Migraines weren’t uncommon for then-25-year-old Marissa Stubbert, who had experienced them since high school. “I could always function,” Marissa says. “I know some people get a migraine and they’re down and out, but that never happened to me.” One morning, Marissa was getting ready for work and had a migraine that wouldn’t subside.

Bailey Miller was only two years old when she had her first seizure. Doctors thought it was a one-off, until her seizures became more frequent. She had brief lapses where she would experience a loss of awareness, a symptom of absence seizures, and later, full tonic-clonic seizures, characterized by a complete loss of consciousness and muscle contractions.

After Catarina Macedo’s mother, Rosa, passed away from glioblastoma in January 2020, Catarina felt she had to do something. “At the time, I was in this whirlwind of grief,” Catarina says. “Even through her journey with glioblastoma and everything that came with it, my mom had such a fighting spirit. She didn’t want anyone to be sad or down. She just tried to live every day to the fullest.”