MaxLove Project

In 2013, I met Farmer Glenn Tanaka, and he offered us something simple and enormous: bring your families to the farm.⁠
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What happened there, again and again, I can only call miracles. Kids who couldn't walk got out of their chairs and walked between the crop rows. A little girl sick from treatment ran the corn maze and chased other kids for hours, just a kid among kids in the sunshine. Families made memories on that land they will carry forever. ✨⁠
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And the Tanakas kept opening the gate wider:⁠
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🚜 Family farm days with fresh produce harvesting⁠
🍽️ Farm to Fork dinners under the tent⁠
🥕 Fierce Foods Academy classes among the fields⁠
👟 Walk for Kids winding through the crops each spring⁠
🕊️ A bereavement retreat held in the quiet of the land⁠
🌻 Our honorary sunflower patch, planted for the SuperKids we carry in our hearts⁠
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All of it donated. Twelve years of therapeutic land, shared freely by a family who simply believed our families belonged there.⁠
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Farmer Glenn, Shirley, Kenny, and the whole Tanaka family and team: thank you. You gave our SuperKids room to thrive, and the love that grew on your land lives in thousands of families now. 💛⁠
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Do you have a Tanaka Farms memory? Tell us in the comments, we'd love to hear from you! 🎗️⁠
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Max's neurosurgeon, Dr. Loudon, made quality of life the promise from day one. Then he pointed us to the person who would help us keep it: his wife, Dr. Ruth McCarty, a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine with a practice inside the children's hospital. A rarity then, and still far too rare now.⁠
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The day before chemo: Dr. Ruth. The day after chemo: Dr. Ruth. Every hospitalization, every step of his journey, acupuncture and TCM walked alongside Max's conventional treatment, easing what medicine alone couldn't. ✨⁠
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It made integrative care real to us. Not as a philosophy, but as quality of life focused practice. So:⁠
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💛 The first fundraising gift MaxLove Project ever made funded Dr. Ruth's work at the hospital⁠
🏥 Then we fundraised to bring acupuncture + TCM to families outpatient⁠
🤝 Then we opened an office side by side with her practice, Open Mind Modalities. Families came for community acupuncture and stayed for each other⁠
🔬 Then, together, we built The Ohana Project: our peer-reviewed, published research study, proof that the comfort we witnessed in Max and so many SuperKids could be studied, measured, and shared with the world⁠
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One referral became a pathway. Hospital to outpatient, family to family, practice to published science. 🌿⁠
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Dr. Loudon and Dr. Ruth, there aren't words big enough. You taught us that healing is larger than treatment, and that focusing on quality of life brings so many gifts. 💛⁠
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Did integrative care touch your family's journey? An acupuncture session, an Ohana gathering, a moment of calm in the storm? Tell us in the comments, we'd love to hear from you! 🎗️

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When Max was in treatment, his care team told us to focus on his quality of life. I'm a culinary school grad, and where others might have seen only what couldn't be controlled, I saw an opportunity to do something. I saw hope in quality of life, not fear.

A close friend brought a book to the hospital: Anticancer: A New Way of Life. It confirmed what I already sensed — that food, movement, and emotional well-being could work alongside Max's treatment, meal by meal, in my own hands.

So I cooked. Whole foods, modified for Max. The hospital warned that if he lost any weight, it would have to stop. He never lost the weight — and through treatment, he never once needed a blood transfusion or low-ANC hospitalization. Something we'd been told was impossible. 💪

Then families started asking: how are you approaching Max's nutrition? The answer became Fierce Foods. ✨

🥕 First class: a preschool teaching kitchen in Orange County, 2012
📦 Fierce Foods Kits mailed nationwide — a Twilight Turtle, our guide, and healthy snacks (including the very first donations from our beloved partners at Lily's Sweets 🍫)
🏥 Then: in-hospital programs, community classes in CA + GA, online courses, RD consultations, precision nutrition and The Fierce Foods Kitchen cookbook

Hope, not fear. It started as a way to nourish one little boy and became a way to inspire a movement. Next year, it lives on with Sam Day Foundation.💛

Do you have a Fierce Foods memory? A class, a kit, a recipe that changed dinnertime? Tell us in the comments — with your permission, we'll weave your story into our 15th anniversary celebration next month. 🎗️

⏳ Just weeks left: every gift through Sept 30 is DOUBLED by the Walker Family Matching Gift — and $250+ receives one of the last 50 signed Fierce Foods Kitchen cookbooks. 🔗www.givebutter.com/maxstrong26

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💛 $32,680 raised. Just under $20,000 to go. 💛

We are here because of the continued love and generosity Walker family. When we shared what it would take to finish our final chapter well, Ian and Amy Walker didn't just give — they built the whole structure to get us there: a $10,000 gift, a $20,000 matching challenge, and then they rallied their companies and their networks to help carry it. Years of quiet, steady support, and they're still finding ways to amaze us.

