Mom Survived Thanksgiving Crash That Killed Her Whole Family: 1 Year Later, She Opens Up for the First Time (Exclusive)

• On the evening of Nov. 22, 2023, Lauren Muckleroy’s husband Zach and their two young children – Judson, 12, and Lindsay, 9 – were killed by a drunk driver

• Lauren, 44, who was driving their Chevy Suburban and suffered broken bones in both arms, along with spine fractures and an intestinal tear, was the only survivor in her family

• In the year since her loss, Muckleroy has reached out to her community to share her grief — and advocate for children. “Our situation has brought out the good in so many people," Muckleroy tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "That has given me so much hope"

After suddenly losing her husband and two young children in a crash, the past year for Lauren Muckleroy has been marked by surviving all the firsts, the milestones, without them. “I have felt the unfairness of this, not just to me, but for the three of them” she says. Halloween, birthdays, the first day of school: every holiday has been a reminder of what they’re missing and how they will be remembered. “On those hard firsts, we’re really loving and remembering them and just feeling it," she says.

It happened on the day before Thanksgiving last year, a hectic morning - Muckleroy remembers that much. The details are disjointed: a last-minute trip to the grocery store; a broccoli-rice casserole recipe she was testing out; her husband coming home from work tired; the stress of getting their two kids on the road for the family’s three-and-a-half-hour trip from their Fort Worth home to her parents’. Then her memory blurred — until she heard the words she’ll never forget: “I remember a police officer telling me that all three of them were gone.”

On the evening of Nov. 22, 2023, her husband Zach, 44, and their two children — Judson, 12, and Lindsay, 9 — were killed in an instant when a Toyota Tacoma crossed into their lane on a Texas highway near Austin and hit them head-on. The driver, 25-year-old Connor McKim — whose blood alcohol count was just over three times the legal limit, according to a police report — died soon after.

Lauren, 44, who was driving their Chevy Suburban and suffered broken bones in both arms, along with spine fractures and an intestinal tear, was the only survivor in their family. Even as her body began to recover, Muckleroy wondered if her heart could ever heal: “I remember thinking, ‘What is my life going to look like now? Where will all my love go?’”

In the year since her unthinkable loss, she has found an answer: Instead of drawing inward, Muckleroy has reached out to her community to share her grief — and advocate for children through her work with the Fort Worth nonprofit The WARM Place, which supports kids who have lost loved ones. “We say, ‘Don’t let the sadness win,' " says Muckleroy's twin sister, Melanie Dow.

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This past October, eleven months after the crash, Muckleroy chaired the nonprofit's annual gala, which helped raise $700,000, surpassing fundraising goals for the event.

“I wanted my energy to go to something that isn’t a reminder of this tragedy,” she says. “Being able to pour myself into something uplifting is amazing.” It’s also been a way of honoring her loss: “I want my focus to be on remembering them.”

Muckleroy and her twin sister, Melanie Dow, are in the planning stages of a new grief center to provide peer support for kids in Central Texas, tentatively called Hope Road. “After what happened it’s unimaginable to think about moving forward, but Lauren does every day,” says Dow.

The sisters intend to collaborate with the WARM Place to lobby for legislation that would provide grief education to students in Texas public schools.

Related: Grieving Mom Speaks Out After 'Angel' Daughter's Fatal Fall Down Mountain, Says She Went to Watch Sunset (Exclusive)

More than 5,000 people showed up at the church, two separate venues at Texas Christian University and on live feeds last December to remember Zach, Judson and Lindsay.

“People are in awe of Lauren’s strength,” says Rev. Russ Peterman, who officiated the memorial service and is a close friend of the family. Ft. Worth was where Zach, the head of a commercial construction company and a former football player at Texas Christian University was informally known as “the governor” for his gregarious personality.

“When you’d go to dinner with him, you couldn’t get out of the restaurant without him talking to every table,” adds family friend Sasha Denman. “He made you feel important and special.”

Lindsay was “spunky, a spitfire,” Muckleroy recalls — a fierce defender of her friends, with a soft spot for pugs. At a spring fundraising run for the WARM Place, a group of her friends showed up in pug onesies in her honor: “I was sad, but hugging these girls, I felt joy,” says Muckleroy, who ran with them.

Judson — a.k.a. Jelly Man, aka Juddy — loved pickleball and hanging with friends. “He had such a good heart,” says Muckleroy, who surprised his baseball teammates by showing up for their championship game this year. “I’ve tried to sit in the grief and feel it, even though that’s hard,” she says of staying close to those who were close to her family.

Muckleroy has seen the friends of her children wrestle with their loss, and she has encouraged them to “talk about it, not pretend it didn’t happen.” It’s something she learned in her own childhood, when at the age of 5 she and sister leaned on each other after they lost their mother to lupus.

“It’s so important for children not to feel alone in their grief,” she says. That’s why she hasn’t hidden herself away with her sadness. “She’s been so determined to stay active and involved, and it’s been a shining example of a public display of grief and of healing,” says Shelley Bettis, executive director of the WARM Place. Adds Denman: “Lauren is leading us to choose love and to choose to survive.”

There are, of course, difficult days. “Sometimes I go a day without crying, and then other days I can’t get it together,” Muckelroy says. Like during a recent trip to the store when she was pushing her cart down the aisles and saw the frozen blueberry waffles and popcorn that Lindsay and Judson loved, and the peanut butter and almond milk that she used to buy for Zach’s morning smoothies.

“It washes over me,” she says. And she still hasn’t been able to bring herself to unpack the three bags from that fateful Thanksgiving trip. “It’s daunting,” says Muckleroy, who now lives near her sister in Austin, but who visits her Fort Worth home often.

She knows “life will never be normal again. I will miss them forever.” She finds hope in the ways that the three of them are being remembered, the outpouring of love that she's felt from so many, and the goodness of people.

"We sometimes think that to find hope or joy, that we have to eliminate sorrow, but it's possible that you can experience both at the same time."  But, she adds, “it can still be good. It sounds crazy to say, but I see so much good that’s come from our situation. The worst thing is never the last thing. I truly believe that.” 

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