Tea For Christmas

Each year, a group of ladies in Scottsdale join together for Christmas Tea. It’s no ordinary tea. They decorate a home that’s already gorgeous, create a store filled with holiday trinkets, collect raffle prizes and ask for support for the moms and babies at Maggie’s Place. This year their leader, Susie Stelzer, a longtime friend…

The Labor of Love

Written by MissionCorps Member Emily Bruce. Thank you for sharing Emily. When a baby is born, it is the maternal instinct (and growing increasingly more common in hospitals), to place the baby on the chest, skin-to-skin. This skin-to-skin contact, often called “the golden hour,” has incredible benefits for both mom and baby. Babies who are…

How Are You Preparing?

Lent is a week away. What are you doing to prepare? Thought, reflection, prayer? In a meeting with the Maggie’s Place staff yesterday, we took time to reflect on some words from Pope Francis. Perhaps these thoughts will help you prepare for the season as well. Do You Want To Fast This Lent? In the…

Saying Yes

Maggie’s Place operates on a set of core values: love, hospitality, community, and excellence. These values aren’t easy. In fact, they’re radical. But radicality doesn’t entail impossibility. It just means we need grace. As we inch closer to our 17 year anniversary on May 13, we’re celebrating some of the initial “yeses” that created Maggie’s…

Why Do A Year Of Service?

I graduated from Gonzaga University in 2013. As a Jesuit institution, service is something that Gonzaga talks about a LOT. Zags are incredibly service-oriented. It’s instilled in us through service-learning classes and mission trip opportunities and our clubs. Still, I have to admit that post-grad service was not something that ever entered my radar as…

New Life

Love rocks at Maggie’s Place in a special way. As a new MissionCorps at Maggie’s Place, I was surprised to learn that, no matter how much love I give, even more is returned. Love is the fuel and driving force behind every new day. This Easter season, I have been thinking a lot about how…

Pro-Life Beyond Birth

“I don’t know if I’m good enough to be her mother,” she sobbed as I held her newborn daughter in my arms. Not much had gone right in Rose’s life. Her first memory of violence occurred at a mere three years old. Adopted into one abusive family from another, she struggled to maintain healthy relationships.…

The Gift of Tears

In my time at Maggie’s Place, I have cried. I have cried tears of exhaustion after a long day of work, tears of sadness when someone I love is in pain, and tears of frustration when I feel inadequate. Living in a house full of women, it can be extremely challenging to hide those tears.…

Courage, Dear Heart

At Maggie’s Place we have a saying that the only thing that is constant is change. There is always a new mom moving in after another mom is finishing the program, a new baby being born, or a new MissionCorps transitioning into her role. We learn to love in the transitions and change that happen…

Into the Desert

Brown and Spiky. This is how I described Arizona upon my arrival at Maggie’s Place. I grew up surrounded by the lush, green fields of Pennsylvania and taking day trips to the Atlantic Ocean. The brown landscape, pointy plants, dry heat, stinging arachnids, and assorted reptiles are foreign to me, and left me wondering… “What…