Hope Featured in Bloom Academy newsletter!

A big thank you to Bloom Academy for featuring our story in their monthly newsletter! Read the full article below.

"When we look closely at a life well lived, there is a small, but powerful truth hidden in plain sight.

The truth is that life isn’t one big firework show. The “stuff” of life is actually each moment, big and small. Yes, it is proudly watching our little ones graduate from VPK with their miniature cap and gown (and feeling all of the feelings). And yet, equally important, life is also picking them up on a Tuesday afternoon in March. It is reading a bedtime story on a Sunday night in July. Life lives in both the mundane and in the marvelous.

So, when we say to you that Bloom Academy has made all of the difference in our lives, and the lives of our children, we mean both the little and the big. Bloom’s support during thoughtful day-to-day moments has created a safe, welcoming environment for our family that has helped during difficult big moments, like rebuilding our home after Hurricane Ian and the passing of our children’s grandmother.

In addition to a loving staff that listened and checked in with our family, Bloom’s support has assisted us in fulfilling the last wish of my late mother-in-law, their grandmother, which was to create a natural end-of-life option filled with beauty and life for the families of Southwest Florida named Hope Eternal Gardens. Knowing that they were in good hands during the day, over the course of five years, we were able to design, permit, build, and license Hope. Today, Hope is a one-of-a-kind cemetery that supports families through the big and the small moments in life by planting micro-forests and sowing wildflowers with loved ones before and after a loss, offering the only natural burial option in Southwest Florida, and creating a sustainable nature park to enjoy for generations to come. Best of all, Hope has become a place where our children have been able to celebrate their grandmother and experience the bigness of life by planting trees, watching them grow, and exploring nature.

Our family has experienced first-hand the power of community with Bloom as a pivotal part of our “village.” We’ve seen how support during small moments in life can add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. It turns out that those moments can move mountains. And guess what? Moving mountains sure can feel like fireworks."