I will miss these trees(below) when I leave Texas – My Southern Series – (Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas) Mind you I did not do a travel assignment in Mississippi – but I witnessed it, the people, the ghost towns, and it’s crumbling infrastructure – the poverty. I spent yesterday driving on the back roads of Houston – bumpy. Graffiti behind me. Tents to the left and shanties before me. Old warehouses. Dented cars and twisted trees. I am lucky and in awe and crisis, at other times. I’m sure like you – I don’t have answers to anything. I wax and wane between being and believing in Capitalism and most times these days – witnessing just how unsustainable it feels to be. Sometimes I’m the most progressive of the progressive and other times – others may perceive me – as quite conservative. Snobby. Maybe.
The woods, I said I had distaste for have actually been an invaluable experience. The work I do as a Nurse – also. The journey here and there. The moments, my past, the current climate – all are Medicine. The person I judge, the people I distrust, the future. The governments. The white people. Yes – I have a weird thing with some of you. You see – you seem too silent to me – and vocal in all the wrong ways. Maybe. I’m just being honest. Maybe it’s not whiteness but wealth – that keeps you silent. Comfortable. Master puppets – so good at theatrics. Hmmm, yes. There’s too much theatre. All the while human life is being destroyed. For what?
We are like trees – juxtaposed. Beating hearts. Same hearts that provide the same function, no matter what. And yet our hearts don’t seem to be beating LIFE, these days – like these breathing trees. I don’t get it. And I do. We seem to be holding our breath.
If you’ve had it too easy, we probably have not met. Whether here or there. A park bench, cafe, plane, train. On a mountaintop. In the middle of the road or in a dressing room. The pool in Thailand. Your BnB in Nam. If you’re not in tune with the moon. We have not crossed paths. Your hand on my back – in the dance room. While cleaning the floor of an OR. Beside a cow — a sinking lake. A cab in Egypt. If you’ve had no pain and you do not dance we surely have not met.
If you do not know pleasure – I know we haven’t met. I do not mean pleasure as in drinking or shopping or vlogging. I mean pleasure as in sharing —What deeply feels good and cracks our hearts open. A tasty mouth pleasing morsel. If you do not mmmmm, ahhhhhh and ohhhhh we probably have not met. For sure we have yet to meet. But only once you’ve been to your knees – With your shame and fear. Guilt and hate and dirty crimes. Our past lives and current ones too.
We’ve indeed met if you’re weird. Honky tonk too. You talk to trees and animals and things. You relish in the ecstasy of singing your lungs out. Driving down highways — To the unknown. Windows down – on off roads. No exception. You don’t do stale air. Or lungs. The Universe brought us together if you do not behave/pretend to be like anybody else. You’re brave. You’ve made me more brave. I hope you know this, if we’ve met.
We’ve met of course if you’re poor or rich. Have the best of the best or do not know how you’ll make the rent. Sometimes. School for that matter — does not matter. You probably love eighties music like it’s the only thing that makes you move. Life is more interesting than school or a party. And I want to hear about your life. I trust we will meet if it’s meant to be. Especially, if you’ve not known at times who and what and where is home. You have the heart of a refugee. Like me.
We’ve always protected the community — I mean, with our very best knowledge, resource capacity, skill. With our spiritual, mental, emotional, physical strengths and capabilities. And with that, at times, there has been a cost; to ourselves/our safety/our health. (Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) You see, we don’t just show up, as humans in white lab coats and certain color scrubs to the hospital. As a matter of fact, those in white coats are often out of touch with the day to day. They’re not aware of the machine running in the background. The minor and major injuries happening to staff. The staff that come sick to work — yes, even encouraged to do so, in a Pandemic — and pre pandemic. Folks in the lab, their desks, in these tiny boxes — I will say this more loudly ∆ There is Nuance. And parts unknown. There is not a one size fits all to this global health crisis or any. There is, as a puzzle – many moving, and nonlinear parts • pieces.
There are humans well intentioned and with great compassion for our communities’ health everyday on the “front lines.” They have worked hard,(some, for 20-30 years)put their career before family, keep this career to feed their families, pay someone’s bail, place others’ health before their very own. I have worked with colleagues on chemo, with breast pumps attached to their nipples, in their own personal crisis’s, that need two jobs, that are in financial and other personal strain. Our patients are not aware of these beautiful messy humans taking care for them, well, because they trust – our badges and certain color scrubs.
Here’s the thing, maybe we should be aware that things are messy – right now. And kinda always are. This is why the hero thing is so fucked up. Maybe people should know that you’re a hero one day – and the next a number : asked to do overtime today and a leave of absence tomorrow. Maybe people should know, there are different ways. Better, I don’t know. But different. We’ve got some big shake ups coming, my friends. It’s time to recognize, we need each other – across the whole spectrum. Varying views, dialogue, information, specialties and stories.
To speak of Personal Power. Choice. Self Responsibility — Is not to be overly Idealistic sans an awareness to those in dire circumstances and Beings that actually lack alternatives. It is not to point fingers or claim one Country’s Health System is better than the other. I think Globally, we can learn alot from one another. One system cannot be had with the other. It’s like our own internal system. A whole system in which we tend to fragment and leave others to fix, adjust, brainwash – us, back to a supposed state of balance. Balance. Something we are clearly fooling ourselves into being/having, once one part is “fixed.” Do you ever notice how when you fix something, something else falls apart? Especially when it’s done quickly, in fear, or with a bandaid; with virtue signaling, adverts, drugs, drink, sex, etc? What happens when you run a marathon post knee surgery, before your body, brain spirit has fully recovered?
