A Mother's Love Became a Mission

Her name means wisdom.

Sophia Francisca Hartman was born on April 11, 1993, on Easter Sunday. She was the only girl born into either side of her family in fifty years, and she grew up with five brothers.

Sophia had a learning disability, and her mother, Vivian, taught her to understand things in simple terms, including, later, her own healing.

Sophia's Angels did not begin as a business idea or a nonprofit concept. It began with a mother trying to help her child.

A three percent chance.

In 2004, Sophia was diagnosed with refractory leukemia, a form that does not respond to chemotherapy. She was given a 3% chance of survival.

She went through four rounds of chemotherapy and reached remission, and she came home for two weeks at Christmas. Remission was not the end of treatment. The chemotherapy and the blood tests went on.

Vivian was living through what no parent expects: caring for and comforting her daughter through the fear, the uncertainty, and the exhaustion of a serious childhood illness.

The doctors cared for Sophia. Vivian was still her mother.

She wanted to know what she could do to bring her daughter comfort and love.

So she learned. She taught herself reflexology, aromatherapy, and visualization, and she looked up every medical term she didn't understand. She showed Sophia pictures of real cells and taught her to picture the ones that fight cancer multiplying into millions. Sophia had her own word for it: charge.

Sophia asked her mother to keep using touch with her. And she encouraged Vivian to teach other parents what was helping, even letting her leave the hospital room to do it.

That was the beginning of the educational work Sophia's Angels does today: helping parents feel involved, informed, supported, and able to comfort their child.

So no parent walks this alone.

Sophia lived one year and one week after her diagnosis. She died on October 14, 2005, on the eve of Yom Kippur.

Her family could not get the authorization to take her home. Before she died, Vivian had her wheeled outside so she could feel the sun on her face and the wind.

Afterward, Vivian chose to carry forward what Sophia had asked her to share. Sophia's Angels grew from one belief: another parent facing a seriously ill child should not have to feel alone or helpless. That work grew into:

• Parent education
• Supportive family resources
• Love Kits
• Outreach
• Advocacy
• Hospital and community relationships