Finding My Rainbow
Before I ever held my daughter, I already knew loss too well.
I experienced five miscarriages. Five moments of hope that turned into heartbreak.
Each of these left a mark (not just on my body, but on my spirit). I remember sitting in waiting rooms surrounded by other expectant moms, trying to hide the quiet ache of wondering if I’d ever make it past the first trimester. There’s a certain kind of silence that follows repeated loss. A silence that people don’t talk about. A silence that makes others uncomfortable. A silence I often tried to fill.
And then came Avianna.
My miracle baby.
My light after all those dark and uncertain years.
She was everything I prayed for. She was tiny, perfect, and absolutely radiant. After five losses, finally holding her felt like I was breathing for the first time. She was real. She was here. She was mine.
And then, one unimaginable day, she was gone.
Avianna died of SIDS, and in that moment, my world shattered in a way I didn’t think was possible. All those years of grief came flooding back, but this time it was different. I had seen her face. I had felt her heartbeat against mine. I had memorized her scent, her soft breath, the way her fingers curled around mine. Losing her was more than losing a baby. It was losing my future, my purpose, my very sense of who I was.
My life can be broken into two periods. There was before Avianna, and there was after Avianna.
After Avi, I went on to have another miscarriage at 12 weeks. It ended with a D&C, and I remember lying in that hospital bed thinking, How much loss can one heart hold? I didn’t know if I could keep going.
For a long time, I believed that “finding my rainbow” meant having another living child — that healing would come only when I could hold a baby again. But grief has a way of rewriting everything you thought you knew. Over time, I realized my rainbow wasn’t waiting in the form of another baby. My rainbow was waiting in the form of purpose.
My rainbow came through giving back. Through creating something that could honor Avianna and, at the same time, help other parents who were walking through the same storm.
That’s how my shop, Fly Avi Fly, was born. What started as a small project to keep her name alive became something much bigger. Every product I make carries her memory. Every order funds retreats for other loss parents who need a space to breathe, to connect, and to remember that they’re not alone.
These retreats have become sacred. They’re filled with moments of honesty and courage. They are filled with women sitting in circles, speaking their babies’ names freely, laughing again, crying again, rediscovering what it means to live with their grief instead of trying to outrun it. And in every single one of those moments, I feel Avianna’s presence.
She may not be here in my arms, but she’s everywhere in this work. She’s in the shop I built, in the parents I meet, in every tear and every ounce of hope that rises from our community.
My rainbow isn’t something I found. It is something I built out of everything I lost.
Finding my rainbow means transforming pain into purpose.
It means speaking Avianna’s name out loud, no matter who it makes uncomfortable.
It means helping others find light even when the sky still feels heavy with rain.
I may not have gotten the rainbow baby I once dreamed of, but I got something just as powerful. I got a rainbow that reaches far beyond me; one that continues to stretch through every life Avianna’s story touches.
It shows up in the mom who messages me saying she finally said her baby’s name out loud for the first time. It’s in the friendships built at our retreats; in the laughter that somehow finds its way back into a weekend that started with tears. It’s in the quiet moments when someone tells me, “I thought I was the only one who felt this way,” and for the first time, they don’t feel so alone.
That’s Avianna’s light working through me. That’s her love, still moving, still healing, still reminding me that even in the deepest loss, something beautiful can grow.
My rainbow isn’t something I waited for. It is something I became.
And every time I see another parent start to find a sliver of peace, I know she’s right there, painting the sky beside me.
And to me, that is the most beautiful rainbow there is.
Photos taken by Amanda Swiger.
Find out more about Project Finding Your Rainbow.
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