I am beyond thrilled to be speaking at the End Well Symposium in Los Angeles this November. I’m so grateful for their focus on pediatrics this year. It is a population that evokes particularly tender emotions when we talk about end of life, because goodness, they’re only just getting started.

It is a tremendous privilege to be a pediatric nurse at any stage of a child’s illness, to be so intimately involved in the care of the our world’s most precious little ones.

But it is a particularly sacred privilege to take care of a child, and stand beside their family, at the end of a child’s life. I remember every single patient I’ve provided end of life care to in our pediatric ICU. I don’t take it lightly that I was allowed into a space so raw, so beautiful and terrible, so vulnerable. It is an experience that the child’s caregivers never wanted to walk through, and an experience they will never forget.

How we shape that experience can leave a mark on a family forever.

What shapes us, our perspectives and hearts and conversation skills, as we bring ourselves to these children and their families? What makes us helpful, or God forbid, harmful? How do we shape and honor a more humane end of life for children, in the midst of all the grief and complexity?

I have been aching for a rich conversation like the one we will be having in November. I’m so deeply thankful to be invited to be a part of what promises to be an extraordinary day.

I truly hope to see you there. We need these conversations more than ever.