I did not plan to start a nonprofit.
I planned to go about my day. I planned to handle my to-do list, make dinner, live my normal life. And then March 19th happened — and normal was gone.
In an instant, everything changed. There was no warning, no time to think, no moment to prepare. One moment I was living my life and the next I was walking into a hospital as an overnight caregiver with absolutely no medical experience, no training, and no idea what I was doing. I had never been in this position before. I did not know the right questions to ask. I did not know how any of it worked. I just knew that someone I loved needed me — and I was not going to let them face it alone.
So I stayed.
What nobody tells you about becoming a caregiver overnight is that you pack for everyone but yourself. You think about the person in that hospital bed — what they need, what will comfort them, what the doctors are saying — and somewhere in all of that you completely forget that you are a person too. You forget to pack clothes. You forget your toothbrush. You forget everything. And then days pass and you are still there, sitting in waiting rooms, sleeping in chairs, surviving on vending machine food and whatever courage you can find at the bottom of an empty cup.
I remember what got me through those long nights. My Beats headphones — the only thing keeping me sane when the fear got too loud. My Burt's Bees lip balm — always in my pocket, one of the only familiar comforts in an unfamiliar place. A Starbucks run that was never really about coffee — it was about five minutes of being a person again, not just a caregiver. A Life is Good hoodie, a pair of sweats, a blanket that made the cold hospital nights just a little more bearable.
Small things. Everything things.
I also remember what I did not have. I remember my phone dying in the ER and that specific panic — the isolation of being cut off from the world in the middle of the scariest moment of my life. I remember the anxiety that crept in slowly and then all at once, the kind I did not even recognize as anxiety until it was already controlling me. I remember looking around that waiting room and thinking: why does nobody prepare us for this? Where is the bag someone should have packed for me? Where are the resources? Where is the support?
The answer was nowhere. Because it did not exist.
That question never left me. It followed me through every hospital visit, every long night, every moment I sat in a waiting room wishing someone had thought ahead for me. And eventually, instead of waiting for someone else to solve it, I decided I would.