Just Like the Moon: Maite’s Mission and the Light of Ordinary Days

There is a moment that comes after the hardest part is over. During a crisis, there isn’t much time to process what’s happening. You’re focused on getting through the next day, the next appointment, the next piece of news. It’s only later, when life begins to settle, that you can look back and understand just how much your family went through—and how much you held onto along the way.

For Maite Rodríguez and her family, that moment arrived quietly. On a school morning, her daughter Alessia, eight years old, bright and determined, gathered eggs from the coop. She climbed a tree. She read a book. She did what eight-year-olds do.

It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived through a crisis why those ordinary moments devastate you with their beauty.

They decided to conceive a second daughter—intentionally, carefully—ensuring she would be an HLA match for Alessia, a perfect genetic fit to become her stem cell donor.

Vida arrived on January 9, 2024, during one of Alessia’s hospital admissions. Her cord blood was collected at birth. A year later, her bone marrow would provide the stem cells her sister needed.

In Maite’s telling, there is no drama for drama’s sake. Only love, decision, and two daughters being sisters.

“Vida is just Alessia’s baby sister,” Maite says.

Their first stay was Christmas Day 2024, for Alessia’s pre-transplant testing. They were welcomed with gifts, food, warmth, and something rarer: incredibly caring people who seemed to understand without being told.

Over the next year, the Rodríguez family would stay at the House thirteen times—including an extended four-month stay during and after Alessia’s transplant. Four months. Long enough for a place to stop being a refuge and start feeling like home.

The House gave them the practical things: a place to cook, to rest, to work when they could. But what made the difference was the normalcy. Their daughters could simply be children. Alessia could play and laugh in the playroom. Vida could be a baby sister. Maite could write in the early morning quiet of the living room—and during those early mornings, she created Just Like the Moon, a testament to this journey, another way of telling this story to the world.

Walking in that first Christmas morning, Maite wasn’t prepared for what she found. When they entered the playroom, the staff was already waiting for them—with gifts.

“We had gifts,” they told her.

Her reaction was immediate: “And I’m like, what?”

She pauses, even now, remembering the weight of that generosity. ” We were overwhelmed by the love, the kindness, and the sense of family. It felt like we were walking into a friend’s home. Our family home. It was a great day. It was a great day.”

“My favorite thing about the House is the playroom,” Alessia says. “That’s where I just get to be a kid.”

In those words is everything the House accomplishes. Not just shelter, but the space to be. To breathe. To recover not just medically, but as a human being, as a family.

The people made it real. Staff members like Edwin and Peter at the front desk. The social work team. Volunteers. Other families who became friends—connections that didn’t end when the medical crisis passed. Families don’t forget the people who held them through their hardest moments. They come back not because they need a room, but because they miss the people who became part of their story.

This story belongs only to this family. A mother on a mission for hope. A sister born to save her sister. A four-month stay that allowed recovery to happen alongside ordinary joy. A book transforming the symbol of disease into something luminous—a light, constant and reliable, witness to everything below.

This is why Maite and her family were the honorary family for Ronald McDonald House New York’s Annual Gala in 2026. This is why Maite spoke at Cipriani Wall Street; holding this story in public, in front of 700 people who can choose to be part of it. Because when she speaks, she’s not just telling her family’s journey. She’s speaking for every family sitting in a hospital tonight, wondering how they’ll get through tomorrow.

There is another family in a hospital tonight. Another parent learning to live inside urgency. Another child facing a journey that will test everything. Because of people who choose to invest in Ronald McDonald House New York—donors, volunteers, supporters—that family won’t have to face it alone.

Maite carries a message for every person moved to give:

“In supporting the House, you’re supporting families like mine. You’re supporting families who just received the worst news of their lives, and are flying from all over the United States, from all over the globe, to be here. We’ve met families from India, China, Latin America, all over the U.S. So, in supporting Ronald McDonald House New York, you are supporting families like mine who are struggling to stay afloat, not just financially but emotionally.  Our load is very heavy, and if we could give it to anyone else, we would. But we choose to carry it with dignity and grace, and you help us do that.”

They will have a place to stay. They will have people who care. They will have the chance to stay together. They will have the knowledge that their struggle has been witnessed by people who chose to answer.

To be, like the moon, a steady light in someone’s darkest sky.