Health, I’ve realized, is not so much in saving/fixing – It is in listening. It is in something as disorienting, as a Pandemic, that affected the WHOLE- visibly, to make us question our ways of living. Listening. Being. It has affected us on every level imaginable. And knowable. We have just been asleep. My thoughts and feelings are not to discount the death; the pain, the PTSD nor the Virus. It is actually to lean into it… more. Because I’m afraid we are going to bypass what is essential for recovery – The actual articulation of the experience both personal and from within the hospital corridors. Those that faced something unimaginable/not in the science books. The unbearable pain of witnessing others die alone. The inability to FIX. Cure. Ease the suffering. The desperation. The bureaucracy, to boot.
One vaccine is not the FIX/Perhaps it’s an adjunct. The question now is – How are we going to be Healthy – individually and as a WHOLE. How are we going to stand up for things we believe in? What will we eat? Who will we convene with? Where will we live — Now and ten years from now? Where do we put our money? Time? Energy? Will we understand that relationship to our neighbors/village/community is essential for our Balance? Will we understand that everyone has a story, a set of values, history? That people will think and feel differently than we do – And that the beauty is in difference and our sameness. When we cut a human open in the OR, we all have a bleeding beating heart.
We think we’re gaining health…when we lost the health a long time ago. Just had a chat with my friend in South Africa; around all things weird, currently. It does not matter if you’re here or there – our world is going through a transformation. Most of us blindly unaware however, to the madness. The Control. The power. The wealth transfer. The poverty. And yes, to the dying. The later, I’d say we were never good with – I speak from a person in the Modern Health system – but does not get labeled by it. I know that letters beside my name, mean shit. The place I work means shit. As in, one is neither better than the other. We are alluded into thinking; if I work for this company or that…then, well then, it’s going to get me somewhere or somehow I will be a better person. This is communal narcissism.
I fully recognize my place in the industry, as a Nurse, is one of practical purposes, momentarily, and truly why I joined forces many moons ago. Yet I was also deluded — I, as many do, went into Medicine not as a business but as a place where we tend and care to those suffering. Well, I’ve realized most of us were suffering. And then we became exploited. I’m not going to spread the gospel on our healthcare system. I’m presently in a position to not give a shit about what former friends, current friends, colleagues, think about our supposed heroic Western Medical Model. Or our supposed Science Heroes. If we truly cared we would not be in a state of Dis-ease. And Disease. Companies would not be pushing junk food down our throats. Drug companies would share vaccine “recipes” to the world. We would not all be on social media — high and mighty chanting from soap boxes. My friend in Cambodia would not be worrying about her community, currently, in fear of starving to death, because of Covid restrictions. My other dear friend, in her 60’s, in the States, wouldn’t have been in a cabin without proper plumbing, all winter long. There would have been water in Mississippi and Louisiana after a freak snow storm. More than a month out, humans, in the deep South were without Water!! Water people.
We are more interested in sending People to Mars. This is fucked up. We are more interested in Pop stars. This is fucked up. We are more interested in fitting in and something so called normal. We are not normal. We are not healthy. The first thing my friend said was “do you see how unhealthy people have gotten over the last year and a half?” Yes. Yes. Because we haven’t been in a state of health — which I said at the beginning of this post. And now, we’ve been in fear. Our bodies are in shock. We have lost control. We haven’t been able to save lives. We have not been touched. We have not had ceremony – around life and death. We are zooming. Fidgeting. Putting guns to our heads – and others. Heads. We were addicted to violence, a long time ago, whether in action or speech. We are addicted to salt. Fat. sugar. Power. Belonging.
Yet, we do not know what it’s truly like to Belong. Most importantly to ourselves. Our first home. Our Body. Our Breath. Our Spirit. We do not know what it truly feels like to feel good here. Safe here. In love, here. This primal relationship to Self and truly feeling in our own Personal Power. With freedom to make our own choices. Sometimes we need to go it alone – in order to discover “The Health.” It’s a journey all right. I don’t know. I want to tell everyone to practice Yoga, take some shrooms, or have pleasurable, frightening experiences often. Or experiences outside our borders. But I don’t know. I don’t know. And it’s not my place to tell others what they :should: be doing. I am just here on this crazy planet with the rest of you – In deep honor and gratitude for all its quirks and quirkiness. In its dis-ease and Health. But first and foremost with Responsibility to Self. If we do not tend compassionately to our Selves – well, everything we do and think is compulsory and disingenuous.
It’s funny, for as long as I’ve been in medicine, the health to me is not the beep beep, buzz buzz, stick, poke, prod, cut, coagulate, stitch, staple, fix, chart, review, time-out, count 1-10 4×4’s. Not to burst a bubble or 20. But most anyone can learn to do the skills of the trade. Ohh I know, now many have a PhD beside their other letters – To me medicine is not about the schooling either. I mean, it is. (Don’t take it so literally 😷) Maybe I trust the mess more – the vulnerable, gutsy, big hearted, kind and tender, nerdy (yes) too, artsy, weird, human to human, hand to skin, funny people, that never think they know everything – nor are they above anyone.
To me the Health is in the Relationships – with our colleagues. (no matter the letters or lack of) There can be no lack actually – just an H a U an M an A an N. It is all hands on deck. It is respect for different ideas, thoughts and points of view. Health is in Recognizing – that sometimes others need more of our weight, our love, our skill, some days. This is not a fight – A competition. Sometimes the Health is Surrender. Surrender to greater powers that be. To things unfamiliar. Health is Connection – always. To our patients. To their eyes, their Spirit, fears, joy, grief, community, culture. It is one hell of a journey. Health is to Listen. A full body listen. It is trusting once again in our instincts. Because when all systems fail – what is left? Usually a story.
Medicinal Conversations 