Letter from our Founder

January 2021

Dear fellow sojourners on this dementia journey, 

I never intended to start this ministry, a non-profit organization. In fact, I fought it for almost a decade.

I had only graduated college a few months prior when people started telling me I should start a not-for-profit. I was told they saw something in me that would make a wonderful executive director and founder. While I still don’t know what they meant by this, I took it as a compliment. I started to wonder what would I be the founder of? Why does the world need yet another non-profit organization? Organizations having just obtained their status or still seeking their 501(c)(3) status were sprouting up all around me. While I have an entrepreneurial spirit and find deep purpose in serving those living with dementia and living my faith, the three did not come together in my mind as something to form in such a formal way.

As I brought the Eucharist to individuals at various care communities on New York’s Upper East Side, I saw a spiritual hunger, heard about feelings of abandonment, and witnessed the deep power of a simple prayer said in communion with another human being. As time passed, I started to do more than bring the Eucharist and pray a Hail Mary or Our Father, I would sit and listen to their stories of faith. When language was not present, I would share what Father’s homily spoke about that morning at Mass or read part of the bulletin and the New York Catholic diocesan paper. The Holy Spirit was at work, and the light of Christ started to grow in times when the darkness of life in a care community felt more like a prison.

I had something special, but it clearly was not my work. It was God’s. The years went by, and I started to expand what I was offering, but only in small bits and moments. Then, in 2017 when I was at Mass, the Gospel of Mark Chapter 5 was read. It felt like the Holy Spirit hit me upside the head with a frying pan. I had never heard the voice of God so clearly in my life before or since then. I was to start a ministry, call it the Hem of Christ, and help those seeking to continue their life of faith even as dementia starts to take over every other aspect of life. I was called to help bring the hem of Christ to those seeking healing, not of dementia, but of isolation, fear, and spiritual hunger. 

Our Jewish and Protestant brothers and sisters are doing good work in creating a dementia-friendly church, but we need more than a building physically accessible and a staff that knows the basics of dementia. We need access to the sacraments, we need opportunities to grow in faith (yes, even with dementia) and we need community outside of the Sabbath. How can we collectively answer God’s call to greater love for those walking the dementia journey? Through prayer, education, and community we can do great things!

Now, as we sit here, some 10 years later, I finally took the steps to make it real. To get in the boat with Jesus and to put out into the deep. The Hem of Christ is becoming its own entity able to live beyond me, and into something greater. It exists to help those living with dementia continue their journey of faith. To help care partners, discover life after care. To bring the hem of Christ to those seeking healing. We do this for the Glory of God Alone, and I look forward to what we can co-create with Christ through this work, together.

In Christ,