The past five years have been a landscape of heartbreak I never could have imagined. I have watched the things I value most—my family and their health—be systematically dismantled by heart disease and stroke.

In 2021, the world stopped when I lost my big sister, Heidi. She had just turned 52. One moment she was here, and in an instant, a rare disease called Lymphocytic Myocarditis stole her away. The grief was a physical weight, but it wasn't the end of our battle. In 2022, my beautiful mother fought a war on two fronts: In 2022, my beautiful mother suffered a series of devastating, repeated strokes; it was only through the investigation into those strokes that we discovered the stage 4 pancreatic cancer. We only had 14 days with her after that diagnosis before she was taken from us.

The struggle has not let up. Last year, my father’s heart—the heart that has held our family together through all of this—began to fail. Watching him navigate acute heart failure and the constant, frightening shadow of effusive constrictive pericarditis has been a constant reminder of how fragile our time truly is. And as if to remind me of the reach of this disease, my Uncle Sam had to undergo emergency CABG surgery this year due to severe vessel disease.

I am tired of losing the people I love to these diseases. I am tired of the silence, the suddenness, and the pain.

I’m walking for Heidi. I’m walking for my mom. I’m walking for my dad and my Uncle Sam. But more than anything, I’m walking so that your family doesn’t have to know this kind of pain. Heart disease is the #1 killer in our nation, and we cannot let it keep winning.

I am pleading with you today—please, help me turn this grief into action. Even a small donation brings us closer to a world where these stories don’t end in tragedy. We cannot walk this path alone; I need your help to change the narrative.

Will you stand with me? Will you open your heart and help me reach my goal?