Hi, we’re Jessica and Kiara, Trish’s daughters.

Our mom, Trish, is a fighter. Since her 2022 diagnosis with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, she's defied expectations again and again.

In July of 2024, we were told she likely wouldn’t make it to the coming October. Against all odds, she did. She has endured whole-brain radiation, as well as ongoing chemo and gamma-knife radiotherapies. Treatments we once feared might not work have shown results—giving us something we hold incredibly close: more time together. Our mom continues to fight for each day, memory, and moment with the people she loves, and we carry that hope with deep gratitude.

Before sharing where we are now, we want to pause and say thank you.

Phase 1: Gratitude for Your Support

During the first phase of this journey, the generosity of friends, family, and our extended community carried us in ways we will never forget. Thanks to your kindness, we raised $30,000, which allowed us to provide critical care and stability for our mom. These funds helped us purchase a stair machine so we could remain in our family home, rent essential medical equipment to support her comfort and mobility, and keep up with mortgage payments during an incredibly uncertain time. Your support gave us the ability to focus on what mattered most—caring for our mom and being together.

Phase 2: The Road Ahead

For the last several years, our mom's illness has made it impossible for her to work, and our family has reshaped our entire lives around her care.

Kiara has put her own life and career on hold to become our mom's full-time caregiver, providing 24/7 support. Jessica has spent months of time in Hawaii while trying to maintain her job in New York and devoting her earnings and savings into our mom's care. We’re grateful for the time we’ve gotten with her, have done this out of love, and wouldn't have it any other way. We've poured our savings, our time, and ourselves into giving her the care she deserves. The need has grown beyond what we can meet on our own, and that's why we're asking for your help again.

Your support will go directly toward:

• Keeping our mom in the home she loves: where she feels safest and most herself.
• Specialized in-home care: as her needs grow, so does the level of caregiving expertise required to keep her safe and comfortable, and to let Kiara begin rebuilding her own path.
• Medical equipment: purchasing and renting the tools that support her comfort, mobility, and daily care.
• Ongoing medical & living costs: treatments, transportation, and the everyday expenses of keeping our household running, from keeping our car running for her appointments to home repairs we've had to put off, such as a broken dishwasher.
• Moments of joy: because there's still time for sharing laughs, yummy food and spending time at the ocean she loves, watching for the whales. These moments matter more than ever.

We are doing everything we can. We're asking for help so we can keep showing up for her the way she has always shown up for us. Our mom has always been the first to show up for others, offering love, compassion, and support without hesitation. Watching her continue to fight with such courage and grace humbles us every day.

How else you can help 

Beyond donations, we'd love to collect video messages for our mom. If Trish has touched your life, we'd be so grateful if you'd record a short video sharing what she means to you. We’re gathering these to remind our mother of the love that surrounds her. You can share the messages with [email protected].

And whether you're able to donate, share this page, or send a message of encouragement, please know your kindness means the world to our family. Even if you can't give, sharing this reaches someone who might.

With gratitude and love,
Jessica & Kiara

A Message from Trish, in her own words:

Dear friends & loved ones,

I’m trying to figure out where to start with all the thoughts I have. All of these thoughts.

Recently, life has felt like I’m cross stitching, and I keep loosing stitches. Each missed stitch is a lost connection. I am unable to complete my thoughts. I have so much to say, and yet, I can’t stitch it out like I used to.

Here I am lost in my thoughts again.

Realizing my current condition, stage 4 breast cancer with metastases in the brain and throughout my body, there’s only so many times you can recover. The cancer’s impact on my cognitive abilities, has made it harder to communicate with you all, harder to stay close, harder to travel. I’ve had to look my mortality in the face, a lot. I’ve been told my time is up, only to defy those expectations.

I want to say thank you, to each and everyone of you, for adding love and connection to my life. Be it through a smile, conversation, like, comment, and the countless other ways you all have shown up for me. Thank you.

I want to share a memory for each of you, but honestly, I am exhausted. I would like to say snot is dribbling out of my nose. And I know, some of my friends will not understand or want snot, or this doom & gloom perspective tied to gratitude.

Over the last four years of facing cancer, I have learned purple does not come off of carpets and stains easily – so just don’t even go there. Christmas lights and deer bring tremendous joy, especially, in August. Cancer is a killjoy.

I’m afraid to let all that I’m feeling out. Why? Cause of pain and to actually have to say good bye to people and that I have got to make amends. Because no one is ever clean in any relationship, I don’t care who they are – even Jesus (Donna had a great post about this) – but this all just complicates things a lot more.

I’ve learned that some decisions cannot be made for us, we have to make them for ourselves. This ties into a comment Jessica said the other day – if I couldn’t see something clearly, it wasn’t meant to be and that is okay. The answer that sings true will come.

Have you ever had a moment in time when there’s something you’re struggling with? When you’re struggling to find what the answer is, or how to find that answer? To find it, I wait until sunset – everything is brighter at sunset. It reminds me that the key is being open to help, and allowing others to help us find the answers.

P.S. it doesn’t have to be sunset, it can be sooner.

I’m really grateful for this time we’ve had together.  What has gotten me through this experience is my children, my love, and God.

My advice: Make sure you’re sitting down. Make sure you’re surrounded by people you love and know. People you trust, when you can’t always trust your own mind. What really matters in this life is our love. Real love.

I want to say that.

I am so grateful to have walked through life with you all at my side. And I as continue, I need to ask for your help to keep moving forward on the road. I am not done yet. Asking for your help means I still have hope for our future, for my children Jessica, Kiara, and, my daughter-in-law, Alexis.  I am not done yet.

The people we have encountered have been so incredibly human, and kind and generous. I’m so grateful for all the people who are in my life, who have supported me and my girls through this period of time. There are so many of you out there, it’s just crazy. I want to do this right, instead of a hundred times. How do we do this right?

Mahalo nui loa for the laughter and love we have shared, and for the all love that is still to come.

xoxo,
Trish