Professional Experience Meets Lived Experience

How Did We Get Here?

True North Living was shaped by both personal experience and professional experience.

I am a nurse with a professional background that includes psychiatric and behavioral health care. Throughout my career, I have worked with individuals experiencing complex mental health needs and have seen how profoundly a person’s environment, relationships, consistency, communication, and sense of safety can affect their overall well-being.

My nursing experience has taught me that providing care is about more than completing tasks.

It is about paying attention.

It is about recognizing changes.

It is about understanding that behavior communicates something.

And it is about remembering that the person receiving support is more than a diagnosis, a chart, or a list of services.

But professional experience is only one part of the picture.

Living with and advocating for someone receiving residential services taught me something equally important:

The people receiving services often understand the strengths and weaknesses of those services better than anyone.

That is why True North Living is being built at the intersection of professional knowledge and lived experience.

We believe regulations, training, clinical knowledge, and professional standards matter.

We also believe that the people who live in a home should have a meaningful voice in shaping what that home feels like.

My experience as a nurse—and particularly my experience in psychiatric and behavioral health care—helps inform our commitment to safety, consistency, communication, individualized support, and recognizing each person as an individual.

Andrea’s lived experience helped us ask a different question:

“What does it actually feel like to live here?”

True North Living was built by taking both questions seriously