I have been for eight years. Every time a baby is left alone, every time a mother is rushed to surgery and the machines are too loud and the room is too cold… I pull up a chair.

And I hold them. And I sing.” I sat at my kitchen table and wept.

I wept for the mother I only briefly knew, I wept for the beautiful, compassionate woman sitting in front of me, and I wept for that terrified twenty-two-year-old version of myself who just wanted to do the right thing in the dark. We spend so much of our lives wondering if anything we do actually matters.

We clock in, we clock out, we do our best to navigate a chaotic world, and we rarely get to see the ripples of our actions. But sometimes, if you are incredibly lucky, the universe brings the ripple right to your front door, thirty-two years later, just to remind you that love is never wasted.