“Just one hour of fun. One hour of laughing and giggling, and learning about their life and their past, and giving them hope, and them saying, ‘It’ll be okay.’ Absolutely no one knows if it’s going to be okay or not, but just to hear them say that is amazing.”

During her stay, a local sorority came to the House and cooked dinner. “I don’t think they have any idea how happy I was to have pancakes and bacon. We couldn’t afford bacon. That’s the harsh reality of your kids being in the hospital: you can’t work. If you don’t work, you have no money. You have no place to stay. You have no food. Without the Ronald McDonald House, I literally don’t know what I would have done.”

“At the House, we feel like we’re not the only ones going through this.”

“It helps me not keep everything bottled up inside. If I’m having a bad day, I can just talk to somebody. They’ll tell me, ‘You’re loved. You’re safe. You’re ok, and you’re going to get through this.’ And the parents are just living the same life we are. It doesn’t matter what kind of background we come from, or how much money we have or don’t have, we’re all the same.”

“You can just think about your kid. You don’t have to worry about dinner. You don’t have to worry about where you’re going to wash your clothes. You don’t have to worry about how much a hotel is going to cost on a given night.”