Grace Lives Here

I saw the radiology report before anyone called me.

I don't know exactly how. I just know it was there and I read it and the tears came before my brain had even fully processed the words.

Every instinct I had been pushing away and talking myself out of for months had been right.

All of it had been right.

And then I had to go back to work. Sit at her bedside. Smile. Make small talk. Carry the full weight of what I knew while pretend...

I pulled into that nursing home parking lot and sat before I could make myself go in.

Because I knew that what was waiting inside wasn't just paperwork.

It was twenty signatures, signing her life away. Each on acknowledging that my mom was no long making her own decisions. Each, a small goodbye to the version of her that wasn't coming back.

I signed every one, my hands shaking, my heart breaking. And then I walked out to my car and...

There's a moment in caregiving that nobody prepares you for.

Not the crisis. Not the phone call. Not the ambulance.

The moment they finally stop fighting.

I was sitting in the corner of her hospital room eating McDonald's chicken nuggets when it happened. She had just woken up and seen me across the room and said — "Please don't take me yet. My daughter just got here. I want to spend time with her."

And just like that — after weeks...

Six months ago I was sitting in a hospital room with the blinds closed.

She didn't want them open. And I sat beside her in the dim light watching her breathe and asking myself the same question over and over.

Where did she go?

Not the medical version of that question. The other one.

The one that comes when you realize the spark has been dimming for longer than you knew. That somewhere along the way the person you love stopped reall...

PODBEAN DESCRIPTION: Ep 13

Nobody tells you about the waiting room.

They tell you to get your loved one to the hospital. They tell you to call for help. They tell you that once she's there everything is going to be okay.

What they don't tell you is that you're going to sit in a plastic chair under fluorescent lights for forty five minutes next to people who are laughing and joking like it's just another Tuesday while you still don'...

Some breakthroughs don't arrive the way you expect them to. After weeks of 911 calls that failed, doors that closed, and a mother who refused every person who tried to help her — the thing that finally broke through wasn't a doctor or a ultimatum or anything I had tried. It was a retired nurse I had never met before who sat down beside her, took her hands, and told her the truth with love. And my mom — after weeks of fighting every...

I need to warn you before you press play on this one.

This episode is heavy. Not in a way that will break you — but in a way that might finally give words to something you've been carrying around without knowing what to call it.

This week I'm taking you inside the days nobody sees. The ones between the crisis moments. The ordinary, exhausting, heartbreaking days of showing up over and over again for someone who is slipping away rig...

What happens when you finally do everything right — and it still isn't enough?

In this episode of Grace Lives Here, Kris takes you inside the moment caregiving finally broke her. From pushing her mother down a hallway on a walker with nothing left in the tank, to calling 911 and watching the paramedics walk back out the door — this is the episode about the night the system failed, the loneliness nobody warns you about, and what it ...

What do you do when the person you’d do anything to save refuses to be saved? In this episode of Grace Lives Here, I’m taking you back to a specific Thursday in August—the day my mother went from stubbornly independent to a fragile stranger on the bathroom floor. We’re talking about the side of caregiving for aging parents that people rarely admit to: the livid, bone-deep frustration that comes when a parent sabotages their own hea...

I spent a long time watching things change with my mom and telling myself it was nothing. I saw the missed meals and the red flags, but I wrote them off as nothing, in part because I wasn't ready to face what was actually happening. I was subconsciously holding up a world that had already started to crumble. This episode is about the reality of the "gap" I’m living in right now—the exhausting, emotional wh...

What happens when you realize that the "safe-middle" of your life has actually become a cage?

For over 50 years, I’ve lived within a "radius of allowed behavior." Staying small, keeping quiet, and staying close to the ground because I was terrified that if I didn't fly, I couldn't fall. But after a recent, middle-of-the-night epiphany, everything changed.

I realized that while I’ve blamed others for holding me back, I’m the one who...

I blinked, and I was in the middle of a nightmare I didn’t know how to wake up from...

I’ve been staring at the date on the calendar. Today is my mom’s birthday, or it would have been if she were still here.

I wasn’t going to talk about any of this yet. I didn’t know if I could keep it together long enough to get the words out. But my gut told me to do this now, even if my thoughts aren't perfect. Even if I can't keep it together...

When the person closest to you triggers the version of yourself you’ve worked so hard to leave behind, how do you find your way back?

In this deeply personal and unfiltered episode of Grace Lives Here, I’m stepping behind the mic from a place I usually try to hide. The "in-between." After a small comment escalated into a night of spiraling, self-doubt, and the temptation to "burn it all down," I’m exploring why progress feels so fr...

Episode 4: I Survived, But I Wasn’t Free Yet

We talk a lot about surviving hard things. We don’t talk nearly enough about what happens after.

In this episode of Grace Lives Here, I share what it looked like to survive a life-altering illness and realize that survival didn’t automatically mean peace. The danger had passed, but my body hadn’t gotten the message yet. We talk about panic, a nervous system stuck on high alert, and why...

Why It Feels Like We Ruin Things When They Start to Go Right Grace Lives Here – Episode 3

Why does fear show up after things begin to feel better?

In this episode of Grace Lives Here, we talk about the part of healing no one prepares you for.

The moments after progress, when clarity arrives and your nervous system doesn’t know what to do with it yet.

I share a deeply personal story about a night when everything looked fine on th...

In this episode of Grace Lives Here, I’m talking about what came after survival. After meningitis rewired my brain and took my voice with it. After years of learning how to function again. After caregiving, loss, exhaustion, and the quiet shame that can settle in when life is interrupted and you don’t recognize yourself anymore. This episode is about writing — not as productivity, not as publishing, and not as a cure — but as a way...

This is the first full episode of Grace Lives Here, and honestly, it still feels a little vulnerable to say that out loud.

In this episode, I share the story behind this podcast. Why it exists. Why it matters to me. And why it comes from a very different place than anything I’ve done before.

I talk about losing my voice in a very real way after surviving meningitis, how close I came to losing my life, and what it was like to rebuil...

What if the life you miss is the one you haven’t let yourself live yet?

That question has been sitting with me for a while. And honestly? This podcast exists because I waited. I kept telling myself I’d start when things felt clearer. When I felt more ready. When the fear quieted down a little.

But I’m not sure that moment ever actually comes.

So this is me choosing to begin anyway.

Grace Lives Here is a podcast I’m creating in real...