July 4th, Independence Day, I took some time out of the holiday to work on a fellowship application that was due the next day. I’m keeping mum about the specific fellowship because although I’d like to win, the exciting thing to me was that I was doing the application at all.
Between the frustrations of my cancer treatment, my growing disillusionment with working clinically in profit-focused health care, and the toll that the pandemic took on health care workers, I had gotten stuck in what I’m calling “the health care darkness.” The problem was, I didn’t realize that’s where I was. All I knew was that I wanted to write column after column about everything that’s wrong with health care in America and describe those problems in the most dire terms possible. And it’s not that those planned missives would have been inappropriate or untrue, but I didn’t find a lot of interest in that message and it was a very hard place to be mentally.
I want to write another book and I want that book to have something hopeful to say about care, its value and importance. I couldn’t see any hope at all for several months, even in the midst of publishing the paperback of my own book, HEALING. Then, a few weeks ago, light began entering my consciousness, one slim beam at a time. I’m not going to share the idea that gave me hope because it’s still in an embryonic state. A couple of months ago, though, I described my vague thoughts for my next book as, “the sperm are swimming up the birth canal hoping to find an egg.” An embryo is progress.
In this newsletter I’m going to recount how I came out of the darkness, because maybe my description of that process will help someone else with whatever darkness they are finding themselves in, or may end up in in the future.
My whole life I have been someone who kept putting one foot in front of the other as a way of getting through problems. It works! If you read my essay about hiking in Grand Canyon you got that message loud and clear. In fact, the only way to get out of a deep canyon is to do exactly that—keep walking. Unfortunately, being stuck in professional frustration and moral distress does not yield so easily to the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach. I slowly figured out that only time was going to heal my health care wounds, time to read spy novels (Mick Herron’s “Slow Horses” series), see friends, workout, visit Grand Canyon, enjoy the kids…. Time, in short, to do anything except focus on how hard it is to be a nurse right now.
The cliché description of this approach might be that I needed to be in the present. It’s not quite that simple, though, because part of my issue was that the present for nursing really sucks, which is why nurses keep striking, working as travelers, and also quitting. I needed to be in the present for me, then, not taking decisive steps, but simply waiting. When I told my friend Julia that I wasn’t getting much writing accomplished and felt bad about that, she encouraged me to take some time to catch my breath after cancer and covid and HEALING. She was right and it helped.
My new literary agent Lindsay Edgecombe was equally helpful in offering her own advice about patience. When I expressed frustration with not being able to power my way through to a new book idea, (as one powers through 12-hour shifts, perhaps) she wisely told me, “This is not a nut you’re going to crack.” There was a wisdom in her words that no one had ever shared with me before, except maybe the joke my husband Arthur told me his brother Steve used to make: “Writing a PhD dissertation—that’s not a night before job.” Arthur repeated this to me as I was finishing my own dissertation, and it helped. Lindsay’s words added nuance by saying that force would not lead me to an idea. It made me think about the opposite of force, which is gentleness and, again, waiting.
Finally, another friend, who’s an accomplished textile artist, listened as I described the feeling of being stuck and how I felt self-conscious even revealing that I felt that way. I am someone who gets things done. I do not get stuck. I told my friend that I was trying to learn patience and my friend, who has known many writers, generously shared with me that all of them have periods where they feel bereft of ideas and uncertain, and these periods usually follow the completion of a big project, like, say, a memoir about having breast cancer.
Learning patience was hard, but I’m doing it slowly and…patiently. But I also found a way to get some of my upset into words. In my last newsletter I shared a column I wrote for CancerNursingToday.com. I’ve committed to writing a monthly column for them for the next six months, when we’ll reassess. It’s not The New York Times, I know, but they are interested in the reality of nurses’ work environment right now, and the serious struggles nurses face as they continue to be overworked and underpaid with no obvious relief in sight. I want to tell those stories partly as a way to, I hope, help nurses feel seen in their struggles at the bedside. I’m no longer doing that work and acknowledging the difficulties of nurses in this present moment is one way to honor those who keep coming to work in hospitals, hospices, and clinics.
I came out of the darkness by learning patience and also finding a place to put my despair about health care into print. Both are crucial. I can imagine for someone else, though, that the idea of putting one foot in front of the other might be great advice, and something they hadn’t thought of. Another person might start writing poetry as a way out of the darkness, rather than writing columns about the challenges facing nurses. The key ingredient seems to be making a change in one’s own life, doing something different. I’m lucky in that I could afford not to work clinically, to read murder mysteries and hang out with my (helpful) friends. Being different allowed me to better see my whole world and realize there was more there than career disappointment—a lot more.
I always end this newsletter by wishing all of you my best, and I mean it. This time I especially mean it. Being stuck was really hard and I hated feeling that way. My friends got me through along with support from Arthur and the kids. Many of you, my readers, helped by engaging with my writing and effectively telling me, in all kinds of ways, that I definitely had something to say. If any of you are stuck in a darkness of your own right now, I send my warmest wishes. You can find your way out of it, but the trick, for me at least, was understanding that it would require a whole new path, and I would have to walk that path in a new way, more slowly and deliberately, than I ever had before.
Hugs,
Theresa
P.S. My next column in CancerNursingToday.com will come out next Tuesday and I will sent it out as a newsletter on Wednesday.
Theresa, You unfailingly shine light on our nursing world, the joys and the challenges in their own time. In retirement after an incredible, satisfying career I am seeing the current state of US healthcare as a family caregiver, and it isn't pretty. One of the things that infuriates me is the stream of articles that our well-intentioned colleagues write on increasing the resilience of new nurses, or, for instance very recently, a pep talk on ensuring that homeless people aren't discharged prematurely. Enough! The system is broken. Pretending otherwise is destructive for everyone. There is not enough time in the day for clinicians to ensure that their patients get the services they need. Nurses are amazing because they pull off amazing feats amid great obstacles. But also nurses are preventing change for the better by pulling off amazing feats amid great obstacles.
I loved every bit of this column, Theresa--your spying dog, the flying goldfish, “Put One Foot in Front of the Other” (now I have that song running through my head!), and--most of all--that you have that embryo of an idea starting to grow. I can’t wait to see what it develops into! I am so happy that you have found a way to care for yourself and pull yourself out of the darkness, dear friend.