Maya Angelou once said people won’t remember what you said or did — they’ll remember how you made them feel. That truth has quietly guided me through my whole adult life. I believe every person deserves to be held and honored exactly as they are, especially in life’s final chapter, when so much can feel like it’s slipping out of their hands.

My path here wasn’t a straight line. I started at the University of Pittsburgh dreaming of becoming a speech language pathologist, but a class in human behavior and psychology gently pulled me somewhere else — toward people, toward presence. I earned my MSW from Widener University, and spent the next decade as a trauma social worker before I finally found the work my heart had been reaching for all along: hospice care. For the past 8 years, Penn Medicine Hospice has given me the honor of walking alongside patients and families through some of the most tender, intimate moments a person can experience.

It’s that work that brought me to Threshold House. I’ve seen, up close, how much our Philadelphia community needs a home like this one. Death doesn’t ask what’s in your bank account, what choices you made along the way, or whether you have people to lean on. In that sacred, tender time, people deserve room to breathe — to think about what truly matters to them, instead of worrying about being a burden, or where they’ll lay their head, or who will care for them. Hospice can offer so much, but it can’t replace the warmth of a hand to hold or someone simply there, day after day.

Being even a small piece of Philadelphia’s deathcare community, in this way, is one of the deepest honors of my life.