We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lara Stanze. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lara below.

Alright, Lara thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?

Being a foundation that grants wishes to those facing life threatening illness, I’ve read many requests and heard many beautiful, heartfelt stories from people who want so badly to bring a moment of joy to their loved ones.

It was a letter from a Mom, writing to request a Dream for her daughter that moved me beyond words. She wrote to tell me of her daughter’s illness and wish for a family cruise. The way she described her love and admiration for her daughter, their relationship and unique bond, and finally the heartache she felt as she realized her daughter had a life threatening illness and no matter how hard she tried, she was helpless to fix this for her beloved child all brought tears to my eyes as I read and felt the emotions coming off the page.
We sent this family on their cruise and the photos they subsequently shared conveyed every bit of the love and closeness of this amazing mother and daughter.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

When our mother was diagnosed with terminal leiomyosarcoma cancer, she felt helpless, scared, and frustrated. We realized the only thing we could do was to help keep her spirits up, and in an effort to do so, we chose to try to fulfill as many of her wishes as we could. Through the efforts of family and friends, we were able to make many of our mom’s dreams come true. Watching her smile and laugh while she enjoyed these experiences was not only beneficial to her, it helped us as a family. We were making memories to last us a lifetime. Through our Spread A Little Joy Foundation, we now hope to pass these gifts on to others in need.
A unique thing about our foundation is that anyone can be a part of making a dream come true. We rely heavily on networking with people through social media and word of mouth to utilize their skills or connections to make a dream come to fruition.
Many times people who don’t necessarily have the means to contribute money towards a non profit are able to lend their particular skillset to aid us in fulfilling a Dream.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

This is a tough one because if I hadn’t lost my own Mom to cancer, I don’t know that I would have been moved towards this field of work. But yet, it was the pain of losing her that brought me to this journey of being able to help so many others, and it is exactly what I feel I was supposed to do with my life.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Tenacity. Once we take on a Dream request, we like to make it happen quickly and I will not give up until every detail is arranged, and I know for certain we are doing every single thing we can do to bring a little bit of joy into that person’s life.

Contact Info:

• Website: spreadalittlejoy.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spreadalittlejoyfoundation