Almost two years into the pandemic, the world is heading toward an endemic “new normal”. For us, the new normal has a different meaning. It’s a world without the beautiful smiles of our beloved son Leonardo. Typically, parenting means raising a child and seeing his/her personality unfold as time goes by. For us, grieving is part of our parenting journey.
While adapting to the “new normal”, we try to integrate Leonardo’s legacy into our life and be the parents that he would be proud of. Part of this is spreading love and kindness in memory of Leonardo. During the season of giving, we would like to take a moment to express our gratitude for your generous support to Leonardo’s Smile Fund, which was set up right after his passing. We transferred all bereavement money received at his memorial to the fund. Apart from that, we have also made our own contributions and received additional donations from friends all over the world.
As of December 18, Leonardo’s Smile Fund has received a total of SGD26,950 (or VND435,500,000). The fund has disbursed VND97,600,000 (or SGD5,800) to support 11 families in the SOS Children’s Villages in Hanoi, Phu Tho, and Thanh Hoa provinces in Vietnam.
Taking this opportunity, we are also pleased to share about another project that Pinky is working on to honor Leonardo and all babies gone too soon.
In the early days after that tragic loss of Leonardo, Pinky scrambled to look for resources related to child loss and coping mechanisms to help herself. A mother in an online group for grieving parents in Singapore sent her a book titled “Surviving my first year of child loss” in which bereaved parents from all over the world shared their personal stories after a miscarriage or the loss of a child.
Since Pinky has not been able to find similar resources in her native language - Vietnamese, she reached out to the author and acquired the right to translate and publish the Vietnamese version. She has been working with her sister and a publishing house in Vietnam to translate and produce the book, which is slated to be released in March 2022 on the occasion of Leonardo’s second birthday. She also wanted to distribute this book for free to a number of hospitals across Vietnam, so it could reach parents who are new to the grieving journey.
After Pinky shared this project on her personal Facebook page, an overwhelming support has poured in. As of today, we have received more than 750 pre-orders of the books, the majority of which will be donated to hospitals in Vietnam. If you would like to join us in this campaign, please fill up this form and we will get in touch when the book is available.
To our dear friends and supporters, words cannot express our thankfulness for your kindness and generosity. We wish you a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year, and can’t wait to reconnect in 2022.
