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Finding Strength in the Celebration of Life

MJ Garcia-Brake ’25 (they/them/theirs) celebrates life with the LEAD* community.

Mary “MJ” Garcia-Brake survived childhood cancer and a leg amputation, yet like most people, public speaking made MJ anxious. During MJ’s first year at the University of Hartford, after realizing the communications class they were enrolled in was really a public speaking class, MJ was grateful to learn the LEAD program offered anxiety-busting public speaking tips. LEAD provides leadership development, resilience coaching, and career readiness training to undergraduate students.

While attending a new-student information session, MJ’s mother suggested the Georgia native apply to LEAD partly as a way to make friends with students who shared their values, but being part of LEAD has provided more than just a core group of friends, MJ says. It has taught skills and provided guidance “that we take out into the world and practice,” the sophomore says.

MJ’s involvement in LEAD has shown them they’re more skilled than they realized. “Every time I leave a LEAD session, I say, ‘Wow. I can do this.’ The emotional high goes on. It gives you so much power, and it’s great being with people who are so supportive,” MJ says. “I’ve learned what I can and can’t do. I’ve learned that I can be president of the Boxing Club. I’m capable of handling this role, which I didn’t think I could do before.”

At age 11, in the fall of sixth grade, MJ, a dancer, gymnast, runner, swimmer, and soccer player, was diagnosed with a type of bone cancer called osteosarcoma, which started in the femur and spread to the knee. Chemotherapy, hair loss, crippling fatigue, and nausea were followed by a leg amputation called “rotationplasty.” A surgeon removed the knee and parts of the leg a few inches above and below the knee. Clinicians rotated the area below MJ’s knee 180 degrees and connected it to the remaining femur; they attached the foot where the knee had been, so the foot could act as a knee, with prostheses to replace the removed parts. Removing the foot, MJ says, “was the last thing I wanted, but the doctor said, ‘It’s your best option for being able to return to what you want to do.’”

MJ didn’t know it then, but that experience would inspire their career choice. Later, after watching a documentary about animals with prostheses, MJ considered a career as an animal prosthetist, but then thought, “I’ll do what my prosthetist does and work with children.” MJ came to the University of Hartford because it offered a combined five-year undergraduate and graduate school program in prosthetics and orthotics, which allows students to begin graduate school after completing three years of undergraduate courses.

Every time I leave a LEAD session, I say, ‘Wow. I can do this.’ It gives you so much power, and it’s great being with people who are so supportive.

While undergoing cancer treatment, MJ and their younger brother benefited from an Atlanta-area foundation named after Amanda Riley, a student athlete who died of cancer at age 17. Foundation volunteers planted flowers in front of the family’s home when MJ was sick and gave their brother gift cards to Game Stop, since cancer affects siblings too. That experience drove MJ to help others after recovery.

After being cleared to exercise, MJ tried gymnastics for two months until learning about equine therapy. After participating in equine therapy for three years, MJ began volunteering for the program. They joined their high school swim team, enduring two years of bullying and taunting at swim meets until it became too much, MJ says. As a high school student, at a point in life where most teens want to fit in, standing out and all that it involved became exhausting.

MJ received inspiration from the artist Frida Kahlo, who said, “At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” Like MJ, the painter is Mexican, became an amputee later in life, and identified as queer. MJ appreciates attending a university that welcomes diversity in all its forms.

MJ felt ambivalence about the prosthetic leg. Living most of their life with two legs and adjusting to their new normal has been challenging. “Sometimes I’m still not okay with it. It’s still just really hard to see it,” MJ says. “Most of my life, I had a leg. This is my seventh year of not having a leg. I’m more accepting of it than I was at first. Therapy helped with that. Getting involved with camps and adaptive sports helped.” At the camps, “I’m not the cancer kid. I’m just a kid. I got to go paddle boarding and horseback riding. At amputee camp, I’m not a sore thumb,” they say. “I was starting to understand that there are more people going through this.” MJ also played adaptive sports for five years in Atlanta, including football. “I was so happy to be able to say I play football.”

Once at the University, MJ joined the co-ed Boxing Club and soon stepped up to serve as president. MJ’s mother is a school social worker in suburban Atlanta, and their father, a Mexican immigrant, works 12-hour days at the Mexican restaurant he owns. Service to others is a family trait. Since first grade, when MJ donated tooth fairy money to the American Heart Association, they have been following their mother’s advice to give back to the community. MJ visited children with cancer while going in for post-treatment checkups and volunteered at the camp for amputees that they attended as a kid.

Having faced both taunting from others and the loss of friends, MJ was surprised at how quickly and easy it was to trust the other women in the LEAD program and form close bonds. “I’m very careful about who I let in and who I approach. After treatment and facing death, it’s very hard to trust people,” they say. During the LEAD orientation retreat, “it was eye-opening that you could trust people,” MJ says. “We lifted a girl six feet in the air. She didn’t know us. She trusted us.”

When MJ told the other women in their group that they don’t run because they fall and would hold the team back, MJ says, “They said if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.” MJ appreciated their acceptance. The confidence grew into being able to open up with LEAD peers and discuss growing up as a mixed-race girl in a school where the majority of students were Latinx, where classmates would say, “You’re not really Mexican.” Being with the women in the LEAD program felt safe. “There were times when other students would say, ‘You are who you are. You are the only one who can identify yourself.’ It’s great to figure out who I am. I really don’t think I would have done that in Georgia. I appreciate that every day of life is to be celebrated.”

Sponsor a LEAD Student Program

Gifts to the LEAD program provide unique educational opportunities for young women to experience a life-changing professional development and personal enrichment program. Gifts of all sizes are welcomed and appreciated.

For a gift of $2,000, you can sponsor a student’s participation in this transformative program for a year. Your LEAD student sponsorship:

• Provides 13 annual interactive leadership training and practical life-skills workshops.

• Connects your student(s) to a network of peers and mentors who inspire them to pursue opportunities and persevere through challenges.

• Creates an opportunity for your student(s) to attend a leadership retreat and professional conferences.

• Helps your student(s) secure transportation to internships and interviews, and participate in community service trips.

You can impact a young woman’s life in a meaningful and powerful way. If you are interested in sponsoring a LEAD student, please contact Amy Jaffe Barzach at 860.983.5040 or [email protected].

MJ’s participation in LEAD is sponsored by Karen Gibbs Orefice ’65 (HCW) and her husband, Jerry Orefice.