Tana Elizabeth Quigley was born on April 9, 1982 and was raised by her parents Gene and Beth in their home in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.  Her parents have two other children, Melissa and Geno, and Tana was a loving and devoted sister to them as well as aunt to their children, Patrick, Justin, Gavin, Chase and Grey.

She earned a bachelor of arts in dance and a bachelor of science in psychology from Montclair State where she was blessed to make lifelong friendships with her sorority sisters in Tri Sigma. Tana went on to earn her masters in Social Work from NYU in 2008 and to start her own NPO (Productions For a Cause) devoted to raising money through the arts for causes that mattered to her, including domestic violence and families affected by autism.  She was an original member of Thomas Byrne Entertainment LLC, and competed very successfully in the ballroom circuit.

Tana’s devotion to educating led her to present regularly at mental health centers and for general audiences on a variety of topics including suicide prevention and healthy relationships.   She was a co-founder of the Seaglass Counselling & Wellness Center with two locations, one in Ridgewood and one in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey where she worked tirelessly and selflessly to help people find balance in their lives.

She believed that people in pain were like broken pieces of sea glass with sharp, jagged edges and that after finding peace through their therapeutic journey, like being tumbled and pounded by the waves of the ocean, end up polished, shining and regenerated.   This idea was born from the countless summer days she spent on the Jersey Shore collecting sea glass as a child.  She would keep only the polished ones that were “ready” and throw back the ones that needed more work. Her family’s beach house in Sea Girt may have been her favorite place in the world.

Tana left this world less than it was.  She jumped out of airplanes and stood by her people and stood up for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves, and danced in the sand on the beach at midnight and lived with an abandon that everyone who knew her admired.  We close with the phrase that she lived and died by and we honor her by trying our best to keep this in our sights.  Follow your dreams.