In February 2024, a small group at Abundant Life Reformed Church in Wyckoff was sitting together, trying to discern what God was calling the church to. One of our elders, Cheryl Cohen, suddenly blurted out a long-felt desire.
She had cared for her father through Alzheimer’s. What she remembered most was the loneliness — the way people greeted her with pity and fear and then scattered. But she also remembered the beauty she had experienced with her dad on that journey. Both things were true at once, and there was almost nowhere in the world that knew how to hold them both.
She wanted to build a place that could.
We took the ball and ran with it.
The name says what we believe
For months we threw names around. Nothing captured what we wanted to be — until someone said “kaleidoscope,” and the room got quiet.
“We needed a name that said no to the tragedy narrative of inevitable decline, in which the afflicted person steadily disappears. We want to flip that story on its head. Our loved ones are not gone before they are gone. They are very much alive. There is still joy, humor, compassion, and life to be lived. Each moment in the dementia journey is painting a beautiful picture to behold — like a kaleidoscope does with each turn of the wheel. But like a kaleidoscope, you need light to see it. Our hope is to help care partners find that light.”
That is the philosophy that shapes every gathering, every conversation, every choice we make about how to welcome people through our doors.
The first session
January 2025. Two care partners and their spouses. That was the first Connection Café.
We had no idea what we were doing. We knew there was a need — but we had no idea how great the need was. We learned quickly.
One year in, we’ve served more than 1,200 individuals. We have folks coming from every corner of Bergen County, as well as parts of Passaic County, Hudson County, and Rockland County in New York. Medical professionals and adult day care facilities are referring people. We are now a resource in northern New Jersey for Care2Caregivers, the free peer-support helpline for dementia caregivers provided by Rutgers’ University Behavioral Health Care.
What guides us
- Personhood comes first. Every person we welcome is a whole person — not a diagnosis, not a stage, not a problem to be managed. We honor who they are, where they are.
- Relationships are the medicine. Dementia is a relational disease. As changes occur, both the person living with dementia and the people around them are affected. We build the connections that the diagnosis tends to break.
- We focus on what remains. A common myth is that a diagnosis means loss of capability. We challenge that by paying attention to what is still very much there — and giving it room to live.
- No one comes alone. Our shared model means the person you care for is in the same room with you. You can see each other. That changes everything.
- A “no judgment zone.” We operate under what Pastor Keith calls the Planet Fitness / Las Vegas rule: what happens at The Kaleidoscope stays in the room.
The team
The Kaleidoscope is led jointly by Rev. Keith Moody, our founding elders Cheryl Cohen and Wilma Vander Molen, and Maureen Braen, CPXP, CDP, CMDCP, CDSGF, CADDCT — a credentialed dementia specialist and founder of Rise Dementia Care, who moderates our support sessions and educational series.
We are deeply indebted to Marlene Ceragno, Vivian Korner Green, Cary Lopez, Rachel Rebich, Kerry Sherer, and Dr. St. Rachel Ustanny for their time and priceless guidance during our first year, and to the volunteers who show up month after month to make every gathering a place people want to return to.
Where we’re going
In March 2026, The Kaleidoscope formally became a 501(c)(3) public charity — its own organization, with its own board, built for the long road.
On the educational side, we are continually evolving. Living Well as Life’s Patterns Change, our six-session series for people experiencing mild cognitive impairment and early cognitive change, was born out of a need we kept hearing in the room. We expect more of those quiet pivots in the year ahead — built around what participants actually tell us they need.
And as one care partner put it: “I never imagined what God had planned.”
Neither did we.