Denise / This Human Life

Denise Vaughn is a Family Advocate at Joshua Station. “I love sitting with our residents and developing relationships. Much of my work is very practical. But it’s always amazing when we sense we are both simply doing this human life thing together, and in that way we’re ‘the same.’

“A resident showed me a picture of herself on her phone. It was from 2013, and she looked full of life and confident. She looks 20 years older now. She had a bad accident that broke her body. She was divorced. She’s had trauma and depression that she can’t talk with me about yet. But she tells me about being in the grocery line with a full cart, finding out she has no money on her food stamp card, and being overwhelmed with embarrassment. She was literally stroking the picture on her phone as she spoke. I told her, ‘That picture on the phone is still you.’ And the embarrassment is me; I’ve known that kind of shame.