Our Story

Hi, I’m Summer!

More than 5.4 million children are hospitalized in the United States. Every 33 minutes, a child is diagnosed with cancer, and that’s just one reason children are admitted to the hospital.

Twelve years ago, on Halloween, my family became one of those statistics. Little did we know we were about to face the fight of our lives. My brother, my only sibling, was only ten years old. I was 15 years older than Mac. We went from an office visit to driving straight to Children’s Memorial, directly into the fight of our lives.

Mac ended up spending just over a year in the hospital, from Halloween Day, 2001, to the eve of Thanksgiving, 2002. I wish my story had a happy ending and I could tell you that my brother lived, but he is in heaven. He fought a battle they said was impossible, but he beat it. In the end, he went to heaven due to a medical error.

My favorite memory of our journey was the following year, once again on Halloween. My brother was in the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) and couldn’t trick-or-treat. He was lying there in a dingy, pale yellow hospital gown that looked like it had been washed hundreds of times. There was nothing festive about it. It did not represent his personality or the holiday he so loved!

So I painted his face like a zombie. We were laughing so hard. For a moment, life felt a bit “normal” during this horrible time. But then we got in so much trouble! His skin practically peeled off as we tried to wipe off the makeup. All I could see behind the facecloth was his smile. Mac looked so happy, just like a ten-year-old boy should.

Around Halloween of 2014, I saw a picture of my friend’s daughter, who was going through treatment. She was posing in her gown with a caption that read, “Maya trying to rock her blah hospital gown before her spinal tap!”

That’s when the idea of Brave Gowns hit me. Hospital gowns make you feel like just a number. They do not reflect these children’s personalities. They do not tap into the pure magic of a child’s spirit. They do not bring hope!

I knew we could do better, and we set out to do so. What I didn’t know was that hospital gowns hadn’t been updated for over 150 years, and nurses and doctors everywhere wanted a change. That was what we intended to bring them, and we did!

We have now put over 900,000 Brave Gowns on children throughout the world. With a goal of 3.4 million, we still have a lot of work to do!