Our story
I was the one who stayed.
My grandparents raised me. When their health turned, I became the person who stayed home and took care of them. Gracenear comes from those years.
Devan Towslee, founder of Gracenear
The hardest part was not the work
People picture caregiving as tasks. Meals, medicine, rides, laundry, the night it takes an hour to get settled. That part is heavy, but you learn it.
What wore on me was the not knowing. Did she eat while I was out? Did anyone notice he needed something? Is everyone else on the same page I am, or am I the only one holding all of it?
Families carry that in group texts, sticky notes on the fridge, and phone calls that go to voicemail. Paid caregivers carry it too, coming into a home with no idea what happened yesterday. And the person receiving care feels it most, because asking for help and hearing nothing back is frightening.
Where the idea took shape
At Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, a storytelling class asked us to write something true. I wrote about being the caretaker, the one who stayed. Writing it down made something clear: almost every hard moment came back to the same gap. Someone asked for help, and nobody could be sure it was heard.
I build software for small businesses. So I started building the thing I wished we had.
What Gracenear is meant to protect
Dignity. The person receiving care should never feel watched or tracked. They start the request, and they see that help is coming.
Peace of mind. Families should see how the day went without sending a dozen texts.
A standard of care. Every caregiver should walk in knowing what the family expects, and the family should see what was done. Too many families have a story of care that went wrong. A shared, written standard helps prevent that.
Their story. A person is more than their diagnosis. We want families to be able to keep voices and memories in one private place, so the person they love stays at the center.
Why the name
Grace, near. The help that matters most is the kind that shows up close by and on time, and treats the person with grace when it does.
Where this goes next
Gracenear is not available to the public yet. I am building it with input from families, caregivers, and people who study dementia care, and preparing an application to the National Institute on Aging to fund a careful study of how well it works. If any part of this story sounds like yours, I would be glad to hear from you.