I didn’t choose this work because it was easy or clear.
I chose it because life kept inviting me into the most honest moments humans ever experience.
For more than twenty years, I’ve worked as a hospice nurse, walking alongside people at the end of their lives and sitting with families in the sacred space between holding on and letting go. I have witnessed fear, regret, forgiveness, laughter, silence—and love in its purest form.
The dying taught me things no textbook ever could.
They spoke about what mattered.
They spoke about what they wished they had said sooner.
They spoke about love—how it never really leaves, even when the body does.
Over time, I began to understand something deeply: the end of life is often life’s greatest teacher.
But it wasn’t until I experienced profound personal loss myself—after the death of my stepfather—that this understanding took on a new shape. Even with years of professional experience, I felt the isolation of grief in my own body. I felt how quiet the world becomes after loss, and how quickly people expect you to “move on.”
That loss changed me.
In the stillness of grief, I felt a clear calling—not to fix grief, but to honor it. To create spaces where grief could be spoken aloud without shame. Where love could be remembered without being rushed into something else.
That calling became GLADD—Grieving Loss After Death and Dying.
GLADD was never meant to be a program alone. It was meant to be a presence. A reminder that grief is not something to overcome, but something to walk with. A place where people could feel less alone in the most vulnerable season of their lives.
Along the way, I put words to what I had been learning for years in my book, 8 Lessons the Dying Taught Me. Those lessons weren’t about death—they were about living more honestly, loving more fully, and understanding that grief is simply love asking to be carried differently.
Beyond my work, I am also a mother. Raising my two sons has grounded me in the everyday, reminding me that love is both fierce and fragile, and that presence matters more than perfection.
Everything I offer in this space—whether through GLADD, my writing, or speaking—is shaped by lived experience. By bedside conversations. By loss. By love.
My mission is simple, even if the work is not:
to remind the world that grief is not the end of love.
It is proof that love does not end with death.
It simply asks us to find new ways to stay connected.
If you’re here, I’m glad you found your way.
You don’t have to walk this alone.