so many years to become a mom but she was THRILLED when she found out she was having twins! She had always dreamt of having two kids so this was right in line with her happily ever after.

But in an instant, her dreams were shattered into a million pieces when her twin girls were born 4 months early and tinier than any babies she had imagined in her dreams. Her life had transformed from a fairy tale into a terrible nightmare when one of her children earned their wings and left her arms.

Her surviving baby girl was in the hospital for 4 months before coming home. They had to keep the fragile little princess in isolation to prevent her from getting sick because she had a very weak immune system.

The little girl that had dreamed of becoming a mom was devastated by her child's death and worn ragged with the care of her little fighter, fearing everyday she would lose her too. This woman had no idea how hard being a mom would be...how broken her heart could be and still be beating or how much she could love someone that weighed barely a pound.

Her world was very dark and she wondered if light would ever touch her face again.

She decided to take a walk one day with 20,000 other people. It was still dark in her world but she could see the faint glimmer of light contained in the hearts of every walker.

She joined hands and hearts with all of those families like hers that had lost their fire within.

Soon a spark ignited in her heart and in the halo of that tiny spark she saw something she had not seen in a very long time and thought she had lost forever...HOPE.