Why I Built Serenity & Sweet Tea

There's a version of this post where I tell you Serenity & Sweet Tea started as a business plan — a market gap I spotted, a niche I researched, a spreadsheet with projected revenue. That's not what happened.

It started with my Daddy.

He's been my whole world since birth. My first love, if I'm honest — when I was four or five years old, I told my Mama, adamant as could be, that when I grew up I was going to marry Daddy. She'd just giggle. He was my best friend and my confidant growing up, a man who worked two jobs, always, to make sure his family had what it needed.

So when my Mama passed away, I didn't give it a second thought — of course Daddy was going to come live with me. I knew his memory had been worsening, but I had no idea what kind of roller coaster we were about to ride. A dementia diagnosis. Then bladder cancer. Then an aneurysm. Then liver cancer. One after another, stacking on top of each other, over five-plus years of me being his primary caregiver.

I do not regret a single day of it. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you my body, my mind, and my wallet aren't completely exhausted, because they are.

That's the truth this whole brand was built on top of.

If you're here, there's a decent chance you know some version of this season yourself. You're an adult child caring for an aging parent — maybe your mother, maybe your father — while still trying to hold together your own home, your own job, your own family. You didn't apply for this role. Nobody trained you for it. And somewhere in the middle of doctor's appointments and medication schedules and quiet exhaustion nobody else sees, you probably found what I found: a caregiving world full of clinical checklists, and almost nobody actually talking to you like a real person going through a real thing.

I looked for community and came up mostly empty. I looked for resources that understood the emotional weight of this — not just the logistics — and mostly found silence, or worse, cheerful advice that didn't seem to have lived through anything like this at all.

So I built the thing I wished existed.

Why "Serenity & Sweet Tea"

The name is exactly what I needed most in the hardest parts of this season: a little bit of peace, and someone to sit with me a while. Not a lecture. Not a checklist shouted at me from a place of theory. Just a porch, some sweet tea, and a little bit of honesty.

That's what I want this place to be for you.

What lived experience actually means here

There's no shortage of caregiving advice online, and a lot of it is well-researched and well-meaning. But there's a difference between advice that comes from studying a situation and advice that comes from living inside it — the 2am moments, the guilt that shows up uninvited, the strange grief of watching someone change in front of you while they're still here.

Everything on this porch starts from that lived place first. Not instead of good information — but underneath it, holding it up.

What you'll find here

This isn't going to be a place that pretends caregiving is a tidy, inspirational journey. It's going to be honest about the hard parts, practical about the logistics, and warm about all of it. You'll find:

• A free weekly letter — the Porch Light Post — with real talk and practical help

• A blog full of stories, systems, and reflections from someone who's actually been in it

• A podcast, The Porch Light Circle, for the drives to appointments and the folding-laundry hours

• Digital tools built to make the coordination side of caregiving a little lighter, starting with the Family Huddle Kit

• Eventually, a paid community for those who want to go a little deeper

If this is you

If you're reading this in the middle of your own hard season — whether it just started or you've been in it a while — I'm glad you found your way here. You don't have to have anything figured out today. You just have to be here.

The porch light is always on. Come sit awhile.