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Remembering Lindy, Capturing the Miracle by C Double H Photography

Every baby matters. Every story matters.

 Whether a baby lived for months, minutes, or was carried and never held, their life deserves to be acknowledged and remembered.

Remembering Harry, Madalyn Smith Photography

Our Mission

This Little Light is dedicated to insuring that families in Kansas who experience pregnancy or infant loss receive compassionate care, tangible resources, and remembrance services like professional photography through the work of trained volunteers to honor each child's life and support grieving families.

This Little Light was created from a strong belief that no family should have to walk through pregnancy or infant loss feeling alone, unsupported, or unsure of where to turn.

We are This Little Light

Meet Our Founders

Meet our Executive Director,

Hanna Perry

Hanna is a wife, mom, doula, and professional birth and bereavement photographer. She has 5 children. 4 are here with her and one is in heaven. Much of the work she does today has grown from both her own experience with loss and the families that she has walked alongside through pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and bereavement.

Hanna’s daughter, Olivia, was lost to miscarriage on New Year’s Day. She didn’t know what options were available to her or what choices she was allowed to make for herself and for her baby. By the time she began learning about pregnancy loss and the options families can have, that moment had already passed for them. In the years that followed, Hanna learned just how isolating pregnancy loss can be. It wasn’t until she found other women who truly understood that she began processing her own grief and learning how to grow around it instead of pushing it aside.

“I can’t go back and change what I didn’t know when I lost her, but I can help make sure another family doesn’t have to walk into their loss without knowing what choices they have.” - Hanna

Hanna’s husband has also been a huge support behind this work. Olivia impacted both of them, even though they experienced grief through very different lenses.

Eventually, Hanna’s work as a birth photographer brought her into bereavement spaces from the other side of the camera. She trained along side Madalyn Smith, her close and trusted colleague and became certified in bereavement photography. She began to walk alongside families experiencing miscarriage, still birth, and infant loss. Photography can give a family something incredibly meaningful to hold onto, but the more families that Hanna met, the more she realized that photographs were only one piece of what was needed.

Her work as a doula has only strengthened that belief. As she continues her education and training as a birth worker, she hopes to expand that work into bereavement and loss specific doula support. She wants to be better equipped when serving families whose pregnancies and births end differently than they had hope.

Hanna’s work has also brought her face-to-face with serious challenges within hospital systems, particularly surrounding access, advocacy, and the way families are supported during birth, as well as loss. Those experiences have strengthened her commitment to advocating for families, pushing for meaningful change, and helping make sure parents understand that their voices and choices matter.

As Executive Director of This Little Light, Hanna oversees the organization as a whole and helps lead the direction of where it is going. Her role includes developing programs and resources, coordinating the work between team members, building relationships, and taking ideas for supporting families and figuring out how to put them into action.

Along the way, Hanna has also had the privilege of meeting the women who now stand beside her in this work. Each of them entering her life at different points in her journey, bringing their own experiences, strengths, and hearts for families into This Little Light.

“Bereavement photography is only a small part of This Little Light. It is only the beginning. From remembrance and practical resources to education, community, events, and continued support long afterwards. I hope that This Little Light becomes a place families can turn to at different points throughout their journey.”

Meet our Chief Operating & Training Manager,

Madalyn Smith

Madalyn has dedicated her professional career to the service of pregnant families and their babies. A bachelors prepared registered nurse by education, Madalyn spent several years working at the University of Kansas Health System St. Francis Campus New Life Center as both a postpartum and labor nurse before transitioning to full time motherhood during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She has a passion for education, having taught countless families the ins and outs of pregnancy, labor, and babywearing as a childbirth and babywearing educator at local hospitals and through private classes.

Madalyn is the wife of Cody, her high school sweetheart, and together they share 3 young boys - Charles, Henry, and Theodore. Guided by her experience as a nurse who cared for loss families in the hospital, Madalyn turned her passions for photography, service, and women’s health into a volunteer experience when she became certified in bereavement photography in September of 2023.

