“Without the mirror to remind me of my body’s weakness I would have looked at my spirit instead And seen that I am becoming invincible”
― Poems for the Dark
-Jane Marczewski
The Gift of Hope
Jane ‘Nightbirde’ Marczewski
Jane Marczewski, who performed under the name Nightbirde, touched the hearts of millions around the world with her story and song “It’s OK” on America’s Got Talent, earning Simon Cowell’s coveted Golden Buzzer. When her performance was aired the family witnessed in awe how many people were inspired by her spirit.
Doctors had given her six months to live the year before her audition; the treatment that extended her life by more than two years was only possible because of collective, ongoing generosity, strangers funding a woman they'd never met. She died on February 19, 2022, at thirty-one.
The Nightbirde Foundation (www.nightbirdefoundation.org), run by Jane’s family, has carried her forward through two forms of direct support to others: Gifts of Hope, care boxes sent to women during critical moments in their own cancer journey, and treatment grants that help women access care insurance won't cover. As of the foundation's most recent numbers: over 1,200 Gifts of Hope have been delivered, five treatment grants provided, and twenty-one countries reached.
Her brother graciously met with me to tell me more about Jane and the organization. Mitch's presence was earnest and kind, and his gaze direct. For someone telling this story for what must be the thousandth time, I was drawn to how alive the story is within him. He was an ambassador, carrying on a message of hope and endurance that Jane had woven through the embodied artistry of her life.
When I asked about the intersection of her art and her cancer journey, he answered by going straight to her journals. This is the foundation, he says, where I can see her process and dedication, long before she was ever diagnosed. Thousands of pages of life through the lens of her perspective.
What strikes me most is his description of the parallel structure of her journaling. On one side of the page she recorded what happened, on the other side she alchemized her experiences into poetry and philosophical wisdom. It gives a window into the way she made meaning from the hardest of things, transforming them into art.
Jane had a natural connection to creativity throughout her life. She loved to draw, to flow over pages with patterns and design. Mitch shows me how he has taken snippets from her journals and drawings and joined them together to print on hoodies and mugs to support the Nightbirde Foundation. Her handwriting alone looks like art: clean, deliberate, and sweet. Her voice echoes through the marks she made.
Creativity runs through the family in different forms. They were always a very musical family. Their mother directed the church choir. He recalls listening to the parts and pieces come together into a whole arrangement, while he and his sister ran around underneath the sound.
Jane learned piano, a heritage that came down the family line: a matriarchal line of piano players stretching back before her. One can plainly see how Mitch carries her, her love, her hope, in his own heart, the way most people carry someone they've lost. But just as Jane's instinct was never to hold on to what she could freely give (In the midst of her treatment journey she gave away twenty thousand dollars to keep another young woman’s treatment going). Her brother is also not just carrying her message for himself.
The reflex to give is paid forward. An idea floated after she passed: why not box up Jane. It seemed absurd at first. How do you box up someone that is limitless, magnetic, and so dynamic. But the idea stayed: Her book of poetry, her music, a hat, a travel mug printed with one line, don't you want to see what happens when you don't give up. Pieces of Jane, boxed up, still finding their way into the hands of people who may need a spark to ignite their own light in the darkest hour.
Mitch has shared one of their boxes with me, A Gift of Hope, we pull out a book of poems. It is aptly titled Poems for the Dark. What makes her book of poetry powerful, isn't a comforting message of false positivity. Instead, her words stand in a raw and authentic place that invite hard feelings in rather than ignoring them. What she offers is not the kind of positivity that flattens an experience, and not the kind that can actually harm someone who is struggling by telling them to ignore the storm and look for rainbows. What she does is model an experience of hope that lies within the storm. She is the bird singing at night, even when the promise of morning is uncertain.
Mitch points to specific lines in her work that evoke emotion viscerally, pointing out her ability to bring sensation to the reader, like the potent imagery of wax poured on skin. He still returns to one poem, he tells me, when his own grief needs to hear her voice. It is a poem called “When Grief Comes Knocking”. This poem has a beautiful depth that reminds me of The Guest House, by Rumi. Her wisdom is laced through her writing. She invites the difficult emotions in, spends time with them, and shows what gifts they can offer.
Thousands of these Gifts of Hope go out to the world, Mitch has had the opportunity to hand a few out in person. He tells me about one delivery in particular. Someone had been
nominated online in a city where he happened to be, so he drove it over himself, walked it to the front door, handed it to a family member of someone deep in their own cancer journey.
He talks about what happens in moments like that. How you can never really know another person's experience, not fully, but walking anywhere near a similar path gives you something to share. A blip in time. A brief intersection. Long enough to listen, to witness, to ask the questions most people are too careful to ask. One moment, he hopes, that help people feel a little less alone. It speaks to the organization’s deep mission of connection. It's in those moments, handing a box to someone who will be introduced to his sister, that he can see this isn't just about Jane anymore.
She's become something bigger, an inspiration that begs the questions: How do you hold a hope raw enough to survive contact with the truth, how do you embody gratitude practice while boldly staring into the face of what plagues you, and how do you do this while still honoring all the complex emotions that come along for the ride.
I think of her song, It's Okay, her voice carries the simplest of words with purity and authenticity. What speaks louder than her words, is an embodied energy that communicates one of life’s greatest paradoxes: that great beauty and great suffering can walk hand in hand.
On AGT Jane said, two percent is not zero. Most might crumble beneath those odds, but she found something joyous in them. To me it seemed, she lived at one hundred percent, never letting her capacity to hold enthusiasm diminish. It is people like her who light the path for the rest of us, showing us that there are different sets of possibilities in the most difficult of journeys. It is a journey she would not wish one to walk alone, and she has become someone who walks alongside others with the gifts she left behind.
As an art therapist, I find myself thinking about memory boxes I have helped others make on both sides of death. Sometimes a person who is dying builds one, gathering objects and words meant to connect their loved ones to them after they have died. Sometimes it's the people left behind, assembling something to unbox when they need connection the most.
Either direction, the underlying premise is the same: that a relationship with someone who has passed doesn’t have to end, only change in shape. In bereavement therapy this is called continuing bonds, the idea that healthy grieving isn’t about letting go so much as finding a new way to stay in relationship with someone after they have passed.
What I am struck by at this moment is that I, much like many women opening this Gift of Hope, am meeting Jane for the first time. Entering into a new relationship with a living message.
For the woman who opens this box somewhere along her cancer journey, this is often the first time she meets Jane at all, a relationship starts, inside a cardboard container built by Jane’s love and the love that surrounds her. Though I never got to meet Jane while she was alive, I am deeply grateful to have met her in this way, watching her brother unbox her creative message of hope with the tender hands of love.
If you would like to introduce a loved one to Jane through her Gift of Hope, you can nominate them to receive a gift on the Nightbirde foundation website:
https://www.nightbirdefoundation.org/gifts-of-hope
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