There are moments in life when change is subtle, so gradual we hardly notice it happening.

And then there are moments that divide life into two distinct chapters:

before… and after.

I used to think of myself as someone with a strong moral compass.

Ethics, integrity, and transparency have always mattered deeply to me. They still do.

But I didn’t fully understand how those values would evolve, how they would activate, until life asked something more of me.

Until loss made it personal.

 

The First Inflection Point: When Love Meets the System

When my husband died after his two-year journey with colon cancer, something shifted in me.

Grief was there, of course. It deep, disorienting, and ever-present.

But alongside it was something else.

A quiet but persistent thought:

We can do better than this.

At the time, I was leading large technology transformation projects for healthcare organizations. My work focused on backend systems and the employee experience. It was important work, but removed from the bedside, from the human experience of care.

And suddenly, I couldn’t unsee the gap.

Because I had lived it.

I had seen where communication faltered.

Where systems didn’t support the reality of what patients and caregivers were experiencing.

Where the human side of care felt secondary to process.

My values of ethics, integrity, transparency, had always been there.

But now they had direction.

They became advocacy.

That’s when I found PIVOT (Patient and Investigator Voices Organizing Together). Through PIVOT, I was able to bring something that isn’t always present in research spaces: the lived experience of being a caregiver, of loving someone through illness, of navigating a system while your world is unraveling.

It mattered.

And it changed me.

That path of advocacy continued when I joined the board of Gilda’s Club Kansas City, where community, support, and shared experience are at the center of care.

Looking back, I can see it clearly now:

That was the moment I stopped just valuing change…

and started working to create it.

 

The Second Inflection Point: When Death Becomes a Moment Instead of a Process

Years later, when my mother died, something shifted again.

But this time, it felt different.

Sharper. More abrupt. More disorienting.

I received a call from the hospital. No details. Just that I needed to come quickly.

When I arrived, they asked me to wait in a small room.

If you’ve ever been in that room, you know.

There’s a knowing that settles in before anyone says a word.

I assumed she was already gone.

But when the doctor finally came in, I learned that she was on life support and likely would not regain consciousness.

I said what I knew to be true:

She wouldn’t have wanted that.

And then… they left.

It wasn’t until later, after the shock began to settle, that another realization surfaced:

Why didn’t anyone ask if I wanted to go back and hold her hand?

Why didn’t anyone suggest I say goodbye?

In that moment, death became clinical. Procedural. Efficient.

And something about that felt profoundly wrong.

Because death is not just a medical event.

It is a human experience.

A relational experience.

A sacred transition.

That was the moment another layer of my values activated.

Not just advocacy within systems, but advocacy at the bedside.

I realized how much documentation, diligence, and clear communication matter.

How much families need guidance, not just medically, but emotionally.

How much presence matters in those final moments.

That’s when I began exploring the work of an end-of-life doula.

Not because I had all the answers.

But because I knew, deeply, that something was missing, and I wanted to be part of restoring it.

 

Do People Really Change?

I was recently in a conversation where someone asked whether people really change.

For a moment, I didn’t know how to answer.

Because to me, it no longer feels like a question.

Of course we change.

We are changed by love.

By loss.

By the moments that shake our assumptions about how the world works.

We are changed by what feels unjust.

By what feels incomplete.

By what we wish had been different.

And often, we don’t realize how much we’ve changed until we pause long enough to look back.

I am not the person I was four years ago.

I am certainly not the person I was eight years ago.

And while I would never have chosen the losses that shaped me, I can see how they clarified what matters most.

They didn’t take away my values.

They deepened them.

They gave them purpose.

They asked me to live them out loud.

 

Becoming Who You Are Now

There is a quote from Winnie the Pooh that has stayed with me:

“You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

I used to think of that as something gentle. Encouraging.

Now, I hear it differently.

Because sometimes, we don’t discover those things about ourselves until we have no choice but to.

Until life changes us.

Until we become someone we didn’t expect, yet somehow recognize.

 

A Gentle Invitation

If you’ve experienced a loss that has changed you…

If you’ve found yourself thinking differently, showing up differently, questioning things you once accepted…

You’re not imagining it.

You are evolving.

And there is meaning in that.

If you’d like support in exploring what matters most to you now, whether through conversation, planning, or simply having space to reflect, I invite you to connect.

You don’t have to navigate these changes alone.