… what I have come to understand – is that Xavier would become a place of personal healing for me, even as it called on my professional self.
When it comes to luck you make your own
Tonight I got dirt on my hands but I’m building me a new home
– Lucky Town, Bruce Springsteen
I stepped onto the campus of Xavier College Preparatory High School in Palm Desert, California as principal in March of 2024. I came with a full heart and a ton of excitement. I suppose I was thinking about what had come before in my life and all that had brought me to this school: three decades I had spent in Catholic education leadership, relationships I had with people at Xavier, the Jesuit mission I tried to live. I was also excited about the promise of a new chapter in life as Caroline and I were moving here for an adventure together. It seems hard to believe that the joyful beginning of this new venture would turn to sorrow when, a few months later, Caroline was gone.
What was impossible to know then – but what I have come to understand – is that Xavier would become a place of personal healing for me, even as it called on my professional self.
Xavier is a remarkable school. It is the only Catholic high school in the Coachella Valley, and it carries a responsibility because of that. I feel that responsibility almost every day. There is something unmistakably special here. From the moment you enter the gates, you sense that this is not just a school, it is a community grounded in the Jesuit tradition, committed to forming young people who will live lives of service, leadership, and faith.
Our students are at the heart of that mission and have been so helpful in coming to terms with Caroline’s passing. They are bright, funny, messy, determined, deeply human and they want to be challenged. They want to be seen. They want to matter. I am thinking specifically of my senior Cura Personalis group with whom I meet weekly and of my ninth grade, Pre AP English One class with whom I am blessed to talk about literature almost every day.
I get to journey with a wonderful team of educators and staff, colleagues who are passionate about their disciplines and deeply invested in the whole person of each student. They know the power of accompaniment. They know that formation is more than a transcript. They show up, day after day even as they contend with a principal who is just learning the school.
There is nothing flashy about the work we do, but it is sacred. It is in the ordinary rhythms: morning check-ins, classroom discussions, retreats, hallway chats, practice fields, service outings, and liturgies that stop us in our tracks with their quiet beauty. It is in the way we pray together, the way we wrestle with hard questions, the way we tell the truth. At Xavier, when we are at our best (as we often are), the Jesuit call to be “women and men with and for others” is not just something we teach, it is something we try to live, imperfectly to be sure.
I often think of Caroline when I am walking the campus. She quickly fell in love with the school and she loved the season of Lent, especially the idea of metanoia: the Greek word for conversion or a turning of the heart. For Caroline, metanoia was never about shame or penance. It was about freedom. It was about being open to transformation.
Since her death, that word has taken on new meaning for me. These past months have been a season of profound metanoia. Grief has turned me inward and outward all at once. There is a stripping away that comes with loss, but also a deepening. The work I do now is filtered through that clarity. I do not take the days for granted. I know how fleeting they are. And I know how important it is to use our time to build something that lasts. Each day that passes, I am somehow more peaceful. The people of Xavier Prep have so much to do with that. There is work to be done. We are working on enrollment, on transparency in decision-making, on the spiritual formation of both students and faculty, on the concretization of the president/principal model.
But this is joyful work for me. It is rooted in hope.
So here I am, in the desert, still walking through the mystery of resurrection. Still grieving. Still grateful. Still believing in the power of Catholic education to form young people who will go out and set the world on fire.
And deeply, deeply thankful to be doing that work here, at Xavier Prep.