I didn't come to this work because I was called to it. I came because I lost everything.

My business failed. I lost my savings, my social circle, and the dream life I'd spent five years building. I reached a point where returning to a small life felt worse than not returning at all. So I asked for help. From God, from whatever I was actually talking to in those dark months.

My prayers were answered. Just not the way I expected.

Over the next nine months, I witnessed nine people die. Not metaphorically. Real people I happened upon in public, living through their final moments. Accidents, strokes, a suicide jumper. Nine deaths in nine months. I was convinced I’d become the grim reaper. But it was clear that God was trying to show me something. The moment I opened my eyes to see, my path forward became far more clear.

I trained as an End-of-Life Doula through the University of Vermont, learning how to accompany people through death. Now I volunteer at a local hospice while studying Divinity and chaplaincy at Harvard Divinity School. Alongside my formal training, I bring a finance degree, a decade of human experience design consulting, and a mushroom company that decomposed exactly like mushrooms do. None of it was wasted. All of it was part of the experience.

Here's what I also know: the losses that wreck people hardest rarely come with funerals.

The friendship that quietly died. The company you closed after five years while everyone said "on to the next" before you'd started grieving it. The version of yourself you had to put down with no ceremony, no casseroles, no one checking in six months later. I study and offer spiritual direction on non-traditional forms of grief because I know what it feels like to encounter a life event and have absolutely no idea how to handle it. Good and bad! Grief works in mysterious ways.