Why The Accidental Matriarch

I didn’t set out to become The Matriarch.
I became her by answering the call—sometimes literally.

When everything changed, it began with a single ping—an email from a social worker that launched me into a world of grief, uncertainty, and responsibility. That moment cracked open something profound within me, setting the stage for the work I do now with A New Path.

But here’s the truth: I’ve been living in the in-between my entire life.
I came of age in transitional times—born in the U.S. Bicentennial year, raised alongside floppy disks and floppy emotions, educated just as analog became digital. In college, I wrote papers using card catalogs one semester, and Netscape the next. In my first teaching job, I was handed a red curriculum binder with the disclaimer: “We don’t actually do it that way anymore.”

Sound familiar?

In ministry, in mental health, in life—I’ve always found myself at the edge of what was and what’s yet to be, navigating liminal space, learning to see structure in the chaos, and guiding others through it. That’s what a matriarch does: she doesn’t just hold things together, she midwifes what’s next.

Only I didn’t know that’s what I was becoming. Not at first.
When my parents died, I thought I was “just” settling their affairs. But the spreadsheets, the death certificates, the passwords—they weren’t just paperwork. They were portals. To memory, to meaning, to grief. I didn’t just grieve my parents. I grieved the systems that failed them, the things we never said, the roles I had to assume without preparation or permission.

That’s when I realized:
Logistics and legacy are inextricably linked. And grief? It lives in the paperwork.