When Millie Smith and Lewis Cann learned they were expecting twins, they were filled with excitement. Like many expectant parents, they began imagining a future with two babies growing up side by side and sharing countless milestones together.
But during the pregnancy, their joy was met with devastating news.
Doctors told them that one of their daughters had anencephaly, a serious condition in which major parts of the brain and skull do not develop. They were told their baby would not survive for long after birth.
Millie and Lewis named their daughter Skye.
Knowing their time with her would be painfully short did not make her life any less meaningful. When Skye was born, her parents held her close and treasured every minute they were given.
She lived for only three hours.
Those three hours became memories Millie and Lewis would carry for the rest of their lives. They held their daughter, surrounded her with love, and said goodbye far sooner than any parent should have to.
But after Skye died, Millie encountered another kind of heartbreak.
Life around her continued, and because she still had a surviving baby, people did not always realize that she was also grieving the loss of a child.
Some spoke to her as though Skye had never existed.
Others made innocent comments without understanding how painful their words could be.
Then one day, someone casually told Millie that she was “lucky” she didn’t have twins.
The person had no idea that Millie had, in fact, given birth to twins.
She had simply been forced to say goodbye to one of them.
The comment was not intended to be cruel, but it exposed a painful problem: there was no simple way for people around a grieving family to know what had happened.
That moment inspired Millie to create a small symbol.
Something quiet.
Something simple.
And something that could tell an important story without forcing grieving parents to repeatedly explain their loss.
That symbol became the purple butterfly.
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