A Little Backstory

I’m from Western Pennsylvania. I live in a town that people five minutes down the road have never heard of.

Yeah… it’s that small.

People love to knock small-town living. They say it’s hard to get anything, there’s nothing to do — and they’re not entirely wrong. If I lose internet, I’m pretty much screwed. Lose power, and it feels like I just got transported back to the 1400s. Deliveries can be… an adventure.

But there’s something this little town has that a lot of places don’t. Values.

Around here, we take care of our own — and usually anyone else who needs it. Just the other day I ran into a guy I hadn’t seen in probably ten years. He was down the street talking with one of the neighbors, so I wandered over. Within minutes there were five or six of us standing around, beer in hand, solving the world’s problems.

That’s just how it works here. If someone’s roof needs fixed, somebody shows up. If someone loses a loved one, people cook meals. If somebody’s having a rough time, somebody checks in.

Those values were ingrained in me from the day I was born. Mix them with an unhealthy amount of nerdiness, a career in technology, and more grief than I ever expected to carry — and somehow a couple of ideas started taking shape.

This isn’t a business. It’s a place.

A place where it’s okay to not be okay — where we can laugh, vent, tell stories, and remind each other that no matter how dark life gets, we keep going.

We don’t ignore the bad days. We walk through them together, because without the lows, the highs wouldn’t mean nearly as much.

Moonlit is where my nerd side gets to build. We’re making modern heirloom keepsakes — pieces meant to preserve the people and moments that matter most.

But we’re building it around those same values I grew up with. For every memorial piece we create, a portion goes to a charity or organization that helps others. And if a family reaches out in the middle of funeral planning, or they’re struggling financially, we’ll work with them — prioritize their order, meet in person if we can, and do whatever’s reasonable to make one small part of an incredibly difficult time a little easier.

That idea came from my own experience. When we were planning my brother’s funeral, we were shown memorial products that cost hundreds of dollars. One pocket knife was around $350.

That didn’t sit right with me. So the nerd in me bought a laser engraver.

This is phase one. Maybe one day there’ll be CNC machines and a full woodworking shop. We’ll see. But one thing won’t change: we won’t charge a grief tax. We’ll build beautiful things, charge honest prices, and remember there’s a family behind every memorial we make.

I’m not writing any of this for a pat on the back. I’m writing it because I hope someone in a dark place reads it and realizes something.

The worst moments of your life don’t have to define the rest of it. Sometimes they become the reason you build something that makes someone else’s burden just a little lighter.

And if that’s all we accomplish… I’d call that a life well lived. ❤️