Friends,

I have always resisted New Year’s resolutions (and diets for that matter) because I have found them to be unsustainable. Or perhaps because, as Oscar Wilde famously put it, “I can resist everything except temptation.” The bottom line is that resolutions have not worked too well for me. I have found it more productive to work on more modest and sustainable changes to my behaviors to advance personal and professional goals, rather than make grandiose proclamations about how I am going to become a better person, and within two months or so be back to my former habits.

All that being said, at Archway, we have some big ideas about how to expand our impact and improve our work. While our 2022 commitments border on the grandiose, they are grounded in defined plans designed to improve our odds for success. Our 2022 goals are to make Archway Bigger, Stronger and Better. Yes, I know, these “goals” sound rather ambitious and a bit fuzzy, don't they?

Allow me to explain: 

Meet Sheri Replane!

I jump on a video call with Sheri, our very own Director of Communications, and my boss, for a call much different than our typical. This time, I get to interview her for our staff spotlight, and I’m excited to spend time with Sheri learning more about what makes her special!

As I would come to learn through our talk, backpacking was, and continues to be, a significant part of Sheri’s life both as a hobby and as a job. 

“The first time I truly backpacked, I really enjoyed the pace. Everything was steady, but slow and simple. For the first time I was taking things in at a different speed, slow and methodical. I really enjoyed life at that pace. I was seeing things in a new way, noticing things I hadn’t before.”

So, in honor of this view of life, I thought it fitting to mirror the staff spotlight in the same manner and see what we might notice along the way!

Meet Lynda Junker!

I place a call to Lynda in the morning in order to accommodate her chemo schedule. From the moment she answers she’s in a great mood. I’d come to learn that this is just her personality. No matter what trials we discussed she always says with an upbeat tone, ‘but I’m alright!’ 

In January, 2021 she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer and given 3 months to live. “I was having some troubles I saw my primary care doctor for and he had a bad feeling, once tests had come back, about what might be the cause. He sent me to an oncologist, and they told me I had ‘til April, they’d guess.”

“But I’m still here because they don’t determine when I go, the Good Lord does.” Lynda devotes her life to her faith. And I can see, without her directly saying so, that it releases a burden from her own shoulders of things out of her control.

Physically, much of Lynda’s day is different now compared to prior to her diagnosis. She is in a wheelchair and needs help to walk without it, telling me that her bones are very fragile. While that doesn’t stop her from doing the things she’s always loved, I wanted to get to know more about her prior to her diagnosis.