The Titus Scott Foundation was created from love, loss, grief, and pain that had nowhere to go.
I often tell people you never have to assign meaning to your journey if you don’t want to. And it is certainly not up to anyone else to assign that meaning for you.
But this is the meaning I always knew I needed to create from my loss.
Titus died in a car accident when he was four years old.
I remember holding his little body in the middle of that highway in absolute disbelief. Screaming at anyone who would listen that this couldn’t be my life.
I remember screaming at the sky that something beautiful had better come from this.
It took me a really long time to understand that if I wanted something beautiful to grow from this ugly, horrible mess, I would have to help create it.
Nothing could make his death okay. Nothing could make losing him worth it. I just had all this love for my little boy and nowhere to put it.
So I decided I wanted to love and serve people like me.
The ones who feel forgotten.
The ones who feel like their grief is too heavy for anyone else to carry.
The ones who have no idea how they are supposed to get through the next hour while making impossible decisions about a child they were supposed to spend their lives raising.
The parents who are trying to figure out how to pay for a funeral. How to choose a headstone. How to honor their child with dignity when their entire world has just come apart.
No parent should have to choose between honoring their child and being able to afford it.
The Titus Scott Foundation exists because Titus existed.
Because he was here. Because he mattered. Because being his mom changed my life, and losing him did not end my love for him.
I want people to associate his name with love long after I am gone.
Through the foundation, we help families with practical needs in the beginning stages of loss and in the years that follow. We help pay for funerals, memorials, and headstones. We help families access counseling through scholarships and offer grief workshops led by professional clinicians, alongside peer support from people who understand.
Sometimes that support helps a family place their child’s name on a headstone. Sometimes it gives a parent a room where they can say that name out loud and know someone wants to hear it.
This work is not easy.
The stories families share with me take up permanent space in my heart. I find myself looking for signs from their children. Talking to them. Telling other people their stories.
I carry their names with me.
I know what it means to hope someone else will remember your child. To wonder whether anyone understands that you are still their parent. Still loving them. Still missing them in every version of the life unfolding without them.
Because the loss of a child is not one single loss.
It is a million losses, over and over, for the rest of your life.
Every birthday. Every holiday. Every milestone they should have reached. Every new chapter that asks you to keep living while someone you love is missing.
And as time passes, support often gets quieter.
The world moves forward. Families are left trying to figure out how to move with it, carrying a loss that much of society does not understand.
That is why we need our community.
We need people willing to help us keep showing up. To help pay the invoice a grieving parent cannot face. To make counseling accessible. To help us create spaces where families can bring their grief without worrying that it is too much.
If you are able, please consider donating to The Titus Scott Foundation. Your support helps us meet these needs and continue walking beside families in the months and years after their child dies.
If giving financially is not possible, please share our work. Tell someone about our resources. Introduce us to a business or community partner who might want to help.
You may reach a family who has been wondering where to turn.
I cannot change what happened on that highway. I cannot bring my little boy home.
But I can keep loving him through the way I care for others.
And with your help, his name can keep reaching families who need to know they have not been forgotten.
Love, Ash