Every gift through September 30 is DOUBLED by the Walker Family Matching Gift, and yes, gifts from donor-advised funds count toward the match too. 🎗️

Help us close the gap and honor the family who made it possible → givebutter.com/maxstrong26

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🎗️ September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

These are the numbers that have driven everything we've done for fifteen years:

Every year in the U.S., about 15,600 kids are diagnosed with cancer. It remains the #1 cause of death by disease in children.

But here's the part most people never hear: because treatments have improved so dramatically, more than 420,000 childhood cancer survivors are alive in America today — and that miracle comes with a shadow.

💛 By age 45, 95% of survivors will face a serious chronic illness.
💛 By age 30, their risk of a life-threatening condition is 700% higher than their siblings'.
💛 Survivors in their mid-twenties carry the same chronic conditions as family members in their fifties.

The treatments that save our children's lives quietly tax their futures.

This is why we've always said survivorship starts on day one, because so many of these risks can be meaningfully lowered by how we eat, sleep, move, connect, and care for our minds. And it's why this work must live on.

This month, wear gold. Learn the stats. And hold every SuperKid and their family a little closer. 🎗️

*Walking down memory lane with some of our early Childhood Cancer Awareness Month designs thanks to our brilliant friend .s.pirtle.

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Busy Philipps people may not know this and we think they should — you were a champion for kids facing cancer long before you experienced a life-altering brain tumor diagnosis yourself. And now, your courage in sharing your story is not only growing awareness, it’s helping families going through this feel less alone. We’ll always be grateful for you. We’re sending you all our love and cheering for you with everything we’ve got!! 💛💛💛

Late August 2011. Max came home after three weeks in the hospital — four and a half years old, re-learning everything, and very afraid of the dark. Four nightlights couldn't touch that fear. So his mom bought a Cloud b Twilight Turtle, hoping the stars might help.

Max claimed the green stars as his "healing" stars. That first night, he held the turtle up to the back of his head — green stars glowing against his fresh scar — and said: "Look, Mommy! I'm healing!" ✨

One email to Cloud b asking to buy turtles at a discount for other kids fighting cancer. One CEO who said: we'll donate them instead. That's how MaxLove Project began.

Fifteen years later: Super Max the Turtle (with a smile modeled on Max's own 🥹) and more than $500,000 worth of turtles bringing healing stars to children's hospital ceilings around the world — including 300+ delivered to CHOC just this May, the very hospital where Max's story began.

Thousands of children falling asleep under healing stars, because one four-year-old showed us what empowerment looks like. 💛

Do you have a turtle story? If a Super Max or Twilight Turtle ever glowed on your child's ceiling, tell us in the comments!

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This fall, MaxLove Project turns 15 just as we transition our resources to three amazing organizations: , , and Zuza's Way to Healing Foundation. 💛

Fifteen years of beautiful memories: teaching kitchens, farm walks, Super Max the Turtles at bedsides, the Ohana Project, Farm to Fork, 35,000+ families, all building a legacy that will now grow far beyond us.

And you have the opportunity to support our biggest chapter yet: thanks to the *Walker Family Matching Gift* every donation through September 30th is DOUBLED, up to $20,000. ✨

Bonus: every gift of $250+ receives one of the last 50 limited-edition Fierce Foods Kitchen cookbooks, signed by Audra and Max. 📚 When they're gone, they're gone.

🎗️ Give (doubled!) → givebutter.com/maxstrong26

Love. Hope. Thrive. Together.

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Our deepest thanks to for sharing the love with and supporting our Super Max the Turtle donation to CHOC Children’s! Our amazing board member, is pictured here delivering the products with the Share the Love team. We’re so grateful for Sierra Subaru’s incredible generosity! 💛🙏🎗️

♻️ Over $12,000 raised for !

During the Subaru Share the Love Event, customers who purchased or leased a new Subaru had the opportunity to direct their donations to our hometown charity partner.

To celebrate the impact, our team volunteered to deliver 300 SuperMax Turtles to patients at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), where we officially presented the Share the Love check to the MaxLove team. 🐢

Thank you to everyone who chose to give back and help us bring comfort to these brave kids! 🫶

Volunteering

Amazing news about our next chapter! MaxLove Project is transforming into something new — our great work will continue with three incredible organizational partners, and San Day Foundation is one of them. ➡️

🔄 has been a resource and an influence for our wellness program here at SDF from the start. The organization helped Sam maintain a good quality of life while he endured one toxic drug after another. A healthy diet had obvious effects on his body, and allowed him to feel good and avoid additional illness during his last few years of life.

When Audra DiPadova approached us about taking on their assets as they begin to sunset the organization, we felt it was a natural fit for SDF. In this next chapter, SDF will begin rebranding their incredible Fierce Foods cookbook for cancer kids, and make it available for families dealing with childhood cancer. The book was developed with evidence based nutrition guidelines, culinary chef and registered dietician expertise, is kid friendly, culture conscious, and with affordable ingredients in mind. Best of all, executive director Audra will be working closely with SDF to help make the transition smooth.

Max remains an inspiration, and SDF is about to become even more impactful.