Our Story
Official Full Documentary
Who we are
Hello, and welcome to The Hummingbird Project! We are so happy to have you and to share with you our story. My name is Kristen and my amazing husband and life partner of 25 years is Adam. We are the proud parents of 5 incredible boys who were all born within seven years of each other, Noni and Pop to 2 granddaughters and 1 grandson on the way. To say our life has been an adventure would be an understatement. There has never been a dull moment! Adam and I have always worked hard to give our sons the best life possible. We were a typical, upper-middle-class family, living in the suburbs. We spent our days working and raising kids and our nights on either a baseball, football, or soccer field, a basketball gym, or at a swimming pool. Adam coached almost every team they were on, and I was team Mom extraordinaire. One of us volunteered for every field trip and class party. We went to every school play, and award ceremony and never missed a sporting event. Our kids know how much they are loved and supported. They were typical kids, typical teens, and are now typical young adults. We were just like any other suburban family with ups and downs, good and bad, challenges and triumphs. What I’m really trying to say is – WE HAVE A GREAT LIFE!
Through the years, Adam and I would often dream about the future and what we thought each of the boys would be doing at different milestones in their lives. We imagined entrepreneurs, doctors, backpacking across Europe, firefighters, athletes, weddings, marriages, and family reunions with dozens of grand babies. We even joked about who we would have to bail out of jail a couple of times before they figured life out. We never imagined the sharp turn our lives would take on a typical Wednesday in November, just 3 days after celebrating my 45th birthday.
On November 6th, 2019 our world was turned upside down… Two of our five sons, Christopher age 24, and John age 22 were planning a video game marathon and decided to party at the same time. This decision ended their lives and changed the lives of so many others who loved them, Forever. A police investigation uncovered that they got what they thought was Oxy. It was, however, laced with fentanyl. They were gone within minutes. They were smart, handsome, popular, sweet, funny, compassionate boys. They were not only our sons but brothers, grandsons, great-grandsons, nephews, cousins, and friends. Christopher a Dad, John an uncle. They were just getting started in life, and it all came to a crashing halt. The point is, tragedy can truly happen to ANYONE at any time. It does not discriminate.
How we came to be The Hummingbird Project
We were raised in the ‘Just Say No’ era and began our parenting approach the same way. We were the parents that immediately thought our kids needed rehab when we found out they were smoking weed. Because according to the scare tactics ingrained in our heads, they would certainly be strung out, living under a bridge somewhere because weed was the ‘gateway drug’ to addiction. With some life experience, hearing other people's stories, and lots of research, we came to realize that it isn’t always an all-or-nothing scenario. That not every person who smokes weed will become an addict. And that there are other important factors to be aware of (genetics, for example) that play a big role in why substances have such drastically different effects from person to person. Prior to this, we had no insight and very few conversations with our kids about other types of drugs or possible consequences because we thought ‘just say no’ would be enough to keep them safe.
Shortly after their passing, my husband and I looked at each other and knew we had a choice to make. We could either crawl into a dark hole and crumble – an option we knew would be easy to do and that no one would blame us for doing so. The second option was that we had to find a way to make it through in the most positive way possible. We had no idea what that would look like or how we would get there, but we knew, for us, it was the only option. We still had 3 children ages (23, 20, and 17) who had lost their brothers, and a 6-year-old granddaughter, whom we are raising, who had lost her Dad. They deserved to have 2 whole parents and to live full, happy, meaningful lives. We had to lead them through this grieving process and show them that love and light still exist. We were determined to make something good come from this horrible tragedy.
We spent hours questioning and searching for answers. What could we have done differently? Was there anything that could have saved our boys? We kept coming back to the same answer. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. The idea of this foundation was born at this moment. We set out to educate ourselves and spent countless hours researching. It was shocking to see how much we actually didn’t know, and we became determined to share this information in the hopes of changing the outcome of someone else's story. We immediately felt the need to talk. To tell our story and to tell it often. We want to reduce the social stigma around substance use, addiction, and other mental disorders.
Now that we know better, we hope to educate others in a way that can cultivate an environment in their lives where discussions are safe, open, honest, welcome, and often with their loved ones. The more education and awareness we can provide, the better. We want to arm not only kids, teens, and young adults, but parents, teachers, and friends alike with as much knowledge and as many resources as we can. We believe if we set the stage for a safe place to talk, and with a talk track based on facts, people, in general, will feel heard and make choices that can save their lives.
We knew it wouldn't be easy and that we wouldn't come out unscathed. As I write this message, it has been almost three years, and we are still a work in progress. We are still navigating grief. But we are here and we have each other. We often describe grief as standing by the ocean. Some days, no matter where you look, the water is all you see. Some days you notice the sun glistening and can find joy and peace in feeling the sand between your toes and the breeze in your hair. Sometimes the waves are slow and steady, but manageable. Sometimes the waves are enormous and come crashing down on top of you so hard that you don't know which way is up or if you will ever find your way back to the surface. And just when you think you are definitely going to drown, you catch a sliver of light and all of a sudden there is air again. While the waves never get easier, they do come less often and don’t last as long. As a family, we are healing. I attribute a big part of our healing due to us finding a way to use our pain as fuel to honor their memory. We started doing random acts of kindness in the community to honor their memory. We started having family nights to paint kindness rocks.
We then leave them around the community to brighten someone else's day and honor their memory. What we have become stems from my need to feel like not only their death, but their lives meant something. They both have February birthdays… in the first year, with it being only 3 months after they passed, I decided we would do 25 random acts of kindness on Christopher’s 25th birthday and 23 on John's 23rd. Our family went out into the community and paid for coffee, passed out essentials to the homeless community, paid for groceries, etc. I posted about it on social media and with just close friends and family asking to participate, we ended up with over 500 random acts of kindness done in their memory across the US on these two dates alone! I knew right then that this was something I wanted to continue to do. I started brainstorming ideas that would allow more people to participate. I settled in on Kindness Rocks. Kindness Rocks are rocks painted with positive, uplifting messages and then placed in the community for people to find. We are coming up on the 3-year anniversary of their passing and although the enormity of our loss doesn’t go away, it fills my heart to see and know so many people are keeping their memory alive by actively participating in our kindness Project.
While we encourage and practice random acts of kindness and place Kindness Rocks all year round, we have 3 specific dates that we ask our friends, family, and community to join us to help make our voices that much louder. November 6th, February 8th (John’s Birthday), and February 26th (Christopher's Birthday) My goal was to place 365 rocks on the anniversary, one for each day they have been gone, turned into people requesting, and me sending out over 5000 stickers for the rocks! We decided to create this page to share with our friends and family with the hope of spreading not only awareness but kindness, a smile, love, and inspiration. It is exactly what would have made our boys happy. Please join us and spread the word.
In Loving Memory
Christopher Ryan Ramirez
2/26/95 – 11/6/19
John Andrew Ramirez
2/8/97 – 11/6/19
