This was my sister's response to her big Sis on a magazine cover. But, nothing could be farther from the truth.
The smile you see is a result of grit and a shit-ton of GRACE, as I scratched and clawed my way back to Nursing.
Nursing is experiencing an EXIT-stential crisis. And I'm here to say, we don't have to leave our beloved profession.
"I think that we need to kind of reframe what's happening to us, and recognize that this is a call to change, this is a reckoning that's happening in nursing right now. We're not being called to leave the profession, we're being called to transform our profession so we can live in our integrity without the moral injury that comes from, “your asking me to do too much, I literally can't do this, and by you asking me to do this, I may be performing harm on someone, and how am I supposed to go home and move on knowing that I have this duty to take care of other people.” We innovate, we’re resilient as hell, but we've been innovative and resilient and made this broken system look like it's working for far too long.
We're the reason it continues to stay afloat, but you continue to beat the worker and the workers finally said, “we're standing up.” I give huge props to Gen Z: they want balance, and I applaud them. We wanted balance a long time ago but we had these boomers telling us like, “you've got to suck it up” and “you've got to win.” We got stuck in the mindset that we actually had to work harder, and not take a look at self compassion."
I spoke with NurseDeck about my breakdown 2 years ago this month, that led me on a soulful journey.