The Longest Night: A Mother’s Nightmare That Became a Movement

Mya standing on a hay bale at sunset.

I will never forget the exact sound of the phone ringing that night. It was late… the kind of late when the world is quiet and still, when you expect peace, not tragedy. But my phone rang. I answered. I don’t remember the words at first… I remember the tone. The panic. The desperation. The sound of my mother-in-law’s voice breaking as she tried to find the words that would forever change my life. Mya’s not breathing. Jessie is doing CPR. The ambulance is on the way. My body got cold. My heart pounded so hard I thought it was going to burst. My ears rang. My knees got weak. I dropped the phone. Picked it up. Dropped it again. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. But it was. And I ran.

I don’t know how I got in the car. I don’t know how I managed to put my shoes on. All I knew was I had to get to my daughter. My husband drove… Faster than we ever had before. Praying we wouldn’t crash. Praying we wouldn’t be too late. The road ahead of me blurred through my tears. The night seemed endless… black, silent, cruel. I screamed at God. Please don’t take her. Please let me get there in time. Please let her be okay. Over and over, I begged. Bargained. Pleaded. And then I called Justin, her uncle, on FaceTime. I needed to see something, anything. I needed to feel closer to her. And what I heard will haunt me forever. Hearing her dad doing CPR. Through that phone, I heard it. The compressions. The counting. The breaths. Her dad’s voice… desperate, shaking, trying to do everything right. I know that sound. I’ve done CPR more times than I can count. I’ve taught it. I’ve lived it. But this time, it wasn’t a stranger. This time, it was my baby. I wanted to be there. I wanted to take over. I wanted to save her. But all I could do was drive, pray, and break apart inside.

In those two hours, I talked to God more than I ever had in my life. I begged. I bargained. Take me instead. Give her back. I will do anything. I told Him how good she was. How much the world needed her. How much I needed her. I reminded Him of every promise I’d ever made, every good deed I’d ever done, as if I could earn her life back. And the silence on the other end of those prayers was the loudest thing I’d ever heard.

When I arrived and saw the ambulance, it was like time slowed down. That ambulance. I’d worked in that ambulance. I’d saved a man who tried to take his own life in that ambulance. I lost my first SIDS baby in that ambulance. And now, my child’s life had slipped away in that same sacred, cursed space. I climbed inside. My hands trembled as I reached for her. Her skin was cold. Her lips were pale. I kissed her forehead. I whispered in her ear, “Please, come back.” I’d seen death so many times. But never like this.

Leaving her behind felt impossible. But I had to. I got in the car. The road stretched ahead of me, endless and cruel. The sky began to lighten. And then it happened…the sunrise. The most beautiful sunrise I’d ever seen. And the most heartbreaking. Because she would never see it again. Never feel the warmth of morning on her skin again. Never see another sunset. The light that filled the sky mocked the darkness inside me.

We pulled into my driveway. The house looked the same. But it wasn’t. I opened the door. Silence. Her room… untouched, waiting, empty. Her chair at the table… empty. Her laughter… gone. I walked from room to room, touching her things, breathing in the spaces she had filled. And the emptiness swallowed me whole.

As I sat in her room, the memories came. Her first steps. Her first day of school. Her laugh…the one that could light up a room. The nights I stayed up worrying. The times I held her while she cried. The moments we fought, and made up, and fought again. The years we battled her addiction…together. The hope. The setbacks. The victories. The heartbreaks. All of it…leading to this one night. This one choice.

What do I do now? That was the question that echoed through my mind as the hours and days blurred together. How do I go on? How do I live in a world without her? How do I wake up each day and breathe when she no longer can? I didn’t have answers.

Every day since has been a reminder. Her empty chair. I see her there in my mind…laughing, teasing, sharing her dreams, her worries, her plans. And then I see the empty space. The nights stretch on forever. The house feels too big. The house is too quiet. I lie awake, remembering, missing, aching. Sometimes I talk to her, hoping somehow, she hears me.

We fought so hard. Every late-night talk. Every promise. We fought. And in one night, with one choice, it was gone. I made her a promise…. Mya, I will not let your story end here. I will tell it. I will fight for others. I will do everything I can to make sure your life, your light, helps save someone else. In the quiet moments since, I have kept talking to God. I ask Him to hold her. To keep her safe. To tell her I love her. I ask Him for strength. And sometimes, when the world is still, I feel her. I feel His peace.

