Juli Boit is no stranger to helping those in need. She’s an author, family nurse practitioner, and international non-profit director of Living Room International, dedicated to providing palliative care services to adults and children in western Kenya.
After going through an adoption journey with her son Ryan, whose parents had recently passed, and consequently adopting his siblings, she found herself needing some help of her own when two of her kids required transplants far from their Kenyan home.
These transformative experiences made Juli see her work through a different lens: that joy can be found in both giving and receiving and that without the pain, we cannot experience joy. Today, Juli is sharing her experience in the hopes of making someone else’s journey of navigating children’s treatments, ICU admissions, and surgeries feel a little more manageable.
Key Takeaways with Juli Boit
- Navigating an international adoption process
- How motherhood changes your perspective on helping others
- The importance of community & the feeling of belonging
- Creating community in a new phase of life
- Asking for help when you feel vulnerable or scared
- Guiding others through shared experience
- Making room for grief to experience joy
- Practices to help you feel present and grounded
- Navigating a transplant and ICU journey
- How traumatic experiences affect your faith
- Welcoming people who feel like they’ve never been welcome anywhere
Juli Boit Tweetables
- “We have the scars of the treatment as well as the gratitude.” – Juli Boit
- “The sacrifices required for our boys to be cured, made by us and those who helped us along the way, were both costly and worth it.” – Juli Boit
- “There doesn’t have to be a meaning for my children’s suffering, but compassion grew within me in a way I’m not sure otherwise would have happened.” – Juli Boit
- “We don’t control what the outcomes will be but you are loved and you’re not alone.” – Juli Boit
- “Our life experiences give us a unique ability to serve others in the ways that we’ve learned to walk that path before them. The goal is to help make the path clearer for someone else who may be walking behind us.” – Jamie Freedlund
- “That vulnerability, that willingness to say ‘yes’ is what in so many ways saved us and gave us a chance to be able to make it through a really, really dark season.” – Juli Boit
- “If we ever try to numb the pain, then we also lose the possibility for joy.” – Jamie Freedlund
Resources
- Juli Boit’s Website
- Follow Juli Boit on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube
- Living Room International
- Donate to Living Room International
- Brave Love by Juli Boit
- From Beyond the Skies by Juli Boit
- “The Space Between” Documentary
- Ronald McDonald House Charities | RMHC
Rate & Review
If you enjoyed today’s episode of The Joy In The Journey, hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify , Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen, so future episodes are automatically downloaded directly to your device.
You can also help by providing an honest rating & review over on Apple Podcasts. Reviews go a long way in helping us build awareness so that we can impact even more people. THANK YOU!
