A Painting
A witness
A painting can hold what a person cannot yet explain. It can sit beside grief without asking grief to perform.
The Story of Mabazza Foundation
Founder Story
The Story of MabazzaFoundation
How illness interrupted one path and revealed a deeper calling: a life of service refined by survival, art, and the urgent need to help people feel seen.
I
A Life of Service
Before cancer, there was already a calling.
For many years, I believed my purpose was clear. I was building a life of service through the YMCA, a career rooted in community, wellness, and human connection.
I had spent years helping others find strength in their bodies, dignity in their stories, and belonging in spaces that often made people feel invisible. My work was not just employment. It was a calling.
A life of wellness became the foundation. Survival would later give it fire.
2019
Then Life Interrupted
Time did not simply slow down. It broke open.
In 2019, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The future I had been walking toward suddenly became uncertain. My promising YMCA career, my plans, my sense of control, even the ordinary rhythm of my days, were pulled out from under me.
Cancer has a way of stripping life down to its bones.
II
The Language of Art
Healing was not only medical.
During treatment, I came to understand something that changed me forever. Healing is emotional. Spiritual. Human.
A person can be surrounded by doctors, machines, appointments, and medicine, and still feel profoundly alone. I knew that loneliness. I knew what it felt like to need more than treatment.
I needed beauty. I needed hope. I needed something that could reach the part of me that medicine could not touch. Art became that language.
It gave shape to fear. It gave color to grief. It gave light to the places inside me that had gone quiet.
III
The Return
Survival did not return life to what it had been.
When I survived, life did not simply return to what it had been. It became something else. I could not go back to seeing the world the same way.
I had been given more time, and that time demanded meaning. My work in wellness expanded into something deeper. I no longer wanted only to help people live healthier lives. I wanted to help people feel seen in the most fragile chapters of their lives.
A Message
You are not alone
The Foundation's work is built around the quiet need every survivor, caregiver, and isolated person understands.
A Moment
A bridge back to hope
A moment of beauty can interrupt despair, soften a room, and open a path back toward human connection.
Where the Light BreaksDirection within uncertainty 
Heart in ColorWhen words are not enough 
After the RainA path of gold after weather 
Will Against the SeaLight still has a job 
A Path for the Sleepless MoonRenewal in falling gold 
The Beacon That Kept Its PromiseSteadfast light through the storm 
A Prayer Without WordsWhat the body cannot say, image can hold
The interruption became a foundation.
Mabazza Foundation grew from my own experience as a cancer survivor and from the belief that no one facing illness, grief, trauma, or emotional isolation should feel forgotten.
Through art, storytelling, and wellness-centered support, the Foundation creates moments of comfort, reflection, and human connection for people carrying what the world often cannot see.
The Work Today
The spirit of the YMCA years, carrying the fire of survival.
Today, Mabazza Foundation serves individuals and communities through healing-centered art initiatives, wellness projects, and programs designed to bring emotional support to people navigating illness, survivorship, caregiving, aging, and hardship.
Healing Art
Original works and visual experiences that bring beauty, reflection, and dignity into shared spaces.
Storytelling
Personal narrative and public-facing experiences that make invisible burdens easier to name.
Wellness Support
Programming rooted in emotional care, resilience, belonging, and community connection.
Human Connection
Moments that remind people affected by illness, caregiving, grief, or isolation that they are still held.
The Purpose Refined
Cancer changed the meaning of my life.
It interrupted the path.
The diagnosis changed the timeline, the career plan, and the ordinary assumptions that make life feel predictable.
It did not end the purpose.
The same commitment to wellness, dignity, and service remained, but the work became more tender, urgent, and honest.
It revealed the need.
People facing illness need more than treatment. They need beauty, support, understanding, and spaces that do not make them feel invisible.
It became Mabazza Foundation.
A survivor's experience became a living mission to help others stand in uncertainty and still search for light.
The Light Ahead
I know what it means to stand in the shadow of uncertainty and search for light.
Through this work, I want to help others find that light too. Mabazza Foundation exists for the survivor, the caregiver, the grieving person, the isolated elder, the veteran, the patient, and every person carrying something the world cannot see.
Mabazza Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity. EIN 33-2353033.