Tiny Evie Rocks Foundation holds rock painting activity at Children’s Park

Published 6:00 am Sunday, July 25, 2021

Parents of “Tiny Evie,” a 12-year-old creative girl who lost her life to suicide, turned their grieving process into a creative way to spread their message of mental health awareness and spreading kindness.

Michael and Jessica Domingos, the founders of Tiny Evie Rocks, received painted rocks during their daughter Evie’s funeral and since then the nonprofit has been growing and serving as an outlet for grief.

Rock painting activities are held every second and fourth Saturday of the month from 2 to 5 p.m. inside Allison’s House at the Children’s Park, located at 110 E. Dobbs St. in Tyler.

On Saturday, locals gathered for the activity, and the Domingoses set out the newly painted rocks at the Kindness Rock Garden.

“We just want to show people and walk with them in their grief and in their loss, and through that, let them know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and together, we’re going to make it through this,” Jessica Domingos said.

Jessica Domingos said on her hardest days, she paints rocks, or just a heart, with the same message on the back every time: “You are loved.”

The activity has helped the couple process their grief.

“Losing a child is hard, and losing a child to suicide is devastating, but this is my way of spending time with her, so this is how she’s still with us, and we believe she leads it all,” Jessica Domingos said.

Michael Domingos added, “It would’ve been easy to withdraw from everybody. from society, and just kind of keep to ourselves and our house, but it opened the door and gave us the opportunity to reach out to other people and to keep us out there, so it really was saving for us.”

The Tiny Evie Rocks Foundation also has Kindness Rock Gardens at every Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex Stone Supply, which has allowed them to establish gardens at the business locations. The couple drives back every six to eight weeks to clean and reorganize the area with new rocks.

Evie was creative and loved spending time doing arts and crafts projects with her family. She had great talent but was also a perfectionist. Being her own worst critic, she would often create a masterpiece and immediately throw it away. Her parents said one of her favorite pieces was Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh and that she often recreated it for fun.

“She would tell me all the time, ‘Mom, stop worrying. You’re torturing yourself twice. If you can’t do anything about it, just breathe and keep going. You can’t worry about something that hasn’t happened.’ She was smart that way,” Jessica Domingos said.

The Domingoses invite the Tyler and nearby communities to attend their rock painting events at the Children’s Park.

“You don’t have to have lost a child to come to one of the rock painting events here. It’s for people to, whatever you are in life, we’ve all had some kind of loss in life. We have COVID going on, it’s the loss of the life you knew, which causes a lot of anxiety, and you need something to just get a break from that. Even if it’s just for an hour, it makes a huge difference,” she said.

Donations can be made at tinyevierocks.org/info.