217 - A Mother's Resilience with Lisbeth Garces

Listeners, we are back this week with Lisbeth Garces

Since 2007, Lisbeth Garces has sought to provide dance therapy exercise for people with disabilities in memory of her late son, Juan Carlos Garces, who suffered from Muscular Dystrophy. Lisbeth was born in Venezuela, the youngest in a family of seven siblings. At the age of twenty she gave birth to her son Juan Carlos. After five years she received the devastating diagnosis of Muscular Dystrophy. At this point Lisbeth decided to devote all her time and energy to improving her son's quality of life. Lisbeth is not without personal experience in living with people with disabilities.

Lisbeth's sister lives with cerebral palsy, her mother suffered with Parkinson's before she passed away and her brother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at age 60 and passed away at 68 in 2020. Her sister did not receive any medical support or an education, and had no social interaction outside of the immediate family. She witnessed the slow decline in her mother's health while caring for her daughter.

Having seen the disturbing way in which people with disabilities live in Venezuela, Lisbeth made a vow to give her son a life full of physical and social activities that would enrich his life. She made the courageous decision to leave her native country and come to the U.S.

The totality of Lisbeth's life experiences began to merge after Juan Carlos' death. Returning to her love of dancing and Latin musical roots, Lisbeth became certified as a Zumba® instructor. As a natural trajectory, she began to teach low- income special needs students about the joy that can be achieved through joyful dance therapy exercise. Her repertoire expanded to people living with Down's syndrome, Parkinson's, Autism, Muscular Dystrophy, even people in wheelchairs. She envisioned a program that would provide regular classes for people with disabilities.

With drive, inspiration, and a gift for dance, she recruited a Board of Directors to form a new non-profit, Juan Carlos Organization, in May of 2012 www.jcorg.org. Lisbeth learned about the Parkinson’s Network, which certified her to teach physical exercise to people with Parkinson’s. Not ready to stop there, in 2019 Lisbeth received a scholarship from the Mohammed Ali Foundation to learn how to reach out to the nonEnglish speaking Latino community so they could receive help.