About The Album

The original album was created in 1999 in response to a need at our local hospital. A nurse who worked in the neonatal intensive care unit shared with June that 25-40 infants each year were dying in the N.I.C.U. as a result of prematurity, illness or physical problems. Knowing about her experience in creating photo albums, she asked if June could help the families by providing a memory album. We discussed it, and realizing that this project was more than we could manage alone, we appealed to our church to partner with us. They agreed to help without hesitation.
With this commitment, we began developing wording and a design for the album. We read a lot of material and drew from our own and other’s experience with pregnancy and early-infant loss.

Much thought and prayer was invested and many tears were shed wrestling with what Moms and Dads and their friends and families needed to know about enduring such a loss. Several months later we had finalized the wording and design of the album. Using stickers of teddy bears, baby rattles and angels and a variety of paper treatments we decorated the original albums and began assembling them with the help of many friends who wanted to be a part of this outreach of compassion.

We could hardly keep up with the demand at first and soon we were overwhelmed with requests from the hospital and from friends and acquaintances. In the first year alone, we gave away 75 albums. It seemed as though everyone knew a family who had experienced the death of a baby and couldn’t find an appropriate way to show how much they cared. In the years that followed we donated many more albums and the feedback we received about the album was very positive. We began to wonder how we would ever be able to keep up with the requests.

In February of 2001 we were invited to Focus on the Family®, a family-support organization in Colorado Springs. Focus airs a daily radio broadcast heard all over the world on marriage, parenting and other topics. They had been graciously donating a book to us about infant loss which we’d been including with our album to the families in need. Focus had not actually seen the album and when we shared it with them they offered to help expand our outreach by publishing it. Apparently they also needed just such a resource to offer to the many families they encountered who had experienced the death of a child.

This was truly an answer to prayer. Suddenly we knew how we could meet the ever-growing demand for the albums. As it turned out, the need at the hospital was much greater than we would have believed. We learned that the infant and pregnancy losses at our local hospital are actually over 300 a year. We believe that the numbers of families affected by this loss on a national-scale is astronomical.

Forever in our Hearts is the culmination of many months of meetings, research, writing, editing and re-writing. We are grateful to all who have guided us, believed in us and supported us. Our hope and prayer is that the album, in some small way helps to bring healing and hope to many hurting families.