I didn't set out to run a memory care home. That was never the plan, not when I was a Financial Adviser at New York Life, not when I was mapping out what I thought my career would look like. Golden Pines Senior Living has been operating since 2014, two homes in Troy, Michigan, and when I took over operations in 2018 I thought I understood what I was walking into. I didn't.
Nobody tells you the thing that actually gets you. They tell you about regulations, about staffing challenges, about the business side of assisted living and memory care. And those are real, don't get me wrong. But what nobody tells you is what happens to YOUR heart. Because this work, if you're doing it right, will crack you open in ways you didn't know you could be cracked open.
We have residents across both homes, Daley Home and Herbmoor House, and every single one of them becomes family. That's not a line I use for marketing. I mean I know their favorite foods. I know who likes their coffee a certain way in the morning, who lights up when I pull out the guitar and start playing, who will sing along even when they can't remember the words to much else. Those moments are everything. They're the reason you keep showing up. But they're also the reason this work can quietly destroy you if you're not careful.
Because, what nobody prepares you for is the loss.
When a resident passes, and they do, I am devastated. Not in the professional, measured way you might expect from someone running a business. I mean genuinely, deeply devastated. And I've had moments, more than a few, where I sit with that and think maybe I'm in the wrong business. Maybe someone who takes it this hard shouldn't be the one in charge. Maybe there's a version of this where you keep more distance, stay more composed, protect yourself better.
But then I come back to something I believe all the way through. You WANT someone like me running a place like this. You want the person who is wrecked when your loved one passes, because that's how you know there's heart at the center of it all. That devastation is not a weakness. It's the qualification.
Granted, I didn't always understand that. The first couple of years I tried to carry everything myself, every overnight call, every family meeting, every crisis. And what happens when you do that is predictable.. you burn out. Your health takes a hit. Your patience shrinks. You start running on fumes and calling it dedication when really it's just stubbornness. I learned the hard way that you have to rely on your team, you have to build processes and systems, or this work will take more from you than you have to give. And then you're no good to anyone, least of all the people who need you most.
Which gets me to something I tell our staff all the time, and I know how it sounds, but I say it anyway. We are truly doing God's work. I know that's a big statement. I know it might come across as corny or overly earnest. But I double down on it every time because I've seen what happens when seniors don't have people who care. Seniors need love, need understanding, need respect.. dignity. These are not abstract concepts when you're helping someone eat breakfast or calming them down at two in the morning when they're scared and confused. That's where dignity lives. In the small things. In the showing up.
And so, eight years in, I can tell you the business side matters, the systems matter, the licensing and the compliance and the staffing pipelines, all of it matters. But none of it works without the thing you can't put in a manual. The thing that makes you remember which resident likes to be called by a nickname their grandkids gave them, or which song will bring someone back to themselves for three minutes on a hard afternoon.
In any case, there's something else underneath all of this that I don't talk about often.
Mama raised me, back in the Philippines, she was the one who shaped me. And when she passed in 2022, I wasn't there. I was here, in Michigan, taking care of other people's parents, other people's grandparents. I don't think I fully understood until after she was gone that there's a connection between those two things. That every resident I sit with, every hand I hold, every song I play on that guitar in the living room of one of our homes in Troy.. some part of me is still trying to take care of her. Some part of me is still trying to be there.
I won't pretend that realization made things easier. It didn't. It made things heavier, honestly. But it also made them clearer. Because now I know exactly why I do this, and I know that the weight of it is not something to run from. The weight is the whole point. It means you haven't gone numb. It means the work still means something. It means you're still the kind of person who should be doing this.
Sometimes the thing that breaks your heart is the same thing that tells you exactly where you belong.