Grief is not just a feeling. It’s a full-body assault. It didn’t just break my heart… it broke my lungs, my spine, my skin. My bones felt like they were humming with pain. Breathing wasn’t something I did anymore… it was something I survived. Every inhale scraped down my throat like glass, and every exhale felt like a betrayal. How could I still be breathing when she wasn’t? People talk about grief like it’s sadness. Like it’s some dark cloud that hovers over you for a while. They don’t talk about how it crawls inside your body and rearranges everything. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sit still. But I also couldn’t move. My body was exhausted from doing absolutely nothing. The silence in the house was loud. So loud it rang in my ears and made me nauseous. I remember standing in the kitchen, staring at the floor, not knowing why I walked in there. My hands would tremble for no reason. I lost time. I would blink, and suddenly it would be dark outside. I wasn’t living… I was floating in some distorted nightmare that never ended. Some days, the only thing I could manage was to scream into my pillow and beg God to wake me up. Other days, I would look at the front door, hoping she’d come walking in and say, “Just kidding, Mom.” I would’ve forgiven her in a second. I would’ve taken her back no matter what. There were mornings I woke up and for half a second, just half a second, I forgot. And then it slammed into me like a semi… she’s gone. Mya is gone. My daughter is dead. And I am still here. How do you live with that?

I felt like I was rotting from the inside out. I could smell her lotion on her clothes, hear her laugh in old videos, see her name on unopened mail and it all felt like a punch in the throat. There were nights I would lie on the floor in her room and just cry until I couldn’t cry anymore. Until my tears dried up and all that was left was this guttural, broken sound I didn’t even recognize as my own voice.

Grief made me forget who I was. I was no longer a mom. I was a mother with empty arms and no instructions on how to survive that. People kept telling me to eat, to sleep, to rest. But how do you do that when your soul is gone? When every cell in your body is screaming for someone who will never walk through the door again?

The worst part? The world didn’t stop. People went to work. Posted about dinner. Laughed at memes. Meanwhile, I was walking through a battlefield littered with pieces of myself. I used to think heartbreak was metaphorical. Now I know what it feels like to clutch your chest because the pain is so real, so physical, you’re convinced your heart is literally tearing apart inside your body. This wasn’t grief. This was torture. This was survival in its most brutal form.

But somewhere in the rubble of that unbearable grief, I knew I had two choices:

Die with her or find a way to keep her alive… somehow, some way. That’s when Mya’s Mission was born. People see a nonprofit. A logo. A mission statement.

What they don’t see is a mother clawing her way out of a grave that wasn’t hers.

This foundation isn’t just something I do. It’s the only thing that keeps me from disappearing. It gives my grief somewhere to go. Every Narcan box we install, every treatment grant we give, every story I tell; it’s all stitched together with pieces of my broken heart. And I do it not just for others, but for her. Because if I can save one daughter, one son, one mother from living this nightmare… then maybe, just maybe, I can survive mine. Mya’s Mission isn’t just her legacy. It’s my lifeline. It’s what gets me out of bed when the weight of missing her makes me feel paralyzed. It’s what gives my pain a purpose when nothing else makes sense. When I stand in front of a crowd, telling Mya’s story, my voice might shake—but it’s the only time I feel strong. When I hand out Narcan, I think of the kids whose moms will not have to visit a grave. When I write her name, over and over again in speeches, blogs, and grant proposals, I am refusing to let the world forget her.

Grief taught me that I will never be whole again. But Mya’s Mission showed me that broken people can still build something powerful. People ask me, “How do you do it?”

The answer is…I don’t know. Some days I crumble after a Facebook post. Some days I can’t breathe after reading a message from a mom begging for help.

But other days, I get to watch someone walk out of treatment, clean and alive.

I get to see a life that wasn’t lost. And in those moments, I feel like Mya’s still here. Helping. Healing. Holding me up. This foundation isn’t a job. It’s not a side project. It’s my survival plan. It’s the thing that keeps her name alive when the silence in my house feels unbearable. And as the third year without her approaches, the grief hasn’t softened. I’ve just learned how to carry it differently…with purpose, with fire, with her memory lighting the way.

If you’re reading this, I want you to know…this mission isn’t just mine. It’s for anyone who’s lost someone they love, for anyone who’s scared they might, and for everyone who believes we can do better. I’m inviting you to stand beside me in this fight… not just to honor Mya, but to protect every life still at risk. Whether you share our posts, carry Narcan, donate, volunteer, or simply say her name… you are helping to carry this mission forward. Together, we can turn heartbreak into hope, pain into purpose, and loss into lasting change. Please, join us. Help me fight for the living while honoring those we’ve lost.