​Maia Palmer

Kidney Love is a passion project inspired by my kidney donation in April 2025 to my Aunt Lisa. Lisa was only 65 and was about to have to go on dialysis for her Polycystic Kidney Disease. PKD is a genetic disease that causes your kidneys to start growing cysts. Everywhere a cyst touches, that part of your kidney essentially shuts down. It’s possible to have “innumerable” cysts even in your 20s.

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My pop-pop, my uncle, my mother’s cousin, and various other members of my family have passed away from this disease over the years, and none of them lived past the age of 60. So my aunt was already something of a miracle, having lived as long as she had. But it was getting really scary. It’s not an eloquent or poetic way to say it, but there are no words to describe how truly terrifying it was to think about losing her.

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She was a constant presence in my house growing up, to the point that she even came on our family trip to Disneyland.  Lisa was the crazy one, the funny one, the KIND one. We don’t always agree, but she has never turned me away. Hungry and low on groceries? Come over for dinner. Heartbroken? Come over and I’ll comfort you. Lonely? Come over and let’s watch a movie. Annual summertime trips to the beach. Sitting out back with a bushel of Maryland blue crabs and some Corona Lights with limes. Hanging out on the boat in the summers, singing loudly to Jimmy Buffett and splashing around in tubes.  Going to the boardwalk with my aunt and baby cousin and having people think I was Lisa’s daughter. Watching her daughter, my cousin, grow up to become one of my best friends. The memories are countless. And they were on the brink of becoming the only thing I had left of her.

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The choice to donate and save her life was one of the easiest one’s I’ve ever made! I have a successful career as an artist, a meaningful job as a teacher, and being a cat mom, and the thing I am most proud of is helping my aunt live a long and fulfilling life.

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That is a large part of what this artwork is about. Not only are you giving a life-saving gift, but you are enriching your own life through the act of donation. In the first artwork I created as a logo for this project, I wrote, “Love. Donate. Live.” The message is straight from my heart: I loved my aunt. I donated. Now we are living our best lives, forever linked. I want people to understand that donating a kidney doesn’t compromise your quality of life. It adds to it. Underneath, I wrote, “One kidney donation. Two lives changed.” Because they are changed, and completely for the better.