Fundraiser Launched For Greenwich School Counselor With Brain Tumor: GoFundMe

GREENWICH, CT — The community is rallying to support a Greenwich school counselor who is battling a rare brain tumor.

A GoFundMe fundraiser was recently launched to help Tara Fetzer, a therapist and lower school counselor at Greenwich Academy.

As of Monday morning, the fundraiser had garnered over $154,000, far surpassing the original goal of $50,000.

According to fundraiser organizer and friend, Leela Horowitz, Fetzer was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive malignant brain tumor earlier this year.

Horowitz wrote in the fundraiser's description she met Fetzer through work and the two became close friends.

"As a therapist and lower school counselor at Greenwich Academy, Tara has spent her career holding space for people in their most vulnerable and complicated moments. She offers it effortlessly to everyone she knows and loves," Horowitz wrote.

"Earlier this year, Tara was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive malignant brain tumor. She is now being asked to receive and let her community support her in a way that does not come naturally to someone whose entire orientation toward the world is one of giving."

Fetzer is currently undergoing treatment.

"The road ahead is serious and long, and will ask a great deal of her — body, mind, and spirit. She faces it with hope, with courage, and with open eyes. This is a journey without a clear horizon," Horowitz continued.

"The financial realities of this journey are significant — from treatments and care that insurance does not fully cover, to the necessary and difficult step of pulling back from her practice so healing can become her full focus."

At the center of Fetzer's world are her three sons, Horowitz noted, "and the deep desire to keep their world feeling steady and supported."

"Tara lives her life reminding people they are not alone, and that we are capable of moving through the unimaginable. Let us now remind her of the same," Horowitz wrote.

In a May 29 update on the fundraising page, Fetzer's husband, Michael, thanked all those who have donated so far.

"When we shared Tara’s story, we hoped it would reach the people who love her. What happened has left us completely overwhelmed — the response exceeded anything we could have imagined, and we are sitting with a level of gratitude that is impossible to articulate," Michael wrote

"To everyone who gave, who shared, who reached out — thank you. You have given our family something invaluable. You have given Tara the ability to focus entirely on her recovery, without having to carry anything beyond what is already being asked of her.

"We do not take a single act of generosity for granted. You have shown us, in the most profound way, what it means to be held by a community."

View the GoFundMe fundraiser here.