When I First Understood How Hard This Really Is

about me

After spending two decades watching families get stuck in the same place, not knowing what to do or what to say, I knew I had to do something about it.

That's why I built the exact words for these conversations. The ones with your boss, when work is on the line. The ones with a parent who is starting to need more than they're willing to admit. The ones with a sibling who isn't showing up the way you need. The ones you hold inside because you know exactly what you're feeling and still don't know how to say it out loud. That's what these guides give you. The exact words, so the conversation actually happens instead of getting put off again, and the thing you've been avoiding finally moves forward.

I spent twenty years sitting with families during the hardest moments of their lives. I knew the questions to ask. I knew the systems. I thought I understood what families were going through.

Then it happened to me, in two separate seasons, two years apart. My husband was diagnosed with cancer, and I became his person and our son's, who was only ten, while trying to hold my career together. I was passed over for a promotion I had worked years to earn. Two years later my father had a stroke. I sat across from a hospice team asking questions I had never had to ask for my own family. I was passed over for a second promotion during that same stretch.