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Written by RTF Admin
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Thank you to everyone who was a part of this year's Butterfly Release and Summer Remembrance event on June 26th! Here are some photos that we captured that morning.
Hundreds of these beautiful Monarch butterflies were released during our memorial as we remembered so many children who are no longer with us.
Memorial programs have been mailed this week those of you who could not attend. If you do not receive your program in the next week, please let us know .
If you have pictures you would like to add to our gallery, please email them to us! (Please resize them to 800x600 max size.)
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Written by RTF STAFF
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 Support RTF and have a personalized memorial
keepsake made for your child!
2010 Page now available! (Shown at left)
Special Day Pages are a personalized keepsake created just for you using photos from our Butterfly Release memorial event.
We are making these memorial keepsakes available for the first time in June 2010, but have made it possible for you to order one from 2009 as well.
Once you fill out the order form, you will be directed to our donation form to process your payment.
Get Details Here
Order your Page Here
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Written by Corinne O'Flynn
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 Remembering Dads on Father's Day
We don't often hear from the bereaved dads out there, but they
certainly do exist. I wonder if we will ever crack the code to what
makes a man grieve so differently from a woman? I sure do wish we
could. My heart aches for all the fathers who are missing their
child(ren).
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Written by Kristi Sagrillo
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 Dealing with the reality of changing relationships after your child dies.
A wise gardener once told me that if you want a beautiful garden to
grow you must weed it from time to time. Weeding for any gardener,
whether it’s a small flower pot on the front porch or a gorgeous flower
garden in the backyard is an assumed task and occasionally just has to
be done. However, if you neglect to prune the weeds they will
eventually begin to overcrowd or, worse yet, become invasive and try
and take over your entire garden.
After the death of my son, I began to apply this same logic to my own life.
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Written by Corinne O'Flynn
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Do you know me? I used to be so cheerful, the proud owner of an easy smile. I was optimistic and upbeat; pointing out the silver lining behind each of the dark and looming clouds. I was walking across the bridge into motherhood, and felt full of dreams for this baby that was growing inside me, our baby, my baby.
Do you remember me? I used to love going out with my friends, chatting on the phone, hanging out doing nothing, dishing over the gossip columns. I was the one who laughed the hardest when we saw that show together. I was the one who would spend hours shopping with you to find that perfect dress for your special event.
I was the one. I was.
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Written by Corinne O'Flynn
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 Reflecting on life after loss.
Although I have experienced the loss of several people who were close to me, it is the loss of my daughter that marks the most dramatic pivot-point of change in my life. This is not to say that my days are consumed by my grief and the loss of Rowan. They certainly used to be, but they are not anymore.
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Written by Melissa Hogue
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Written by Sandra Courtney-Wherry
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Experiencing the difficulty of parenting a living child while grieving for the one who has died.
 It is 9:30 at night and I am sitting on my couch folding my two year old daughter's laundry and sorting out clothes that she has outgrown. I am also sorting out clothes that show the wear and tear of an active two year old's play. This makes me just like thousands of moms with toddlers that grow faster than we ever imagined. But most other moms are not in tears, sobbing while they hold little pairs of jeans with grass stains.
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Written by Corinne O'Flynn
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Here it comes, the dreaded anniversary. You may be wondering, "How will I deal with it? If the stress today is this bad, how horrible will I feel on the actual date?"
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Written by Corinne O'Flynn
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 Trying to remain objective in the face of emotion
I asked my husband the other day if he thought about our deceased
daughter daily. His response was that he did not. I respect the fact
that he answered the question honestly, considering he must have known
it might upset me. He had an apologetic tone as he did so because I am
sure he knew it was not what I was hoping to hear. I suppressed the
knee-jerk flare up of righteous-indignant defense of our daughter's
memory, and tried instead to make sense of why this is the case. But
since then I had been troubled by the knowledge that she doesn't occupy
his mind in the same way that she does mine.
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Written by Kelly Juenger
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I had a normal pregnancy until September 18, 2009 when I went in for my doctor's appointment and my blood pressure was a little high. They wanted me to come back that Monday, September 21, 2009. I did, and it was still high, so they sent me to the hospital to get checked with an ultrasound. Ciersten's heart beat was normal. When they put the monitor on me they noticed that she was not moving that much so they decided to take me in to have an emegency c-section.
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Written by Corinne O'Flynn
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 "Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner
and life as you know it ends."
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Written by Corinne O'Flynn
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What does it mean to be a mother to a child who died?
I remember back in the first summer after our daughter died, about six to nine months after her death - I started feeling "good" again. It wasn't that I was bouncing back 100% or that I felt I had moved on, but there was certainly a shift in my grief where it was no longer all-consuming.
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