What does it take, as a mother, to turn personal tragedy into an opportunity to change others’ lives for the better?

In early 2013, local mom Katrina Witschen and her husband Matt were thrilled to find out they were expecting identical twin girls. But their joy was soon dampened by the doctors’ discovery that, not only were the girls in danger because they were sharing one amniotic sac, one of their daughters had anencephaly, a serious birth defect that would prevent her from surviving more than a short time outside of the womb. The two girls were delivered at 32 weeks. Valencia, whose name means “healthy and strong,” was born just so and will celebrate her 4th birthday next month. Laurencia, whose name means “victory,” lived for just 15 minutes before passing victoriously into Heaven.

Laurencia’s death, it turns out, was not as much an end as it was a new beginning. In 2014 the Witschen family started a nonprofit called Laurencia’s Victory that honors her life and memory by providing support to orphaned children and adoptive families.