russ alexander

I am passionate about empowering folks with their end-of-life journey. This passion is inspired by the death of my Mom. She died peacefully while on hospice service, with our family at her bedside. This transcendent experience led me to become a Penn Medicine hospice volunteer in 2013. Then the Universe sent me down another road: training as a hospital chaplain at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, completed in 2019.

During death doula training at Emberlight in Asheville, NC, in 2024, I experienced first hand a home for the terminally ill based on the Omega Home model. Upon returning home, I discovered that we have no Omega
Homes in Philadelphia. Subsequently, a group of us formed a team with a goal of creating one. You are looking at the website of the result, Threshold House.

In addition to being called to the bedside of the dying, I also bring other life experience to our work at Threshold House: I have a masters degree in accounting, leading to a CPA and a career in public accounting, and in turn leading to a career as a real estate broker.

I wish to share a philosophical thought with you: Planning for the end-of-life journey, and being present at the bedside of the dying, is not about dying. It is about living. Living the best possible life as you define it up until the moment of death. Until death, you are living. So dying is part of living. Death is a separate, distinct experience. As is being born. All part of one glorious gift, the continuum of life, from birth, through living, to death. Our goal at Threshold House is to empower you to live your best possible life as you define it, until you cross over to what is next.

russ@thresholdhousephilly.org