Madalyn’s experience of miscarrying her daughter, Eleanor, in October 2024, highlighted for her the need for more comprehensive loss education and support for families experiencing a pregnancy or infant loss in northeast Kansas.

She hopes that the existence of This Little Light will continue to bring families the opportunity to document, share, and celebrate the lives of their babies, no matter how long or short their journey earthside is.

“Losing my baby was the single most life altering and isolation experience of my life. Though I had a village of support around me, no one prepares you for the feeling that the floor is falling out from under your feet when you find out something is wrong with your pregnancy. I hope, most of all, that the existence of This Little Light helps families feel a little less alone; that they can share the weight of carrying this insurmountable loss with us.”

Meet our Hispanic Family Support & Outreach Coordinator,

Ana De La Cruz

My own experiences with loss are a huge part of why this work matters to me. When I was very young I experienced a miscarriage at 16 weeks. I was uneducated about pregnancy and motherhood, and I had very little support as I tried to understand what had happened. I remember so little from that traumatic time. Years later, I experienced the unimaginable loss of my teenage daughter.

This time, during the hardest season of my life, I had an incredible support system around me. When I couldn't even think about taking the next step, there were people willing to take those steps for me. I will never forget what it meant to have people step in, help carry the weight of decisions, and give me room to simply grieve and process what was happening. I want to be THAT kind of support for other families experiencing loss.

I also grew up with Spanish-speaking parents and often found myself translating for them, even during difficult and frightening situations, including medical emergencies. I saw firsthand how much harder an already overwhelming situation can become when there is a language barrier.

Being part of This Little Light gives me the opportunity to help make sure Spanish-speaking families are not left trying to navigate pregnancy or infant loss without information and support that they can understand.

My hope is to help make those incredibly difficult moments just a little easier to navigate, to help families feel supported in the decisions in front of them, and to make sure language is never the reason someone feels alone in their grief. I am ready to help the Hispanic community after seeing these language barriers in my own lived experiences.

Meet our Community Outreach Coordinator,

Bailee Carpenter

As the Community Outreach Coordinator, I will be working to build and maintain relationships and partnerships with community members and organizations. I hope to build a sense of connection among loss parents so the grief journey doesn’t feel so lonely and isolating.

I am a mom of three kids — Graham, Harry and Matilda. During the day I work as a social media and digital marketing strategist and in my free time I enjoy reading, walking outside and hanging out with my family.

After losing my son Harry at 38 weeks, I looked for ways to turn my grief into something meaningful to honor him.

I am so grateful to have had a bereavement photographer to capture memories of my son before we had to say goodbye. I treasure those images so deeply, knowing they are sometimes all I have to hold onto during the darkest days of my grief. The work that This Little Light brings to our community will be invaluable for families experiencing similar losses and I’m proud to be a part of it!

Meet our Local Resource & Mental Health Coordinator,

Stephanie Horacek

I'm a wife to the love of my life of 11 years, and a mom of three children - Kaden, Azalea, and my triple rainbow baby Harlowe. I have always believed in photography having the power to preserve the most meaningful moments life has to offer, and that is why I find these services to be so impactful. Through both my personal experience with recurrent loss, and my time in EMS, I’ve seen how quickly life can change, and how important it may be to capture moments in the midst of that change. We can find such healing in, and even treasure, the telling of our story in photo form.

As Local Resource & Mental Health Coordinator, I hope to additionally help create connections between other organizations and our families as they navigate pregnancy and infant loss. I also aim to support our team in building partnerships to widen and strengthen community engagement, and ensure families never feel alone in their grief. Additionally, I will be interning as a bereavement photographer in order to later on provide those services as well.

It is a privilege to be part of an incredible team of strong women that are committed to serving others with dignity, empathy, and love during some of their most difficult days. My hope is that every family who crosses our path feels seen, supported, and reminded that they are not alone.

Together, we are This Little Light.

We are a group of women who have come together with a shared heart for families experiencing miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss. Our goal is to help bridge the gap between the medical care a family receives and the compassionate, tangible support they need before, during, and after one of the hardest experiences of their lives.