I thought I knew what to expect from a long-term care home. Boy, was I wrong. Not completely but enough to have me pause my thinking. To be fair, I’m not sure where my assumptions came from. No one in my family has lived in one. I had never visited one before but yet, like many of us, I arrived with a set of quiet expectations formed by stories we absorb from glossy magazines and curated TV ads.
What I encountered was both what I thought I knew and everything I didn’t. It was both heartwarming and unsettling all at once. Full of moments that softened me, alongside moments that made me pause not because they were dramatic but because they either reinforced or challenged my notions of what long term care offers. Speaking of notions…it led me to consider that of intention. So much of our lives are built on it. Early on, we are intentional about the paths we take.
The right schools.
The right careers.
The right relationships.
The right neighbourhoods.
We plan. We optimize. We compare. We measure progress. We make careful, deliberate choices about how life should unfold. Once we’ve done that work for ourselves, we then turn our attention to our children, guiding, nudging, worrying, and hoping our intentions will carry them forward into lives that are safe, meaningful, and full. How often do we apply that same level of intention to the final chapters of our lives and those of our parents? Not just where we will live but how we will be lived with. Not only safety and medical care but the dignity, identity, and belonging that was so important in the earlier years of our lives. Not merely how long we live but how much of ourselves is still allowed to exist within that living.
Walking into a long-term care home creates a quiet reckoning. It interrupts the idea that life is always about momentum and achievement. Instead, it poses a different question and it is one that has nothing to do with progress and everything to do with humanity: What does intention look like when the goal is no longer growth, but presence?
This is where my understanding deepened and this is also where the Butterfly Methodology matters so profoundly. The Butterfly Approach is, at its core, an intentional philosophy of care. It challenges the assumption that care must be clinical, task-driven, and impersonal. It asks us to shift our focus from routines and structures to relationships, from systems to people and from control to connection. It is intentional about slowing down and noticing who we are with and how we are with them and intentionally adapting the environment to people, rather than forcing people to adapt to environments. It understands that even when memory fades, personhood does not and that we have to be intentional in our behaviour and our communication because emotion often outlives cognition. Joy, fear, comfort, and connection are ever present even if words have escaped our memories.
What struck me most was this: intention doesn’t just shape the experience of residents. It shapes the culture of care itself and is the sustainability we want. Intentionality is not what we say we value. It is what our environments, routines, and behaviours show us to be true. Many long-term care homes are built with good intentions, but intentions, without alignment, can dissolve into process. What is meant to be compassionate can become transactional and what is designed for care can slip into control.
When intention is lived, truly lived….when it shows up in the day to day hum of the home, we do more than improve outcomes. We make a statement about who matters and who we are choosing to be. Surely the twilight of our lives deserves the same intentionality as the beginning. I definitely thought I knew what to expect from a long-term care home. What I discovered instead was a deeper question: If intention shapes how we live, what does our care at the end of life reveal about how deeply we value life itself, overall?
Associate Consultant Trainer, MCM Canada