Mary Gardner Benjamin President and CEO

Mary is a consummate professional. She is a wife and an active member in her community. Her most remarkable achievement, however, is that of being a mother to three amazing young adults, two of whom are active in their respective social communities while trying to reconcile the loss of their sister Teshia.

Mary’s whole life changed when her daughter Teshia was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. She became a caregiver, and her new normal and focus was to help her daughter fight to live, keeping her encouraged and feeling loved. The loss of a child despite their age is a debilitating and dark sensory wilderness experience which she will forever walk through.

Teshia’s death left behind four beautiful giggling children who lost their mother in 2022 to an aggressive bout with cancer. They now spend each day trying to negotiate a fog between play and laughter, asking themselves and Mary, where is mommy and when is she coming back?

To care for her beautiful daughter, Mary had to resign from her job to become a full-time caregiver. Her desperate and fruitless efforts to save a child with whom she shared an umbilical and life sharing experience and the loss of her job to support her child was life changing. She became guardian for four precious and inquisitive children, all under the age of seven. This experience introduced Mary to sleep deprivation, social isolation, depression, day care pick-up mom, bedtime storyteller and so much more.

Mary learned that the notion of “Caregiver” is not an academic degree or a certificated internship. It is a nightmare for which there are no seminars or in-service training and most “newly minted” caregivers are ill prepared when thrust into the responsibility because someone they loved, needed someone to love and reassure them that their condition required a great deal of faith, strength, and courage.

Teshia’s Garden of Hope has developed a rich portfolio of programs, UpLIFT Coach, a non-emergency transportation services and a host of services and experiences to support and provide cancer patients and caregivers, a “Caregiver’s Compassion Toolbox,” to help caregivers become confident, creative, and compassionate caregivers for those they love and for themselves.