Coming Home: How Family Roots Was Born on Five Acres of Love

The Journey Home

In early 2025, my husband and I made one of the biggest decisions of our lives. We packed up our home in Anchorage, Alaska, and moved to Whidbey Island, Washington — not for a job, not for a lifestyle change, but for family.

My parents, now in their mid-eighties, had been living on the same five-acre farm for 47 years. The land where I grew up, where I used to ride horses through the forest, where every corner holds a memory. But time had started to take its toll. The mowing, the weeding, the house chores, the endless daily demands of a large property — it was becoming too much. We knew we needed to be there.

The Conversations No One Wants to Have

If you've ever been an adult child coming home to 'help,' you know it's not simple. There's love in every intention — and landmines in nearly every conversation.

We had some difficult discussions about purging things my parents no longer needed, updating parts of their home that were still stuck in the 1970s (think orange shag carpet), and how to assist with daily chores without stepping on their toes. There were definitely moments when feelings got hurt. There were toes stepped on. But it was all done from a place of deep love.

And then there were the harder conversations — the ones about updated wills, powers of attorney, whether it was still safe to drive. Watching my parents lose pieces of their autonomy was one of the most painful parts of this journey. I don't think I fully understood the weight of that until I was living it.

From the Farm to a Fresh Start

After a few months of helping around the farm, my parents made their decision. They were ready to move into a smaller condo at a nearby retirement community — a place better suited to where they are now. And they asked us to take on the renovations and the purging.

Over the past seven months, that's exactly what we've been doing. We've cleared out decades of accumulated belongings, replaced flooring in the bedrooms (goodbye, shag carpet), repainted every wall, updated the kitchen cabinets, added new light fixtures, and tackled a long list of miscellaneous repairs. Outside, we've been cleaning up the gardens, pruning trees that had gone untended for years, and breathing new life into land that still has so much beauty to give.

I found genuine love in this work. But I also found complexity — in the family dynamics, in the emotional weight, in the sheer number of decisions that needed to be made.

A Question That Wouldn't Let Me Go

As I talked to more friends going through similar journeys — adult children helping aging parents figure out what comes next — I kept hearing the same themes. The same stumbling blocks. The parent-and-child dynamic that makes certain conversations feel impossible. The physical and cognitive changes that add layers of challenge: fading eyesight, diminishing hearing, the heartbreak of a parent who can't remember a conversation from yesterday.

And so many families in denial that any of this is happening at all.

The question that kept surfacing for me was: How can I help?

How can I help other families navigate these tough conversations? How can I empower seniors to start thinking about what's best for them — and their families — in their elder years? How can I take what I've lived through and turn it into something useful?

Why Family Roots Exists

The answer came from looking at what I already had: professional skills as a life transitions coach, and years of experience in project management. Put those together with everything I'd just lived through, and Family Roots was born.

Family Roots is a senior navigation consulting business. We help families have the hard conversations — and then we help bring the decisions from those conversations to life. Whether that means downsizing a home, researching senior living options, coordinating family members across time zones, or simply helping a family figure out what 'what's manageable' even looks like for their loved one — that's our work.

We serve families locally on Whidbey Island and throughout the surrounding area, and we offer virtual consulting for families wherever they are.

And what better place to do this work than the land I grew up on — the farm, the forest, the five acres that taught me what family really means?

If your family is navigating a senior life transition — and you don't know where to start — we'd love to help.

Reach out at Loreen@rootedinvalues.com.

— Loreen, Founder, Family Roots

"I found genuine love in this work. But I also found complexity — in the family dynamics, in the emotional weight, in the sheer number of decisions that needed to be made."

"The land where I grew up, where I used to ride horses through the forest — that's where Family Roots began."