I remember the first time I thought to myself “we can do better.” I could take you to the exact place I was standing. I was a young girl; early teens.
My whole life I have spent time in nursing homes. Whether it be to sing Christmas Carols with the Girl Scout Troop, volunteering with my church outreach group, or tagging along with my Grandma who worked there – I spent more time in nursing homes than your average teenager. And… I loved it. As much as I loved it, I would feel this whisper in my soul “we can do better;” a whisper that would one day become a scream to action.
Still to this day, when I walk into a Senior Living Community, I light up in the way I imagine a professional baseball player lights up when he puts on the uniform and steps onto the field. I love it. I’m made for this. Senior living is not perfect, some are far from that (there’s a whole spectrum) – but it’s not the building for me, it’s the people. Specifically the people that live there. They are my motivation to do better, to do right by them as a whole and individually.
Often I would find myself thinking back to that little girl spending time in the nursing home and would fantasize about a world that served seniors better; that honors their contributions to this world, that tailors to their individual needs, that celebrates them for the treasures they are, and enjoys taking care of them in partnership as they lose the ability to take care of themselves. Most importantly when they have an ask, we can respond with a “yes, we can make that happen.” A fantasy driven by the continuous whisper “we can do better.”
With the guidance of the whisper, I chose a career in Gerontology. I worked in mental health case management, public housing, nursing home long term care, nursing home rehab, and finally as the director of Admissions and Social Services, where I also served in the role of Grievance Officer. To say I was simply aware of the gigantic holes in our systems that serve older adults, would be the understatement of the century. Such a far cry from my starry-eyed aspirations for senior care; I was infuriated by them – making the whisper louder and louder.
A theme I saw time and time again in admissions was how confused families were when it came to placing their loved one in a nursing home. No one was guiding them clearly. They were getting blanket recommendations with no action plan on how to follow those recommendations. All the while they couldn’t really talk to their loved one about looking and asking questions because “Mom will not be happy about this.” Each admission felt like a broken promise, done in secret…that I was facilitating with the whisper “we can do better.”
In 2018 the whisper was a scream and I left my work at the nursing home to start a solo-practice as a Geriatric Care Manager. I was helping people coordinate care, educating folks on aging, dementia, and levels of care and supporting caregivers in their quest to keep their loved ones at home. It was great! But it wasn’t long before I started to hear that familiar whisper “we can do better.” I knew to truly keep people at home I needed to have a nurse involved.
In 2021 Navigate Wellness was born: A Nurse and a Gerontologist starting a business together with dreams to support aging adults who want to stay at home. An alternative to assisted living; bringing the aging-in-place model to them, at their home. Answering the question “can we stay at home?” with a “YES!”
Two years later, we’re doing just that. Our business has expanded to more than just us, and we do keep people at home. We do help people avoid the nursing home. We do bring assisted living to older adults, in their homes. People are living at home, aging-in-place safely because of Navigate Wellness – a dream of a Nurse and a Gerontologist, a long time in the making. And, this is just the beginning of our story.
A story that will always be guided by the whisper “we can do better.”
-Janie
