ABOUT ME
I help adult daughters have the aging conversations they’ve been avoiding — before a crisis has them instead.
Get Curious. Stay Connected.
My story
The moment everything made sense
I grew up watching my mother give everything she had to caring for aging family members. Hours and hours, every week — not because she chose it consciously, but because nobody had ever helped her think through it differently. That image never left me.
Years later, I was sitting with a 27-year-old named Steve. He was crying. Not because he didn’t love his parents — he loved them deeply. He was crying because he had to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives, and they had never gotten to weigh in on it. Nobody had ever asked them what they wanted. Nobody had shown Steve how to start that conversation before a crisis made it urgent.
In that moment, I understood that both stories were the same wound: families who love each other deeply, but who were never given the tools to talk about what matters most.
That’s why I built this work.
How I can help
The method that changes everything
I don’t tell you what to say to your aging parent. I teach you what to ask.
In 15 years of these conversations — in living rooms, in senior living offices, and in the hardest moments of families’ lives — I have never seen a solution work that wasn’t the person’s own idea. That’s Motivational Interviewing, an evidence-based communication method well-established in healthcare, and it changes everything about how these conversations go.
Most people try to help by telling. Motivational Interviewing works by listening, evoking, and empowering — helping your parent reach their own conclusions, rooted in their own values. The result? Less resistance. More trust. Conversations that actually move forward.
My credentials
— and the part that’s harder to say
15+ years in senior living. Bachelor of Science in Speech Communication from Oregon State University. Motivational Interviewing trained since 2011. Hundreds of real conversations with families navigating some of the most difficult transitions of their lives.
And — I spent years working for organizations whose ethics conflicted with mine. I eventually walked away from the income rather than compromise what I knew was right.
Both parts matter. The credentials give me the language. The choice tells you where I stand.
My Mission
To equip adult daughters with the curiosity-led communication skills to have the aging conversations they’ve been avoiding — shifting from telling to asking, reducing resistance, and empowering their parents to make decisions rooted in their own values and shaped by their own voice.
You already love them enough. Now let me give you the tools.