nursingforsocialjustice

Have you ever listened to Micheal Stone? I took a three day course he taught on mindfulness in 2017, very shortly before he died. There are moments in your life and experiences they you have they you can look back at and think, that changed my life. Those three days and the pain I felt when I learned he died are one of those life experiences I reflect on.

Do you ever take a moment to reflect on your identity and how being a nurse has shaped your identity? It’s quite a something. I recommend taking some moments of reflection each day to think about the fluidity of a professional identity and how it flows into many aspects of your life.

Early in my nurse career I constructed a personal philosophy of nursing as part of the requirements for a master of nursing course. I think that the process of sitting down, reflecting on and writing down a personal philosophy of nursing is important at different moments in one’s nursing career. Being a nurse is a privilege. It is something special that allows us to connect with people in a way that not many other people get to in so many diverse situations. We get to be side by side with people being born, with people when they leave the world, with people when they are at the worst moments of their lives and with them when life changing things happen.

We have these lines we draw. Professional, patient. But we are both. It’s like drawing a line to separate water. And, I think that’s easy to forget sometimes.

We live in a moment when so much has been decided by business models that do not embrace human models. Why are any of us doing any of this if, at the bottom of it, the force driving any of it is to engage in a human experience of compassion, and care and love? Why would we be doing any of it? And, I understand that the driving force of many things that organize the world right now are money and self interest and this idea of having more and getting more but what does any of that mean? I think it means that I’m having an existential crisis. But it also means that we get wrapped up in so much bullshit that, at the end of the day, if I die in the next second, won’t matter. What matters is that I tried to do good today and I had some sort of purpose that I structure with this thing we know as nursing. And that makes me happy.

Love,

Michelle D.