A loss that launched a movement
The original spark for #LightUpMBC came from Laura Inahara, a New Hampshire woman who lost her best friend, Jessica Moore, to metastatic breast cancer. A varsity girls’ basketball coach, Moore had gotten elbowed in the breast while playing the game one day, and the resulting pain kept lingering. As a nurse, she knew her injury should be healing more quickly. After she visited doctors to get checked out, she found out she had metastatic breast cancer—meaning the disease had already progressed and spread to her bones, despite her having no other symptoms. She was only 32. She fought the disease for four years, passing away at age 36. “Prior to Jessica’s passing, she said she thought it would be amazing to light a landmark for MBC as a way to raise awareness,” says Inahara, who founded #LightUpMBC in her friend’s honor. In October 2017, five months after Moore died, the first landmark to light as part of #LightUpMBC was the Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, near Jessica’s hometown.
A working mom by day, Inahara began sitting down each night to work on expanding #LightUpMBC. Later she met Bowling, who developed the idea for a live broadcast that would greatly expand the event’s fundraising reach. “I created #LightUpMBC Live as a platform for people to see the landmarks lighting in solidarity around the world and hear stories directly from families affected by MBC.” Bowling says. Together, Inahara and Bowling have formed a volunteer leadership and ambassador team bound by a shared passion and unwavering drive to make a difference in the lives of those impacted by MBC.
The annual event has raised more than $2.7 million from the past few years and continues to be a major source of donations where 100% of net proceeds benefit Metavivor, with a goal of funding research treatments that could turn stage IV breast cancer from a deadly disease into a survivable one. “Metavivor remains the only US organization dedicated to awarding annual grants solely into stage IV breast cancer through a scientific and patient-advocate review process,” Inahara says. “That is what it will take to find a cure and stop losing more than 670,000 lives to breast cancer each year globally. We feel certain that with more research funding, no more of our friends will have to die from this disease—our mission is to give the MBC community more time with their loved ones by shining a light on the most advanced stage of breast cancer. There is often a misconception there is a cure for breast cancer, and we want to share with anyone who will listen that there is not.”
