Aurora Center NYC was founded in 2015 by Marissa Sappho, LCSW, BCD, CEDS as a place of healing and recovery for individuals with Eating Disorders and related concerns.

As a child, Marissa’s favorite fairy tale was Sleeping Beauty and she was enchanted by Princess Aurora and their shared love of animals and song. In High School Latin classes at the Hewitt School on the Upper East Side, Marissa learned Aurora is the Latin word for Dawn. Marissa’s father, an avid reader and philosopher, of Italian descent, shared stories of Roman Mythology including those of the Roman Goddess Aurora, who renews herself every morning, flying across the sky and bringing the morning sun to the world to start a new day. Marissa was raised to believe in the power of women, and as a Modern Orthodox Jew, believes in a personal responsibility to bring light into her corner of the universe.

Aurora represents the chance for renewal and the belief that no matter how dark the day has been before, a new dawn will come. The colors of Aurora Eating Disorder Treatment Center are yellow and gray — yellow to represent the dawn of a new day and a chance to try again, gray to represent the in-between space in which we all must learn to live sometimes. For those with Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder, Orthorexia, Emotional Eating, Exercise Addiction, Depression, Anxiety, Personality Disorders and related concerns, Aurora is designed to be a refuge — a safe space, where each person is treated as an individual, not just a patient, and where whole recovery becomes not only a possibility, but a reality.