🦋 The Purple Butterfly Project: How One Family’s Tragic Loss Created a Symbol of Silent Compassion in Neonatal Wards. When Millie and Louis first received the devastating news that one of their unborn twins had been diagnosed with anencephaly, their world collapsed into a nightmare no parent ever imagines. They were forced into a heartbreaking contradiction: preparing for a birth and a death simultaneously, torn between the joy for one child and the agonizing anticipation for the other. Their daughter, Skye, lived only for a few precious moments after she arrived, yet those moments became the defining event that shaped everything that followed. Her life was profoundly brief, but her presence irrevocably changed how her parents saw the world.
The Invisible Grief of the Neonatal Unit
In the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), the everyday rhythm of hospital life carried on. Nurses asked routine questions intended for comfort or clarity. Visitors spoke with kind curiosity. But even a simple, innocent remark such as, “So, is it only the one baby?” pierced Millie and Louis with a pain that words could not explain. The staff and visitors meant well, but the hurt stemmed from a painful truth: people simply did not know Skye existed. Without a simple, visible way to communicate their loss, the couple faced a second layer of grief—the profound anguish of feeling invisible and misunderstood while surrounded by people.
Millie and Louis decided that no other family should have to endure that hidden anguish. Out of their sorrow grew an idea that could spare countless parents a similar wound: the creation of the Skye High Foundation, named for the daughter they loved and lost.
The Gentle Power of the Purple Butterfly
The foundation’s core idea was as gentle as it was profound: a small, unassuming purple butterfly sticker designed to be placed on cots, incubators, and hospital doors.
The purpose of this silent symbol is powerful. It silently informs everyone who enters the room that a twin or triplet has died. It serves as a compassionate, wordless reminder to staff and visitors that the baby they are admiring had a sibling whose life was tragically short. The butterfly speaks without sound, communicating one essential truth: “One of these babies is missing.”
Behind each butterfly rests far more than a small piece of adhesive art. The foundation’s work extends to creating support groups that welcome grieving parents who feel unable to speak their loss aloud. It facilitates late-night messages shared between mothers and fathers who finally feel understood and recognized. Through this simple symbol, families discover, often for the very first time, that someone recognizes the full, complex story of their child’s arrival.
Millie and Louis cannot rewrite Skye’s brief life. They cannot change the circumstances that shattered their hearts. Yet, through every purple butterfly placed in a hospital, their daughter’s name continues to be spoken. Families who once felt isolated discover they are not carrying their unique grief alone. A symbol small enough to fit in the palm of a hand now carries the immense weight of remembrance and compassion. It brings essential comfort to parents who stand beside an incubator with love in their arms and the profound ache of loss in their hearts.
Because of one tiny life, and one family’s courage to transform their pain into a shared purpose, another parent somewhere in the world feels just a little less alone.
