For parents who donate a child’s organs, mourning is a unique experience.
“You’ve got the grief and the sudden loss, because organ donation comes out of an accident or a tragedy, and it’s combined with this silver lining of gratitude that your loved one saved others,” said Dallas-area resident Tara Storch, whose nonprofit, Taylor’s Gift Foundation, provides grief support for donor families. “Grief and gratitude kind of share the same space, and it’s complicated and layered.”
Storch’s intimate understanding of those feelings is rooted in the powerful contradicting emotions that she and her husband, Todd Storch, experienced after their 13-year-old daughter, Taylor, died in a skiing accident more than a decade ago.
“We couldn’t find anyone who understood,” Tara said. “There was no group. There was no one-on-one support.”
Today, Taylor’s Gift Foundation meets those needs for other donor families. And each grief counselor, each facilitator who leads group therapy, speaks from a place of empathy.
“Every single one of them has personally walked the journey of grief; they have had a personal loss,” Tara said. “When you’re sitting with somebody who’s gone through something hard, and they can look at you and say, I’ve been there, I understand that feeling, it’s just a completely different dynamic. So much beauty comes from that understanding.”
Without Hesitation
Tara says organ donation wasn’t even remotely in her thoughts when a nurse came to speak to her and Todd in Taylor’s hospital room in March 2010. Only hours before, during the family’s ski trip in Beaver Creek, Colorado, Taylor had lost control on the ski slope and struck a tree.
“She was wearing her helmet and doing everything right,” Tara said. “It was just an accident.”
The hospital emergency team in Grand Junction, Colorado, where Taylor had been flown, was upfront with Tara and Todd. Their daughter’s injuries were very serious.
“They worked so hard to save her life,” Tara said. “Oh my gosh, if I could get back to these doctors and just thank them for everything they tried to do. But we got to this point of knowing she would never recover.”
No one could do anything at that point to give Tara and Todd their daughter back. But the nurse who approached them offered a way forward where Taylor could still be making a difference.
“She said Taylor was a beautiful candidate for organ donation and would we consider it,” Tara said.
“We said yes immediately, without hesitation, because of the type of child Taylor was. We knew in our heart of hearts that if she could have been asked, ‘Honey, do you want to save lives in these last moments here?’ she would have absolutely said yes.”
Taylor helped five people with the gift of her heart, liver, pancreas, kidneys, and cornea.
But her impact wouldn’t stop there.
Walking Toward the Light of Goodness
Shortly after the Storch family came home from Colorado, Todd found himself thinking about something his grandfather used to tell him. It hadn’t registered when Todd was a boy. Now it made perfect sense.
“He used to say, ‘You know, Todd, it doesn’t matter what happens, it’s how you react to it,’” Tara said. “Don’t get me wrong. Of course it mattered that we lost Taylor. Our world was completely shattered, but our reaction was going to be really important, especially to our other two children. So we had a choice. Were we going to cave in to the grief and sit in the dark, or we were going toward that light of goodness?”
Todd and Tara felt they had started moving toward that light by agreeing to donate Taylor’s organs. Now, they wanted to give others the same hope by sharing the importance and impact of organ donation.
That message was the initial focus of Taylor’s Gift Foundation, founded six weeks after Taylor’s death. At that time, Todd learned, only about 2% of eligible Texans were registered organ donors.
“We quickly found out that organ donation is not an easy topic to talk about because when people think of donations, they think of death,” Tara said. “But organ, eye, and tissue donations are all about life.”
The foundation coined the phrase, “Outlive yourself,” and it started gaining traction. Todd and Tara were included in People magazine’s “Heroes Among Us” section in 2013. And Taylor’s Gift Foundation has been featured on such national programs as “Good Morning America,” “Today,” and “Ellen.”
The Storches wrote a book, too: "Taylor’s Gift: A Courageous Story of Giving Life and Renewing Hope." The book was named “Most Inspirational Book” at the Books for a Better Life Awards in New York City in 2014.
“Everything was growing and making a difference along the way, but throughout all the years we were working on this, we saw this lack of grief support, specifically for donor families,” Tara said.
More Light in Response to Tragedy
In 2016, Tara and Todd started looking into adding grief support to Taylor’s Gift Foundation’s programming, but they didn’t feel they had the financial support necessary for such a major undertaking.
“The world wasn’t ready for it yet,” Tara said. “Mental health was not something that was really talked about, and so it was a real struggle to fill that gap.”
Then the COVID-19 panic hit, and with it, social distancing, lockdowns, and, for many, struggles with isolation, anxiety, and depression. Suddenly, people were talking about mental health.
“It was the perfect time for us to start our Taylor’s Gift Foundation grief support program, and when we did, it started to grow incredibly quickly,” Tara said.
Since then, the foundation’s fundraising efforts have focused on generating money for grief support.
The program offers parents free one-on-one counseling for a year and group therapy for as long as the family wants to participate. All activities are virtual, and all those who provide counseling, in addition to sharing the experience of loss with participants, are licensed or certified grief professionals.
Families are referred to the program by organ procurement organizations around the nation, by hospitals, and by word of mouth. After families complete the foundation’s online grief support form, Taylor’s Gift Foundation follows up to schedule an intake call within 48 hours. Taylor’s Gift Foundation serves families in more than 40 states, and its grief support program includes a group for Spanish speakers.
After the foundation launched the grief support program in 2021, its efforts caught the attention of NYU Langone Health, which is a premier academic medical center. Currently, Langone Health, the foundation, and the Center for Surgical & Transplant Applied Research Team (CSTAR) are conducting extensive studies on the foundation’s grief support program model.
For Tara, one of the most fulfilling aspects of her work with Taylor’s Gift Foundation is hearing from the families it touches.
“That’s been so incredibly powerful. People that had thought about suicide, that are now finding joy. Their marriage was falling apart; now their marriage is strong.”
Focus on the Mission
That said, Tara would never call launching and running a nonprofit a walk in the park. Her advice to others hoping to start one?
“You’ve got to have strong champions around you to guide you, and you’ve got to have a strong board of directors who are passionate about your mission. But I also think the why you do it has to be really big. When you’re starting something like a nonprofit, there are ups and downs with that; it’s not easy at all. But, for example, my why is so big that I just keep going. Stay really laser-focused on your mission and what that means to you.”
Going forward, Tara and Todd hope to continue expanding the reach of Taylor’s Gift Foundation and bringing in more sponsors to support their mission.
Visit the Taylor’s Gift Foundation website to learn how you can help or sign up for grief support.
Copybrighters specializes in ghostwriting for businesses and nonprofits. Meet our team.
Comments