Thank You for Your Service

Covering all the bases for

   economics, 

      politics, 

         health care, 

            education……

how many more bases are there?

each individual has a belief in the direction for a life’s journey

whether our own or the lives of others and in the direction our leaders create for us.

Our men and women following those directions 

within our own countries and communities

into battlefields across the globe, 

into foreign countries and communities

bring with them their hearts, their intelligence and their souls,

while accepting great risks to their health and wellbeing for our beliefs, 

for the beliefs of their leaders and

for their own beliefs

To all the many who have gone before,

        those veterans in our communities

             and those who serve today

I offer a profound ‘Thank you for your service.’

“We must find time to stop and thank the people

 who make a difference in our lives.”

~ John F. Kennedy

Inside a Pile of Buttons

Navigating the rapids, or any rapids is not something familiar to me. In metaphor, I certainly have images of what it might be like. I have gone kayaking and have limited experience with that so please bear with me as I spin out this metaphor of aging. Aging: a word that makes me feel crumpled and ineffective. I’m not even comfortable when I hear phrases such as ‘this late stage of life’, ‘bucket list’, ‘before I die’.  I could go on and on, however I won’t. Any of them are reminders to me not necessarily of my own mortality, but of the stigma that is attached to each decade. I am approaching, rapidly, my 70th birthday in a couple of weeks. Finding inner balance in the last ten years has frequently brought up this metaphor of ‘navigating the rapids’.  

Yesterday, I met with two of my nursing classmates for planning our 50th Nursing Reunion of the class of 1968. We pulled out pictures of the class, talked about who we’ve lost contact with and who is coming to our Reunion in April of 2018. We talked with the same excitement we had in those three years, maybe a little bit worn around the edges, but we were planning for our future activities. A future involving visiting, site seeing, visiting, staying up late, eating, being silly and having fun in each other’s company. Many have not seen each other since we graduated! After lunch and touring the hotel to visualize our rooms we each returned to our own lives. It is there that the navigation has the potential for stalling.

It is so tempting to just fall over into the old beliefs. Get washed away in the cold, frothing rapids of life’s twists and turns. The other day, I was sorting through my family’s silver cutlery chest, clearing out the pile of buttons and pins that really had no business in being there. They had gathered there like errant children who needed a place to be, each story jumbled and tucked away. There were name tags from St. Mary of the Plains Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, from the School of Nursing at Texas Tech, and just an ordinary name tag. Then there was a tiny plastic box with my dad’s Elk’s pin, a very dirty lanyard from the University of Utah, a couple of jewelry store boxes (no gems inside) and from Saskatchewan, grubby Softball League patches from my son’s jean jacket. And then there’s an unopened seed packet, another name tag from a treatment centre in Kelowna and many more. To top it all off was a big yellow button with blue writing that read: ‘My inner child is a juvenile delinquent.’

That child has been riding rapids for many years. That child has ridden the rapids in the wind and rain, sunshine and cloudless days, all with the intent to just have fun, which could sound pretty shallow. However, in order to find fun in the midst of even the worst of tragedies, in the times when the kayak has overturned, the rapids have been too fast, when drowning seemed inevitable, reaching out to those around saved the day. I may have come out dripping wet, my soul stripped clean and raw, when accepting the unacceptable seems impossible, if I turn to that juvenile delinquent, my soul, for balance, for guidance I can navigate the rapids of advancing maturity. 

“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important 

to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”

~ Isaac Asimov

Understanding Compassion Fatigue

Adjusting temperature and speed sounds like something to be done to a washing machine, or maybe a car. Yesterday, I attended a workshop on Personal Resiliency held at the Coast Victoria Hotel. Sponsored by BCNU*, such workshops are held for those of us in the BC nursing contingent that have experienced burn-out (a very old term) in the workplace. In the thirty minute walk to the workshop, I reflected on the nature of my career while also reflecting on nature in the city. Stopping to take a photo or two along the way under grey skies decorated with orange-red leaves falling like rain in the still morning, I was struck by the great resilience of this natural world. I was certain I would be the very, very oldest still working nurse in a group of young, maturing nurses. Thought it odd that I should be attending such a workshop at this late stage in my career, but as always kept putting one foot in front of the other to see, to learn and to reconnect with nursing colleagues, no matter their age of experience, to have my own abilities to adjust the temperature and speed of my life validated and shored up.

The group was a small group of twenty one nurses. A rough estimate of the average span of careers in the room was thirty years! Only two of us were nurses with under 10 years of nursing experience. Everyone else were nurses, still working in a variety of nursing careers, from thirty years to fifty years! From Emergency Room to Intensive Care, Dialysis to Withdrawal Management, Paediatriecs to Community nursing with the Frail Elderly there was over six hundred years of active nursing experience in the conference room. None of us looked crisped on the edges, maybe a bit tired but good strong energy in the room. We sat in a circle and were assured that we would not be singing or role playing, just telling our stories. Facilitated by two experienced psychologists, they walked with us through the likes and dislikes of our careers.  They showed us that our reactions to any stressors are incredibly normal, coming from deep within our brains as physiological responses to the many traumas. Not just traumas directed at us, but the ‘vicarious’ traumas around us that we see behind the nurses station and within our patient populations on a daily basis. Our learned behaviours create the nuanced ways we, sometimes, allow those responses to manifest. Most responses are completely instinctual. While it was tempting to carry on about completely valid organizational stressors affecting us, we were redirected to the actions we each take to provide compassionate and therapeutic nursing care for our patients. The final discussions about personal resilience and the tools needed to make those adjustments was the most helpful and validating for me.

