Our Story

Charli Rae Lewis

Charli Rae Lewis made her debut into the world on October 18, 2005, in Aurora, Illinois. As a small child Charli was very vibrant, creative, talented, and intelligent. She excelled in school, had lots of friends, and didn’t know a stranger. During her elementary and middle school years, we learned that Charli was being bullied for being “different” which led to the change of her entire character.

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June of 2017

In June of 2017 our family had the opportunity for a fresh start, so we moved to a small town in Missouri. Charli adjusted well to her new school, she was happy and was making several new friends. About a year later we started to notice some changes in her behavior. She became more subdued and spent a lot of time alone. She started pushing everyone away and had a very negative outlook on life. After making many attempts to talk with Charli about how she was feeling, she finally opened-up about being bullied at school, yet again.

She started realizing people that she thought were her friends had turned their back on her and she no longer wanted to go to school. At this time the covid-19 pandemic made its way to Wellington and forced all the students to attend school from home. While the rest of the world was tired of being stuck at home Charli was happy because she no longer had to endure the daily bullying. We decided it was best for Charli to seek professional help but due to the pandemic we struggled to find anyone who was available.

Charli’s Journey Through Anxiety & Depression

In the fall of 2020 students started returning to school but things with Charli were not improving. We discovered that our beautiful girl was using self-harm to release the tremendous amount of pain she was feeling. Her pain started to get worse, and she was now having thoughts of not wanting to be on this earth. We were terrified, hearing those words is every parent’s worst nightmare. We immediately took her to a psychiatrist for an evaluation and therapy. Charli was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. She really struggled with social interactions. We made the decision to try medication to help manage her depression and anxiety. She continued to meet with her therapist weekly and with her psychiatrist monthly. We finally started to see a change in Charli, she was happy for the first time in several years. Unfortunately, in August of 2021 we again started to see Charli declining. During an appointment with her psychiatrist Charli admitted that she had stopped taking her medication. She didn’t think it was helping her anymore. The psychiatrist spoke with Charli, and they decided to restart her medication and increased her dose.

A Heartbreaking Loss

Fast forward to Labor Day weekend, a weekend that our family will never forget. It started out as a great weekend full of quality family time and ended very tragically. On the evening of September 5, 2021, Charli committed suicide. Her father went downstairs to say goodnight and found Charli not breathing. I immediately started CPR while we waited what seemed like forever for the paramedics to arrive. In my heart I knew it was too late. Our baby, our vibrant, amazingly talented beautiful baby was gone. We struggle every day. Constantly wondering how did this happened? Where did we go wrong?

Like most people, we didn’t know very much about mental health or how to best help her. We had never experienced this before. My husband and I decided to start a non-profit organization to help support as many kids and young adults as possible. We want to prevent this from happening to any other youth and their families. Charli’s Limelight of Hope would like to provide the youth and young adults with mental health support, self-esteem building, scholarships, and many other services and programs. We would like to educate schools and students about bullying and provide them with resources. Charli was very active in band, choir, drama, and the arts. We would like to help fund and support these programs that typically don’t receive a lot of attention.