An August blue day. A perfect time to go boogie boarding. Sand blossomed between our toes as my father, my younger brother and sister, and I ventured down the dunes. As we approached the water, we saw two boys struggling, fighting the angry tide.
 
“Don’t move,” my father said, before dashing into the water.
 
Time fell still and heavy. The salty air and my siblings’ screams coagulated into a deep pounding in my skull. My feet remained planted. Screams of terror and disbelief escaped from my body as I realized what was happening.
 
The two boys came back safely. My father, sucked in by the riptide, drowned.
 ________________________
 
My Nai Nai, my father’s mother, said, “He is living in a different way, now.”

But I wanted my father alive in the way he was before, watching me, smiling.
 
When eighth grade began, traveling the hallways I focused all my efforts on avoiding the creepy (but well-intentioned) tissue-stockpiling guidance counselor and deflecting the pitying stares of classmates when they made the connection that I was “that girl.” They anticipated tears. So, instead, I stared ahead stoically.
 
Eventually, my mom realized that her loquacious daughter was now nearly mute. After several ill-fated attempts to boost my spirits, she re-introduced me to Isabel, a popular classmate with whom I hadn’t spoken since fifth grade, the year her mom died. For the first fifteen minutes, we awkwardly lounged in my sister’s fluorescent, canopied bedroom. Each waited for the other to say something profound about our dead parents. That did not happen. But something else did. Isabel talked about her mom -- not as a distant, sad memory, but rather as a nagging, ill-dressed, loving force. She then spoke about her father, a workaholic, fumbling away in the online dating world, and her sister, a fifth grader, who wouldn’t stop stealing her things.
 
I realized Isabel’s life was reminiscent of how mine used to be: oddly normal, oddly whole.
 
Isabel didn’t offer a head-tilting, maddeningly-simplistic speech that I was so numbingly used to, but instead, talked to me beyond my loss. Suddenly, I felt empowered to reveal the thoughts and questions that had been buried so deep inside me. Talking to Isabel was fun and freeing. I suddenly realized I was not alone. For the first time, I felt the courage and the energy to turn my grief into action.
                        
Isabel and I couldn’t be the only ones out there.  So I began to search on the Internet for a community of teens who had lost a parent. There was nothing -- just medical research and religious articles. But I did discover that parental loss at a young age is ubiquitous. I was one of many. And I also began to realize that an online space for teens who have lost a parent -- what I and countless others needed -- did not exist. 

So, I decided to build one.
 
I wasn’t going to let my age, the fact that I was technologically challenged, or my father’s death hold me back. In fact, those would be my secret tools to connect to other people. 

I took every opportunity to surround myself with individuals who could help me fulfill my vision: web developers, business school professors, bereavement professionals, lawyers, teachers, and, most importantly, other teens who had lost a parent. It was invigorating. After receiving hundreds of pro-bono hours of help from professionals, spending days on the phone and writing many, many letters to my dad, my vision took shape as SLAP’D - Surviving Life After A Parent Dies, the first social media platform for teens who have lost a parent. SLAP’D is a place to find hope and connection through shared experience. 
 

SLAP’D has given me the simplest remedy for battling grief: purpose.