At the end of this most satisfying day, I realized that I had been more intensely focussed in the last almost two years, maybe more, on those secondary traumas that I, as one individual, am unable to fix. In short, stepping back from our work lives, stepping into our personal lives to care for ourselves, and accepting our strengths and our vulnerabilities. We do this with our families and our friends, time for reflection and for exercise, for laughter and fun never forgetting to let go of the unfixable.

“There is a cost to caring. Professionals who listen to 

stories of fear, pain and suffering may feel similar fear, 

pain and suffering because they care. Sometimes we feel 

we are losing our own sense of self to those we serve.”

~ Charles Figley, Ph.D 

*BCNU:   British Columbia Nursing Union

Denim Shades

Trying on new clothes, full of hope,

entertains so many thoughts, plans and ideas that swirl around with the new brilliant colours or settle into the denim shades of blues and browns.

Thin graceful modelled images not agreeing with the mirror until final acceptance of one's own singular beauty becomes clear

“You were born an original work of art. Stay original.”

~ Suzy Kassem, author

A Moment for Newness

A Moment for Newness

“Participating in newness? Now what are you talking about? We’re in our eighties! We haven’t seen anything new but the sofa we purchased last week. The only way I can participate in that is to become a more avid couch potato than I already am. And I find that incredibly boring.”

Sheila and Joe were having one of their many philosophical discussions about life. Sheila, the aforementioned couch potato, had never really understood her husband’s fascination with the psychology of things. Retired from his practice twenty years before, Joe had never let go of this fascination. Now here he was, going on about newness when life had become so old that even the clock sounded arthritic.

“Well, every moment is new. Don’t groan. It is! And I’m not talking about just things. I’m just talking about getting involved in life no matter what stage of life we’re in. Don’t fall for the old ruler that a certain age is the measure of the sort of changes to make. And don’t tell me you don’t participate in newness every day. You change every single recipe you make, and often develop your own. I know because I’m your taste tester. You want a new taste, a new presentation and a new balance of flavours and colours.”

“I didn’t think that counted but - and I hate to say this - you’re right. Again.” 

Sheila’s forehead wrinkled. She tipped her beautiful white hair to the left. Always a signal to Joe to be quiet and let her think. 

“Okay. I think I’ve got it now. So, when you had the hip surgery and after rehab you wanted to keep up walking and swimming. And riding your bike. Not new activities for you. But the way you had to do all those things was new. Like learning all over again with different abilities. Free of pain and stiffness.”

Joe leaned back in his chair and smiled. “And then there was your response to all of my changes. You had become so wonderful with taking care of my needs that when I wanted the independence the hip surgery had bestowed on me, you were at a loss with all the time you had for yourself. Learning all over again you also had access to different abilities.”

“We do get so caught up in the minutiae of each routine that has been necessary, so often just accepting the lack of anything new in this world. It's really about experiencing and finding newness in changes rippling through life that are so often ignored or really not even recognized.”

Their very old, and very arthritic, cuckoo clock painfully chimed eleven a.m. Sheila and Joe looked up simultaneously from their very serious discussion. Almost as simultaneously they both chimed in:

“Time to get the old dear fixed."

 "Time for us to try a new lunch bistro."

“You have to be slightly uncomfortable with what you’re doing, 

and you have to be able to try to find moments of newness.”

~ Jonathan Anderson, designer

Author's note: Edited February 19, 2024

Status Quotient

Easing into transitions takes time, patience and acceptance

comfort in each stage of living

washed by life's undercurrents

eased into a new status quo.

“The best part of your story is when it changes.”

~ Bella Bloom, author

Author's note: Edited February 19, 2024

Time Sensitive

Confronting unpleasantness ~ 

virtual monsters to shrink from 

demanding action despite 

inside confusing clamour

what will others think, 

desperate to run away 

while standing firm amid 

swirls and crash of a tsunami of 

voices like discordant cymbals

until time demands an answer and 

acceptance of responsibility pushes through 

helplessness to bravery full of knowing.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

~ Anaïs Nin

A Hallowe'en Surprise

Challenging old beliefs that I just couldn’t follow through, I have learned that I can change up my home routines successfully. Like writing and posting a blog post early in the morning rather than racing to the last second before midnight.  However, I didn’t take into consideration that I was going to be playing in the kitchen most of the day, getting a few more groceries and doing some last minute vacuuming. I hosted a birthday party this evening for a good friend. Our small group of six gets together to share each other’s birthdays every couple of months for the last about 13-ish years.

But I’ve accepted the challenge I set for myself in 2011: write and post once each 24 hours. Started out for only one year, and I’ve kind of gone a bit longer than that. So here I am, at 1140 pm pounding the keys.

Yesterday I was with my writing group - also a group of long time friends. Our ten minute exercise was to write from the stem of a phrase.  We each drew a slip of paper with the stem on it.  Mine was:  ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes…….” . Here it is!

A Hallowe’en Surprise!

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw her. She was dressed in a gold and red satin gown. A blue silk pashmina covered her shoulders, draping gently down her back. Stiletto heels in a rainbow of colours to match. Most days she was just my mom's secretary that came to the house where they worked on proposals and contracts and business things. She answered the telephone and planned meetings. I thought that she would never be very much fun and that brown was her favourite colour. Brown sweaters and slacks. Brown shoes and brown jackets. Even her hair was brown and pulled tightly back in a non-descript bun. Now here she was at her front door cackling and laughing handing out popcorn balls and candy. I don't think I'll ever see her in the same way again.

“If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, 

by today you would have been two weeks better at it.”

~ John Mayer