My name is Cathy and I have been sharing life with people here at Bethany house for 15 years. I am currently the “House Leader” here. This is my home as well as for 8 other individuals. We live along side each other and we just live life. There have been some difficult times over the past 15 years that we have lived together but I experience Bethany as a place of joy, celebration and life. As any other family we have our struggles living as a large group of adults but overall we become like brothers and sisters. I have been privileged in my own journey to share life with 2 of the 5 Core Members that originally founded this home. We have been consistent in each other’s lives for 15 years.

We originally lived in a smaller home that we refer to as the “old Bethany”. As our needs changed and we started to encounter some issues that all people are presented with as we age we became aware that new more accessible home was needed. So began the building of our current home here on Roy street. “ We have space now to be together or to find a quiet moment alone.” This has been a grace for us here at Bethany.

We try to encourage each other every day to contribute to the care of our home and each other. Supper is a time of connecting and sharing our day with each other. In fact it is the only time we have from Monday to Friday when we are together during the day. We laugh and sing and when the mood is right there is still a lot of dancing that happens in our living room, an old Bethany tradition.

I encourage people to visit that look at the site. We are a house of welcome and hospitality. We love to share our home and food with visitors and there is a sense of peace and goodness here in our home. Life here is simple and if people come to enter into relationship and befriend the Core Members and fellow Assistants it can be a year of joy and learning.

We also are a bit unique in our home. We have a “Night Support Assistant” and a “Day Support” team that are present to people during those periods of time when the House team members are resting. We rely on this group of folks to be present to some of the older and more fragile Core Members and provide them with alternative choices to the workplaces and Day Programs that some of our other members attend each day. This has been a blessing for those aging Core Members in our house that need to stay home and remain comfortable in their surroundings.

The old Bethany lives on in the new Bethany