By Terra Avilla
Morgan, this week’s “Why We Love This Place Wednesday” is all about you. You were so kind to speak life over me as your teacher, but I need everyone to hear why I am the one who feels honored to sit in your classroom.
So let me tell you all about my dear friend, Morgan York. Morgan has lived a life quietly anchored in helping other people. First in healthcare, showing up in some of the hardest moments of people’s lives, and now in criminal justice, where she is determined to stand in the gap for others again.
Coming back to school as an adult, while being a full-time mom and a wife, all while trying to juggle the day to day of being a functioning adult is not a “cute little side quest.” It is a whole new adventure that takes real courage, time, and sacrifice.
Adult students deal with self-doubt, packed schedules, and the worry that it might be too late for them. Morgan faces all of this and simply says, “Watch me.” Her bravery is quiet. It means showing up even when she’s tired, reading the chapter anyway, and deciding that her story isn’t finished.
Morgan is open about surviving domestic violence and sexual assault, and she refuses to keep those experiences hidden. Instead, she uses them to fuel her advocacy, preparing through her education to support people who are still facing their hardest times.
Survivors who speak out often become the voice someone else needs, and that is the path she is choosing.
What moves me is that she does owning her pain, for choosing to work it into something good. She laughs, she jokes, she gets her work done, and then she still chooses to say, “If my story helps one person feel less alone, it’s worth telling.”
That is a rare kind of strength.
If you just saw us “on paper,” we might not look like two people who would naturally click. Different backgrounds, different lanes, different life experiences. But from day one, Morgan has been kind, respectful, and so mature in how she navigates people who aren’t exactly like her.
One of my favorite examples: she picked up pretty quickly that I love Jesus, and she believes something different. But for a teacher gift, she went out of her way to find one of the best devotionals I could ever ask for and gave it to me thoughtfully, not performatively.
That gift wasn’t really about the pages; it was about her noticing what mattered to me and choosing to honor it, even though our stories aren’t the same.
Also, her sense of humor? Elite. The kind of down-to-earth sarcastic commentary that keeps a class awake when a PowerPoint presentation is doing its best to put everyone to sleep. She can go from cracking a joke to dropping a deep insight in about three seconds, and I live for that whiplash.
Maybe most of all, I think she’d want to be known for the way she shows up for kids and even kids who aren’t biologically hers, loving and leading them with the same intentional, patient, protective heart every child deserves.
That kind of steady, everyday love is world-changing and wildly underrated. In a world that keeps telling people to “look out for yourself,” she keeps quietly choosing to look out for everyone God has placed in her path.
So, this Wednesday, we love this place because of people like Morgan York. Congrats Morgan I am so proud of you!
