Rebuilding The Life We Lost

Both growing up in families of five, my husband and I always dreamed of having three children, and we do! When our third, perfect baby was born, we were complete. We are blessed with two handsome boys and a beautiful little girl in the middle. After our third was born, my husband bought me the Gold Cuff bracelet with the names of our three children, which I wore almost every day for the past 5 years.

On January 7th, dressed in workout clothes, I packed backpacks and loaded all three kids in the car for school, just like I did every other morning. We didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the last time we would ever walked out our front door. The last time we would see our beautiful home on our perfect street in the Pacific Palisades. The last time we would drive down the beautiful Pacific Coast Hwy on our way to school. Before I was even done with drop offs, our neighborhood was engulfed in smoke. My husband was close by, and was able to return home to grab our sweet puppy and a few essentials; we thought we would just be gone for a few days. Sadly, we lost our home, our neighborhood, everything. Our entire world was reduced to ashes.

A few days later, my husband went back to what was our home and began to sift through the ashes. He found the bronzed baby shoes of all three, burned but recognizable, and my Tiny Tags Gold Cuff, also burned, but recognizable. When the beautiful people at Tiny Tags heard my story, Betsy let me know that although my original is well beyond repair, she offered to make me a new one. This one will hold even more meaning as it now symbolizing the rebuilding of the life we lost.

- Schuyler Schwimer