There are seasons in life that ask questions we never expected to answer.
Who am I now?
What happens when the path I was walking suddenly disappears?
Do I still have something meaningful to contribute?
In 2017, those questions became very real for me.
I was recovering from a life-changing health challenge and trying to make sense of a future that no longer looked the way I had imagined. Along with the physical realities came something harder to describe: uncertainty.
For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t sure who I was becoming.
The work that had defined much of my life was behind me. The future felt unclear. And like many people facing unexpected change, I found myself standing between who I had been and who I might become.
I missed creating.
I missed building.
I missed being part of conversations that could make a difference.
I missed believing that what I had learned, what I had experienced, and what I cared about still had value.
Most of all, I missed having a sense of purpose.
Somewhere beneath the uncertainty, my soul still wanted to contribute. It still wanted to build. It still wanted to create. I just didn’t know what that would look like anymore.
I wish I could tell you I immediately found clarity.
I didn’t.
Some days I felt hopeful.
Some days I felt lost.
Some days I wondered whether the most meaningful work of my life was behind me.
I spent a lot of time asking questions I couldn’t answer.
What now?
What can I still do?
What does contribution look like in this season of my life?
Then something unexpected happened.
While I was still searching for those answers, I came across two County of San Diego Requests for Proposals: the Parenting Expo 2017 and the STAR Awards.
Looking back, I don’t think the significance was the contracts themselves.
The significance was what they represented.
An opportunity.
A possibility.
A reminder that perhaps my story wasn’t finished.
I remember looking at those RFPs and feeling both excitement and doubt.
Part of me wanted to submit.
Part of me wondered if I could.
Part of me wondered if I should.
But somewhere underneath all of that uncertainty was a quieter voice asking:
What if you still have something to contribute?
So I submitted the proposals.
And I won.
Coordinating those events while recovering was not easy. But those projects gave me something I desperately needed.
Hope.
Not because they provided work.
Because they reminded me that purpose does not always disappear when life changes.
Sometimes purpose simply changes form.
The contracts were temporary.
The lesson stayed with me.
I still had something to contribute.
That realization sent me back to a much earlier chapter of my life.
Back to a garage.
Back to 2002.
Back to the beginning.
I did not start with a strategic plan.
I started with a belief.
I believed that families and youth deserved meaningful opportunities to participate in the decisions affecting their lives. I believed that lived experience carried knowledge that systems needed to hear.
But I also came to understand something equally important.
The people working within those systems wanted to be heard too.
Behind every title was a person trying to make difficult decisions, balance competing priorities, and create better outcomes for children, families, and communities.
The more relationships we built, the more I realized that meaningful change rarely comes from one group having all the answers.
It comes from creating opportunities for people with different experiences, perspectives, and responsibilities to learn from one another.
I believed then, and still believe today, that every person brings knowledge, experience, and insight that can strengthen a community.
My office was a garage.
My meetings happened between parenting, paperwork, and everyday chaos.
I would be on calls with mental health providers, public administrators, and community leaders while my sons were in the background arguing, wrestling, yelling, or beating the hell out of each other like brothers sometimes do. I was constantly trying to maintain professionalism while managing real life happening just outside the room.
I remember one moment so clearly.
I was on the phone with the Behavioral Health Director, trying to hold an important conversation together, when chaos broke out in the house again. This time, I lost my composure completely and started yelling at my boys.
I was mortified.
Then he laughed.
Not in a cruel way.
In a human way.
He told me that sounded exactly like the house he grew up in.
For some reason, that moment stayed with me.
Maybe because it reminded me that underneath the titles, positions, systems, and organizational charts, we are all just human beings trying to navigate life.
Trying to raise our families.
Trying to contribute.
Trying to belong.
Trying to make a difference.
What eventually grew from that garage became the Family & Youth Roundtable.
Together, families, youth, providers, and public administrators worked to strengthen partnerships, challenge stigma, elevate lived experience, and create opportunities for voices that had too often been overlooked to influence the systems affecting their lives.
We helped advance the profession of Family and Youth Partners.
We trained providers on the value of authentic Family and Youth Partnership.
We created forums and conversations that brought together people who had often spent years talking past one another.
At the time, I thought the work was primarily about systems change.
Looking back now, I see something deeper.
The work was about connection.
It was about creating the conditions where people could move beyond assumptions and truly understand one another.
It was about recognizing that every voice at the table matters.
Not because every person will agree.
But because every person sees something others cannot.
Families see things professionals miss.
Youth see things adults miss.
Providers see things families miss.
Leaders see things communities miss.
And meaningful change happens when we create space to hear one another.
Years later, while searching for purpose during my own recovery, I found myself returning to those same lessons.
Not because I had all the answers.
But because I had learned something important.
Life changes us.
Loss changes us.
Success changes us.
Failure changes us.
But even in our most difficult seasons, there are parts of ourselves that remain.
The values that guide us.
The experiences that shape us.
The purpose that continues to call us forward.
Maybe life is less about becoming one fixed person and more about rediscovering what remains true in us through every season of change.
Looking back now, I realize that some of the most important work we did was building relationships strong enough for people to hear one another.
Because meaningful change rarely begins with agreement.
It begins with understanding.
— Donna Ewing Marto
LUV Solutions | Thoughts for the Journey