CareTeams from a CarePartner's Perspective

Over the past 14 years, over 90 CarePartners have felt the compassion and support of our CareTeams.  Although CareTeams may start as strangers to our CarePartners, they quickly become supportive, lifelong friends and family.  One CarePartner, and mother, recalls her early memories of her CareTeam.

 ~ ~ It was a sunny day when the volunteers came into my home and introduced themselves as my CareTeam.  My daughter Dee had just started high school and also needed support as she came out about her HIV status.

Soon this group of strangers became the Northwest Hearts CareTeam and waves of lives changed, tossed all collectively in the circles of time allotted.  And throughout these changes, my Team - our Team - never really departed from our side. 

My CareTeam has been my hands when the weights of caregiving chained Dee and I down, these volunteers have been my legs when neuropathy and fatigues kept me close to my bed.  These loving people have cared for us when ignorance and fear blinded the eyes of those who I thought I could see.

My Team and I will always know our one-ness even when cities kept us apart.  I cannot measure the ways I am loved by them and them by me, for I carry this love with me, wherever I go.  Its breadth, span, depth…its gift to me is eternal.  For their love has grown from postcard to postcard, phone call to phone call, from dinners to cabarets, from rides to shoulders, to waiting arms embracing my daughter and me through all our span of life.

All of their gifts have grown me in grace, fertilized us with patience, showered us with their blessed covering in the holiness of love.  Because my cry was heard they rescued my baby and me in the greatest love.~ ~

Dee led an unbreakable chain of love that still exists even after her death at the tender age of 20.  Her spirit and love for life taught the volunteers much more than the tremendous support they gave to her.

- A CarePartner