‘Everybody is going through something’: Meet Women of the Year honoree Tina McIntosh

Tina McIntosh is one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year, a recognition of women who have made a significant impact in their communities and across the country. The program launched in 2022 as a continuation of Women of the Century, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Meet this year’s honorees at womenoftheyear.usatoday.com.

Tina McIntosh knows what it’s like to face challenges.

As the founder and CEO of Joy’s House, a local nonprofit that provides daytime care to adults with life-altering diagnoses, McIntosh helps families navigating difficult waters on a daily basis.

Joy’s House is a community that makes it possible for families to keep their loved ones at home while providing a safe and hopefully cheerful place to spend their days. Activities range from crafts to trivia to brain games — always emotionally or intellectually stimulating.

“There's always a structure to what we do,” McIntosh said. “But we veer from that quite often depending on who's here and what moods are and what people have enjoyed their entire lives.”

McIntosh founded Joy’s House at the age of 27, after quitting her job as an event planner to found the nonprofit. She was inspired by a day center she worked at in Muncie, while she was a student at Ball State — and that spark stayed with her as she navigated the process of building something new in Indianapolis.

Over two decades later, the center has two locations — one in Broad Ripple and one on the south side near University of Indianapolis — and has helped many families keep their loved ones safe and at home. McIntosh is passionate about what she’s built at Joy’s House and its success.

But her own life hasn’t been without its struggles. McIntosh has helmed Joy's House through periods of strife, including a difficult financial period. COVID-19 was devastating for the center, as Joy's House lost many of its guests to either isolation or the illness. In her personal life, McIntosh and her husband have both had cancer twice.

With so much in her life, from running a nonprofit to family life and friendship, McIntosh said she has felt the pressure to balance everything perfectly in the past. But that’s just not feasible. So, one of the principles she uses to guide her life is this: embrace the imbalance.

“I’ve made it my personal goal to embrace the imbalance and just hopefully wherever I am, be really great in that moment,” she said. “And then when I'm done with that, I can move on to the next one.”

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

What is some advice you would give to your younger self? 

One of the best things I learned in the beginning was, I didn't know everything nor did I need to know everything. What I had to do was surround myself with people who were smarter than me, more connected with me, who would then lift me up and Joy’s House in the process.

When you reflect on all you’ve accomplished, what is your proudest moment?

I go to two extremes. One is, we were years ago voted as the most outstanding adult day service in the nation. That was a really great moment. And it was a great moment for Joy’s House because even though I'm blessed to be the founder, I am not the reason we're here. I was the seed for this idea, but it's so much bigger than me and has been for 23 years.

And then, I go to the everyday moments that I actually don't get as much as I used to — but the moments with a guest when maybe he's having a really hard day and I get to kneel next to him and be present and help him feel comfortable and safe — and know that he's in the right place.

What are some lessons that help you overcome adversity?

For me, when I'm faced with adversity, the first thing is faith. I hope that I'm on my knees in prayer, not just in hard times, but in good times too. And I've learned — I think a lot of it is through my personal experience, a lot of it is through my work at Joy’s House — I've learned that you have to lean on other people. We tell family caregivers that all the time, that you've got to lean on your family and your friends and your neighbors and the people who care about you, and you have to be specific with what it is that you need.

People want to show up when you're going through a hard time. It's how we show love to each other is by bringing meals, by being in prayer, by being present with people.

How would you define courage?

My first response goes to being transparent and vulnerable. I'm not sure it's the best answer. But I know for me it's really showing up with where I am. One of the things I really learned during one of my treatments was that my emotions were like a pie, like pie pieces. So I could be really angry. I could be scared. I could be happy. I could be silly. I could be any of the emotions — confused — any of the things. And what I found was I would be sitting with people and every time somebody saw me they came in and they were sad.

They had taken out that pie piece of sadness. And I could always tell they were sad because they would kind of come in gently and they would tilt their head a little to the side, and their tone would change in their voice. They were very present with me. And then whenever we were leaving each other, parting, they would find a way to slip in, “I love you.” Even if they've never said the words before, they would find a way to slip that into the conversation. It was beautiful to witness but what I quickly realized is, I didn't have to meet them where they were. Because if I sat with somebody else's sadness all the time, I was gonna be sad most of the time and I wasn't. And just because I was laughing and I was in a joyful place didn't mean I was in denial. It just meant that I wasn't sad at that very moment I was sharing with them.

Who have you paved the way for?

There's that humble part of me that's like no, but yes. I look at my coworkers over the years and I know that I've been blessed to be part of their professional and personal lives and helped them to have knowledge and connections and a leg up.

I look at our families, though, that we serve — our guests who are our clients and our family caregivers. When we think about paving the way, I think we often think the professional part of things, but I know that what we've been able to do and what I've been able to be a huge part of for 23 years is paving the way for people to keep their loved ones at home.

Moms and dads and spouses and partners and children who are living with some kind of a life-altering (diagnosis), we've been able to keep them in their homes with the people they love the most — sleeping in their own beds, eating at their dining room tables hopefully until the day that they've been able to pass. Which is a hard day for those of us left behind, but it's really the goal of what we do here.

Do you have a principle or a mantra that guides you?

I think it's really important to leave every situation gracefully. Have I always done that? No. Do I feel good about those times when I didn't leave a situation gracefully? I don't, but I've never regretted leaving a professional or personal situation gracefully, and here's my test.

If you can go to the grocery store and run into the person that you've had a moment with and you can literally in the bread aisle, meet them eye to eye and say, "How are you?" And "I hope you're doing well." And if you can mean it when you say it, you left the situation gracefully. If you ditch your cart full of groceries and you run for the car, you probably could have done a better job.

How can people be kinder?

It's such a simple answer. If we would just stop and maybe look at each other and recognize that the person in front of us — whether it be nowadays on a screen or in print, or actually three-dimensionally, in-person, if we would just recognize everybody is going through something.

I've always told my kids to appreciate the meaning of a scar and that we all have them. And whether it's my scars from breast cancer, or it's my husband's scar from kidney cancer, or it's a scar that you got when you were 10 and you fell out of a tree house or it's the scars that you hold inside. But appreciate that we are all going through something. We just don’t all wear it on our face.

This ties back into the people that we serve here at Joy’s House typically being older adults. They're not just the old person that we see in front of us. They're not just the grouchy old man that lives next door or all the wrinkles that we see on a face. They are a collage of every moment of their lives. And I think if we would just slow down and not just look at them and not just ask questions, but really listen to their answers … we would have more empathy and love and patience for the things that make us different and the things that tie us together.

IndyStar visual journalist Bob Scheer contributed to this report.

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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: CEO, founder of Joy's House helps adults with life-changing diagnoses