He asked everyone to call him Ant. It was even official on his school records. Anthony, "Ant," our son, felt the world in the full spectrum of color and selectively displayed his own unique canvas. He lit up rooms with his smile and contagious laughter. The joy he brought to this world was immense.

Ant died by suicide in the spring of 2024. Suicide. We call it by name because that is the reality, and so many youth carry what he carried in silence. A struggle to belong. Silence is exactly what we are here to break. Ant spent too much of his precious life showing up as someone he wasn't, trying to make others happy, drowning in a world that called that normal. We will not let that be the last word of his story.

When tragedy struck and grief came, it did not come for us alone. Community found us. People showed up and sat in the shame, the pain, and the darkness with us. They helped carry what we could not carry by ourselves, and in that, we saw it clearly. This is what saves us: connection, vulnerability, community. A place where no one has to perform to belong. We did not invent it. We lived it. And now we share it.

That is Ant's legacy, alive in every space we create, every family we reach, every young person who finds it and finally exhales. Our work is rooted in love, carried by resilience, and made for the long road. Because being endurant is not just surviving. It is choosing, again and again, to turn it into something that keeps someone else here. We keep the life force flowing.

Not someday. Now.