empathy lifts

twenty years into my career and I recently had my first experience with trauma informed care training. i can truly say that the awareness that this is ” a real thing” has transformed the care i give, but also gives a name to the care i have always tried to provide. its holistic and empathetic. it is so clear to see how each chapter of my nursing career has led me to the next, how the people and the stories i have encountered lend the compassion i am able to give to the next. in processing my own steps and falls i am able to understand that we are all teetering on this scale of life that will inevitably tilt to trauma whether we realize it in the moment or not. though some are lucky to escape it, we are all capable of maladaptive coping in desperation to be ok. perhaps if we can backtrack with our patients and deeply dive in to understand how they landed in addiction, obesity, anxiety, crippling depression, self harm, etc… we can truly facilitate healing.. from the source. and maybe we all assume this is the care we get from our healthcare system, but the sad truth is that it is largely built around a different model…and that model does not scratch the surface of seeing and addressing the whole person.

and stepping out of my professional realm and into personal…

trauma. this is something i used to think was reserved to those who truly experienced a visibly devastating event. i remember many counseling sessions through my years caring for very ill children and feeling shame when expressing that i think i may have ptsd. i remember apologizing to the counselor and saying “i know i’m not in the military laying my life down for my country” as if soldiers were the only population experiencing trauma. i vividly remember trying to grasp the gravity of the work i was doing; one recurring experience that has led to a lifetime of reflection is the death of children. i remember days on the job where i was grieving with one family, wrapping their tiny lifeless child in a blanket, setting them on their mother’s lap in a wheelchair and with so much composure wheeling them to the parking garage to meet the funeral home vehicle…only to turn around walk back to the unit, fight to hold my composure and walk into another room to provide care for the next patient, fighting and suppressing the trauma i had just experienced. this is unfortunately the culture in healthcare with staffing shortages and the idea that we are to create airtight boundaries between ourselves and patients. but the truth is, that is impossible. and in trying to do so, i believe we create unhealthy coping mechanisms. same is true in real life, right? in this culture where it’s not ok to not be ok i think we suppress and hide and cover anything and everything so that we are ok enough to get through each day without appearing affected. and something that has recently started to come to surface is the weight of the trauma i experienced in my postpartum depression with intrusive thoughts. it has been years though it’s taken many to emerge from survival mode to a place where i can process. i can certainly pinpoint times in my journey where i could have pivoted slightly and attempted to cope in a way that would have led me to harm. regardless of which path i took, one thing that seemed unavoidable was adopting the lie that i had to pretend to be ok when i clearly wasn’t. but there’s only one acceptable answer when we are greeted with “how are you?”

it’s through those lens that i can see the bricks of trauma stacked on shoulders, the weight is palpable. shame adds to the weight. judgement crushes. but….GRACE IS WEIGHTLESS and EMPATHY LIFTS.