They spent last Christmas in the hospital. This year, they’re back for a different reason.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) — A Daniel Island family has a special reason for helping make sure families at MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital feel a little less alone this Christmas.

The Bearden family has called Daniel Island home for more than a decade. In October 2023, their lives were upended when their son, Will, was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. What followed was nearly a year inside the hospital, including 263 nights that turned patient rooms into something resembling home.

Treatment dictated everything. Every round of chemotherapy was inpatient. More than a month was spent in the ICU. Milestones most families expect came and went inside hospital walls.

“He spent his senior year in the hospital,” Will’s mother, Jodi Bearden, said. “He spent his freshman year, what could have should have been his freshman year of college, in the hospital. Just watching him hurt and be incredibly helpless as a mom, that’s one hard thing.”

As routines disappeared, holidays carried a different weight. Christmas Eve last year brought a quiet that felt heavier than most.

“I was so sad. Christmas Eve is such a precious night, and you knew that there were families out there celebrating the birth of Christ, and we were there and we were sad and we were lonely,” she said.

In the stillness of that night, she said she searched for a way to keep bitterness from defining their story, even as grief demanded space.

“I pray and I ask God to protect my mind, protect my heart and allow me to not let anger be a part of this story,” she said. “Now, with that said, I do feel like anger can be a powerful emotion and one of the things that I’m angry at the most is cancer.”

Rather than letting that anger turn inward, she said it became fuel.

“What I do and what I’ve done since the minute I picked myself up off of my knees when we first heard Will had cancer is I’ve been driven by a positive anger, doing everything we possibly can to turn something beautiful into something that is as ugly as cancer,” she said.

That resolve sharpened after a message from a friend spending Christmas Eve in a different emergency room with her own child. The text carried a simple reminder that isolation did not mean abandonment and shared how another family had delivered meals to them that night.

What began as comfort turned into conviction.

“I said if we have the opportunity to feed these families next year, if God gives us the opportunity to share love and connection and kindness and joy with these families on Christmas Eve, we’re going to bring life to this hospital,” she said.

That promise became Project Jingle.

On Christmas Eve this year, the Beardens returned to MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital not as patients but as visitors. They delivered meals, $100 gift cards and handwritten Christmas cards made by students at Daniel Island School to families spending the holiday inside the hospital.

The family said the effort was just as much about honoring the place that carried them through as it was about the families now filling its rooms.

“What an asset this community has in that hospital and it’s not the building, it’s the people in it. The doctors, the nurses, the staff,” she said. “Charleston is so incredibly blessed to have this hospital. So, we want to celebrate Shawn Jenkins. We also want to show the families that are there that they aren’t alone.”

She said those families understand something most never have to consider.

“I always say that if you’re there on Christmas Eve as a family, it’s the last place you want to be,” she said.

The Beardens say their ability to return and give back was shaped by the support of their Daniel Island community and the staff who walked beside them throughout Will’s treatment.

For Will Bearden, who’s now in remission, coming back to the hospital felt natural. He said surviving cancer permanently altered his perspective.

“No matter what, it feels like life is kind of downhill from here a little bit because you already went through that,” he said. “That’s got to be like the worst thing ever. Things seem just nicer by comparison. A lot of things I took for granted are a lot nicer now.”

Moments that once felt ordinary now carry weight.

“No one wants to be in the hospital on Christmas and I think if just one person has a little bit of a better day because of one of those meals, then it’s worth it,” he said.

The Beardens say joy is no longer something they wait for. It is something they choose.

“We could live in fear every single day of our life. But no way. Not going to happen. Cancer will not take our family’s joy,” Jodi Bearden said.

Project Jingle will continue delivering meals on Christmas Eve in the years ahead. Those looking to help families and staff at MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital can also support the hospital’s Family Meals program year-round.

Click here to sign up to help or for more information.