She told me that she had lived in Florida for 50 years but now that she had an empty nest, she’d become a traveling nurse so she could live in different places.
“I was only supposed to be in D.C. for three months,” she said, “but now I’ve been here for nine because I just love it so much.” She said that her work had been rewarding from the first day.
After I wrote her poem, she gathered all the other nurses around to share what I had given her. She was one of my biggest supporters during my time in that unit and encouraged so many others to talk with me. I could see that she was the kind of person who would bring joy wherever she was going.
Listener Poet Ravenna Raven
Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital
February 2020
Traveling Nurse
We nurture by nature —
any nurse will tell you this.
I love connecting with people,
seeing things from
their point of view,
sharing their celebrations,
and supporting them when
they return for treatment.
I’ve wanted to do this
since I was very young
and I love that no one here
complains about helping someone.
From the first day at Sibley
that staff has felt like a team,
which will make it
incredibly bittersweet
to leave when I have to
travel to the next city.
She wanted to help people feel comfortable and transform the shame around colon issues. "I want to talk about things that matter, the things people don't want to discuss. I want to help them feel okay talking about it."
When we met, she was coming off a stretch of nine 14-hour shifts. She was tired but in good spirits.
She reflected on how her resilience was born from moments of shared mirth amid life's trying chapters.
“Life is complex and dirty, but digging in is important to me,” she said. “Maybe if more of us understood history, we could understand each other better.”
We are expected to research, contribute to scholarship, earn grants – all on our own time.
We are expected to research, contribute to scholarship, earn grants – all on our own time.
Every day, I try to see through the patient lens, and I ask: what can we do to change this broken system?
She was very proud of her daughter and has hopes for “a bright future that’s as pain free as possible”
“I’m trying to focus on doing little things to make people feel better during everything that’s going on in the world,” she told me.
“It’s hard to see others struggle,” she said. “How can I help with their struggle without struggling myself?”
"I'd tell her it's OK to be loud...it's OK to challenge and to bring all of you into these spaces where no one looks like you..."
“I'm continuously questioning: did I do it right?" she said. "I’ve always done a good amount of second-guessing, but I’m re-learning how to show up differently.”
“It’s weird,” she said. “This is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
"It changed me; It changed the way I look at life," said this woman about her profound experience during her pregnancy.
“It’s been more challenging than normal lately,” she said. “I’m only one person. It's a struggle for me to say no, but I can’t do everything that’s being asked of me right now.”
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
“I like feeling small,” he told me. “Nature has always made me feel small.” He described the sense of wonder that feeling gave him.
“I feel like I have decision fatigue,” she told me. It was normal for her to make many choices at work, but COVID had dramatically increased the number of medical decisions she had to make at home.
“I know ‘vibe’ is kind of a nonspecific term, but I think about people’s vibes all the time,” he said.“ Sometimes you come into a room and it’s just off.
This physician discussed being the only one in his practice network with expertise in patients with a specific type of chronic pain.
“Our constituents are uniquely affected by the pandemic,” they said. This poemee was an educational psychologist who spoke about how much they missed working in person with med students, healthcare staff, and medical educators.