—FOUNDER & DIRECTOR— Regina Sën

Before illness changed my life, I was a mother of four, a licensed CPA, and a professional trainer. I had a career, responsibilities, relationships, and a deep sense of purpose.

Then my health changed the terms of my life.

Catastrophic illness did not only limit what I could do physically. It threatened the things through which I knew myself: independence, work, family roles, financial security, community, and the belief that I could still shape my own future.

For many women, this is the hidden devastation of illness. People may see a diagnosis or limitation. They may not see the loss of identity, the isolation, the grief, or the exhausting labor of trying to remain a person while your world grows smaller.

I know what it means to live in survival mode.

[Read “Head Above Water”]

What I Learned

My life was changed by an act of compassion that reminded me that help is not pity.

When a person enters a crisis with respect, reliability, practical support, and a willingness to understand, they can help restore something illness has taken away: the ability to breathe, to trust, to participate, and to imagine a future.

Emily taught me that the right kind of help does not make someone feel managed. It makes her feel seen.

She taught me that recovery is not only medical: it begins when a woman is believed, when a home becomes safe, when ordinary tasks are no longer impossible to carry alone, when someone helps her move from survival mode toward stability.

What I Bring

Before illness, I was a licensed CPA who worked in public accounting and private industry. I was selected by an NYSE billion-dollar company to serve on a six-figure Peak Performance implementation team and later became one of eight Peak Performance trainers for its West Coast Division.

Those experiences taught me how to lead, train, organize, facilitate, solve problems, and help people move toward shared goals.

Illness interrupted my professional path, but it did not erase my capacity to contribute. It refined what I believe leadership should be: practical, accountable, compassionate, inclusive, and rooted in the voices of people with lived experience.

I bring both professional experience and six years of lived experience alongside women seeking respite, support, and a path back to stability. I understand the difference between being spoken about and being listened to. I understand what it costs when systems overlook the human being at the center of a crisis. I healed alongside those who came for respite and rebuilding, 

A Heartsong In Action Published

My published writing began from a place of humility and desperation—chronicling the daily realities of caring for someone I loved trapped in seemingly endless suffering and disability. In searching for a rescue, I never imagined that a rescue would also find me. Through that journey, I was forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: when women are left to suffer—isolated by disability and pain for years—the toll goes far beyond the body. The cost settles deep in the nervous system, reshaping what it means to heal, both for the one in pain and for those who refuse to leave their side.

Its a double-edged experience: the aching powerlessness of caregiving, the slow, costly climb toward hope, and the unexpected ways that, in helping another (and not always perfectly) the helper can unexpectedly be seen, rescued, and transformed. These writings now form the heartsong of Emily’s Place The One—a lived archive that continue to invite connection, compassion, and healing for all who enter.

The lessons we’re learning about dignity and relationship—aren’t just for those in crisis. They offer a blueprint for any family, any community, to build resilience and deeper connection. None of us are immune to life’s toughest moments. 

Our Vision

Emily’s Place is not intended to become another impersonal system.

It is a vision of a different kind of response when catastrophic illness or injury pushes a woman toward the margins: one that begins with her humanity, her voice, her safety, and her actual daily needs.

It has become an expanding circle of people who are willing to respond before someone becomes invisible:

• Women with lived experience.

• Caregivers and families.

• Patient advocates and community organizers.

• Social workers and in-home support providers.

• Mental-health professionals, nurse practitioners, physicians, and researchers.

• Artists, faith communities, neighbors, and people willing to help in practical ways.

Together, we can identify where women fall through the gaps—housing, benefits, transport, food, caregiving, medical navigation, safety, connection, and respect—and build responses that are grounded in dignity rather than bureaucracy.

No woman’s humanity should be lost to illness and isolation.

Free the Forgotten

“Free the Forgotten” means refusing to accept that a woman should lose her life as she knew it simply because she became too sick, too complex, too poor, too exhausted, or too isolated for existing systems to hold her.

It means recognizing that no one should have to become a crisis before they are believed.

It means treating practical care as a form of liberation.

It means remembering that one woman restored to safety, dignity, and purpose may someday become part of another woman’s path back to life.

Closing

I believe we can get our stars back up in the sky —shining brightly, out of survival mode, connected to new heartsongs and renewed purpose in life.

Emily’s Place is a call to see the whole person, carry what can be carried together, and refuse to leave anyone behind.