Our Story
Vision:
We each live life to the fullest to the end, embracing life’s difficult moments as sacred opportunities for mindful healing, awakening and expansion.
Mission:
To cultivate a community of compassionate support and empathy for people living with cancer, caregivers and their networks as they navigate their cancer journey, using care packages as a tool for connection, respect, dignity and spiritual elevation.
The Sacred Transition is a nonprofit organization and community of volunteers providing mindful care and compassionate support to people living with cancer, caregivers and grieving families. We believe in living full, conscious lives with love, joy, dignity and light as well as holding all of life’s difficult moments as sacred opportunities for mindful healing, awakening and expansion.
We manifest our mission through authentic relating, care packages intended to anticipate needs and comforts, advocacy and education with mindfulness practice woven throughout.
We stand as one with every person in our community, which is really anyone who has or is going through a difficult life transition and particularly people living with cancer, whether we’ve met them yet or not!
Someone is thinking about you, cares deeply and is honored to meet you where you are and walk together through this season and always.
This project birthed out of the Founder, Elizabeth Taylor’s personal experience walking with her husband Marcus through his courageous cancer journey and final sacred transition. She creates care packages with those small comfort and practical items one wouldn’t think they need until in this experience, and brings the compassion one would hope to receive to truly feel they are supported through the process.
To date this organization has served over 300 families with care packages and support and widely recognized for its unique humane, dignified and mutual approach.
Meet Our Founder: Elizabeth Taylor
Hi, I’m Elizabeth Taylor, the founder of The Sacred Transition.
I am a Minnesota girl that has lived in Atlanta since 2016. I love to be with my family and friends, travel, check off bucket list items, surround myself with positive people and inspire people by making a positive impact.
My path in life took a wonderful yet unexpected turn when I fell in love with my soulmate, Marcus, in front of a frozen waterfall in Minnesota on March 10, 2016. Marcus is a Georgia boy and it didn’t take long for me to follow him to the south. The year 2017 was filled with many peaks and valleys. I became a fiancé, a wife and a widow all in one year. So many critical sequences of events took place in order for “Our paths to cross exactly when they needed to, not a mile too early or a second too late.” We got married on the beach in front of our closest family and friends in Santa Rosa Beach on June 24, 2017 (3 years to the day that he was diagnosed with Stage 4 Appendix Cancer).
I learned a lot while experiencing a lifetime of love in the short 21 months we had together and now I continue to learn and grow as I am walking on my grief journey.
This idea and non-profit organization was birthed after I lost Marcus to cancer in 2017. While the loss of my husband sparked the official idea my grief journey began at a very young age. I am a part of a very close-knit family that taught me the importance of giving back to others. When I was 17 years old I experienced my first loss of a good friend. The losses continued year after year and with each one something inside me sparked the question, “Why am I surrounded by loss? What am I supposed to learn and how can I help?”
Grief always launched me into action. Organizing fundraisers for grieving families, bringing meals and items of comfort, taking note of anniversaries and reaching out and staying connected to the families that were grieving. I knew there was a purpose but I didn’t slow down enough to listen… until now.
Now I stand as a woman, widow, coach, compassionate warrior and mindfulness guide to bring a spark of joy, relief and a reminder to those on their cancer journey that someone is thinking about them, and to offer hope there’s another way to navigate life’s difficult transitions with love, joy, and light. I am a certified death doula serving families to courageously and tenderly navigate end of life preparations together.
How we approach life makes all the difference. “In life, you will only have two choices: love or fear. Choose love and don’t ever let fear turn you against your playful heart”, says Jim Carrey. This is how Marcus and I took life head on and played all the cards we were dealt in stride. In Marcus’ words: “I encourage each of you to choose love, be the light that everyone is drawn to, to stay positive in the face of difficult circumstances. The ability to endure while being a light is as close as we get to being godlike. Giving of ourselves is the only way to be filled up.”
The Sacred Transition’s Co-Founder-in-Spirit: Marcus Taylor
Marcus Taylor (November 4, 1976 - December 26, 2017), Elizabeth’s husband, was an endurance athlete who was always ready for the next adventure and truly lived life to it's fullest. Marcus was diagnosed with a rare form of Appendix Cancer June 24, 2014.
After Marcus’ diagnosis he fought the tough battle with grace and made an impact on everyone who crossed his path. He was a man who cared deeply for those in his inner circle and became compassionate through suffering, found humor in all things, was bent but not broken, and found faith at a deep level in the process. He learned and modelled the power of a giving heart.
Two days before Marcus left us he said he had been successful every year since 2014 in this journey and that 2017 was his best year yet. He truly had no regrets and lived life well. In Marcus’s words, “The journey I’m on has brought me to a place I could never have imagined as I continue this fight worth fighting, with a life worth living, in pursuit of a life well lived. I love my life and while welcoming a reprieve from the status quo of cancer, I would not sacrifice the experience, the depth of relationships or the understanding of how life is meant to be lived for a different set of circumstances. Life’s a trip.”
Marcus showed us all what it means to live well with no regrets, how to positively impact others and how to “Eat the Elephant one bite at a time”.
Why "Eat the Elephant"? There’s an old saying "How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time." Don't look at the mountain ahead, just look at the next 10 steps you need to take and then the next 10 steps until you reach the peak. Eat the Elephant... See our Logo story below…
The Story Behind Our Logo
There’s an old saying "How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time." Don't look at the mountain ahead, just look at the next 10 steps you need to take and then the next 10 steps until you reach the peak. Eat the Elephant.....
Elizabeth & Marcus found strength in each other and stayed focused on the things they could control, letting go of the fear of the things that were out of their control. They together focused on the next few steps, lived in the moment and learned to celebrate the small things each and every day.
