The Koa project is in honor of my son Koa James who spent 12 days in the NICU before he passed away. The Koa project is to help honor Koa by supporting other families who are walking similar waters in the NICU and to love on the nurses who make it bearable.
Grief has a way of isolating. It makes the world feel smaller, quieter, and unbearably heavy. When loss enters the room—whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, child loss, or the long, uncertain days in the NICU—it often feels like everyone else keeps breathing while your own breath catches in your chest. You quickly learn that people don’t always know what to say, and many disappear altogether. Not because they don’t care, but because grief makes people uncomfortable.
The Koa Project exists to do the opposite.
It exists to show up.
Born out of love for my son, Koa, this project was never meant to fix grief—because grief is not something to be fixed. It is love with nowhere to go. The Koa Project was created to hold space for that love. To sit with it. To acknowledge it. To say, your baby mattered, your story matters, and you are not invisible in this.
A Ministry of Tangible Love
In moments of loss, words often feel hollow. “I’m sorry” doesn’t touch the depth of devastation. “Everything happens for a reason” can feel like salt in an open wound. What grieving hearts need most is not explanation—but presence.
That is why The Koa Project is built around tangible expressions of care. Not grand gestures, but intentional ones. Small, meaningful acts that whisper, someone sees you.
At the heart of the project are carefully curated support boxes, each one designed with a specific journey in mind.
The Boxes for Grieving Mothers
For mothers who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, or the loss of a child, there is a sacred kind of pain that lingers long after the hospital room empties and the world expects you to move on. These mothers often leave with empty arms but hearts that are forever changed.
Each grief box is created to honor that reality.
Inside is not a solution, but companionship—items chosen to bring comfort, remembrance, and permission to grieve fully. These boxes acknowledge the baby by name, by memory, by existence. They say, your baby lived, even if the world didn’t get long enough to know them.
There is something profoundly healing about receiving a box that does not rush your grief or try to minimize it. A box that allows you to sit in the sorrow while gently reminding you that you are still held.
Support for the NICU Journey
Not all loss happens in a single moment. Some grief stretches over weeks and months, lived out under fluorescent hospital lights and the constant hum of machines. NICU parents carry a unique kind of exhaustion—physical, emotional, and spiritual. Their days blur together, marked by monitors, rounds, and waiting.
For mothers enduring long NICU stays, The Koa Project provides support boxes designed for endurance. These boxes acknowledge the invisible weight of showing up every day when outcomes are uncertain. They offer comfort for the long nights, encouragement for the moments of fear, and reminders that even in survival mode, the mother herself matters.
Because so often in the NICU, care is centered on the baby—which it should be—but the mother quietly disappears in the process. The Koa Project gently brings her back into focus.
Caring for the Caregivers
The NICU nurses—the ones who walk into heartbreak daily—are often the unseen heroes of these stories. They celebrate milestones with families, mourn losses silently, and carry the emotional weight of both hope and devastation on every shift. They are witnesses to miracles and to the moments that break hearts wide open.
The Koa Project also extends care to these nurses through care packages created specifically for them. Not as a transaction or obligation, but as gratitude. A way of saying, we see the way you love families through their worst days. We see how you carry stories home with you. And you matter too.
These packages are small acknowledgments of a role that demands immense compassion, strength, and resilience.
Why It Matters
The Koa Project is not about boxes—it is about presence. It is about refusing to let grief go unnoticed. It is about honoring the lives that changed us, even if they were held for only a moment. It is about creating a bridge between pain and compassion, between loss and community.
In a world that often turns away from grief, The Koa Project leans in.
Because love does not end when life does.
Because motherhood does not disappear with loss.
Because being seen can be the beginning of healing.
This project is my way of continuing to mother Koa—by loving others the way I wish every grieving family could be loved. By turning heartbreak into ministry. By letting sorrow grow something beautiful.
And maybe that is the quiet miracle woven through all of this: that even in the deepest brokenness, love still finds a way to move outward.