Robin Reeves did not set out to become a caregiver. She had been working in real estate in Washington, DC, a career that looked promising on paper but left her feeling unmoored, searching for something she couldn't quite name. The work simply wasn't for her. So she made what seemed at the time like a temporary decision: she would become a caregiver while she searched for what she called her "adult job," the kind of position that would justify her ambitions and meet the expectations she had set for herself.
Then she met her first client, and everything changed. What was supposed to be a placeholder became a calling. Reeves fell in love with the work in a way that surprised her, finding herself looking forward to each new assignment with genuine anticipation. After a year of direct care, she transitioned into an office role, but the pull of caregiving never left her. It was during this time that her understanding of what it meant to care for someone deepened in ways she had not anticipated.
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Her full-time client had a daughter in Texas who would visit for a week or so each year to provide care. During those weeks, Reeves was reassigned to different clients, mostly people in hospice care. She would care for them for only a week, sometimes just a few days, yet in that brief window of time, something profound would happen. They became like family to her. She shared special drinks and meals with them. She celebrated their lives and found ways to help them enjoy whatever time remained, refusing to let the diagnosis become the defining feature of their final days. The focus was not on what was ending but on what was still possible: connection, presence, the pleasure of a good meal, the comfort of being seen and known.
This philosophy has become the foundation of Reeves's approach to gerontology. She works now with older adults living with impaired cognition, people whose short-term memory may be compromised but whose need for dignity, joy, and human connection remains intact. They might not remember what they had for lunch, she says, but they know they can come to her for support. She plays music for them. She helps them reminisce about the past. She fixes their television when it acts up. She gives out chocolate and hugs freely, understanding that these small gestures carry enormous weight in a life that may feel increasingly uncertain.
For Reeves, being a healthcare professional means bringing joy to people who are often overlooked or underestimated because of their cognitive limitations. It means recognizing that memory is only one dimension of a person's experience, and that care is about meeting people where they are, not where they used to be or where we wish they could be. It is about being present in the moment with them, creating pockets of happiness and connection that matter precisely because they are fleeting.
She is clear-eyed about the challenges facing the field she has come to love. She wants to see care put back into the senior care industry at all levels, a recognition that the work of caring has been devalued and deprioritized in favor of efficiency and profit. She believes in investing in current staff through better training and improved communication around conflict resolution, understanding that caregivers cannot give what they themselves do not receive. And she is committed to narrowing the gap in healthcare for people of color, ensuring that everyone receives equal treatment in care and support regardless of their background.
Her advice to students and early-career professionals is simple but hard-won: be true to yourself, be kind to staff and residents alike, and create healthy boundaries so that you can care for yourself. She knows from experience that this work can consume you if you let it, that the line between devotion and depletion can be thin. But she also knows that when done with intention and self-awareness, caregiving is not just a job or even a career. It is a way of being in the world, a practice of presence that transforms both the person receiving care and the person providing it.
Robin Reeves found her calling by accident, in a role she thought would be temporary. What she discovered was work that mattered more than anything she had imagined, work that asked everything of her and gave back more than she knew was possible. She did not find her "adult job" in the end. She found something better: a life of purpose, lived one moment of connection at a time.