Sara Lynn Lieske

Sara was, above all else, a wife and mother. For four and a half years she fought cancer with quiet determination, her greatest motivation never being herself, but her family. She wanted to see her boys grow up, and she poured everything she had into doing exactly that.

Sara was born in Port Orchard, Washington, and grew up with a love of the natural world, of animals, woods, ponds, and the freedom to wander. She met her husband Micah at the University of Washington Tacoma, and after a years-long orbit around each other, they built a life together near the Redmond Watershed, marrying on January 11, 2011. Their home was full of creativity, curiosity, and the constant possibility of the next great discovery of some new thing that would catch her attention and pull her completely in for days or months at a time.

Sara was relentlessly creative. She needle-felted, crocheted, painted, photographed, wrote, and drew. Her last great passion was Zentangle, structured patterns that gave her analytical mind something to hold while her artistic mind ran free. Whatever she turned her attention to, she gave it everything.

Those who loved her will carry her forward. Her curiosity, her creativity, her fierce and quiet devotion to her family, these things don't leave. As the song says, because they knew her, they have been changed for good.

Sara is survived by her husband Micah and her two sons, Owen and Evan, who were her greatest joy and her reason for fighting.