106,253 Hours

On By Tribal QueenIn Uncategorized

Or 4427 days.

Or 6,375,210 minutes

or 382,512,600 seconds

Or simply, 12 years since I passed nursing boards in Raytown, MO.

Last Wednesday, the 15th, was my last day working as a nurse for the foreseeable future. I burned out from the ICU when COVID hit. Moving to outpatient coordination was a brief relief in that I was removed from the literal immediate danger that the ICU posed to me. I functioned a little better for about two years before I realized my stress levels were still sky high. Now though, instead of immediate danger, I’d lost confidence of my nursing skills and knowledge. I didn’t trust myself to give the correct information to my patients, even about simple concerns such as diarrhea and constipation. I worked with facility projects for improvement hoping to learn from more experienced staff. I attended CEs and other learning opportunities, I studied and became certified in oncology. I even presented a poster at ONS. I did everything I could to study for the test I experienced every time a patient called. But nothing helped the anxiety attacks when that phone rang. So, for the last year and a half, I’ve been working part time as a nurse and part time as a clinical project manager for the same facility. It was empowering to work in a role I felt made contributions to our organization and to patient care across larger spectrums, but not be directly responsible for a human’s life. I was able to advise and support projects with the clinical experience I’ve gathered over the last twelve years and I felt my confidence grow in these situations. But the anxiety attacks the night before my clinical days continued. Sometimes I didn’t sleep throughout the night, never knowing what I would be facing the next day. Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night, not from a nightmare, but from my heart pounding so hard I’d feel the lights fading in and out. Many times, I simply called out sick, laying in bed until I felt I could face the world again.

The nursing profession was fighting a war against my body, mind, and soul.

Through these stages, during each of these transitions further away from nursing, I received numerous call outs. Other humans, both within and without of healthcare, all had opinions on what a career in nursing means, how my walking away hurts humanity, how it hurts my career, how it should be hurting me. And I’m glad to know other people know how I’m supposed to feel about this because I certainly do not know how to feel.

  • Thrilled
  • Scared
  • Embarrassed
  • Lonely
  • Regretful
  • Grateful
  • Free
  • Proud
  • Isolated
  • Disappointed
  • Resentful
  • Anxious
  • Guilty
  • Courageous
  • Nostalgic
  • Ashamed
  • Hesitant
  • Shamed
  • Overwhelmed

These are a small smattering of the emotions I’ve felt over the past couple of weeks. So if how you think I should feel isn’t on the list, please let me know and I’m sure I can add a few more….

I am obviously not in a sunshine and sprinkles place emotionally and that’s ok. Other than my nursing manager, before the 15th, I only told a few people at work that I was leaving nursing completely. I genuinely didn’t want to make a big deal about it. But to be honest, after the fact, I wish I had. Because walking away from nursing is a big deal to me. This is the work I’ve done for the last twelve years of my life. It’s all I’ve done for the last twelve years. It dictated so much in my life. I’ve missed funerals, weddings, and so many other experiences because of this career. It taught me another side of the world I’d been so sheltered from previously. It shaped who I am at such a deep level that it’s difficult to distinguish the details, to distinguish who I am and who nursing has made me. And it has still caused so much harm to me.

I called my mom, she said to get it off my chest
Remind myself the way you faded till I left
I cannot be your friend, so I pay the price of what I lost
And what it cost
Now that we don’t talk

Taylor’s Versions only and forever

And now, an ode to my past:

  • OR Circulator & Scrub GU
  • OR Circulator Liver, Kidney, Pancreatic Transplant
  • Burn ICU
  • Cardiac ICU
  • Cardio-thoracic ICU
  • Neuro ICU
  • Trauma ICU
  • Medical ICU
  • Surgical ICU
  • Emergency Department
  • Neuro ICU
  • Outpatient Research
  • Telemetry Units
  • Med Surg Units
  • Outpatient Kidney Donor
  • Outpatient Pre-Liver Transplant
  • Outpatient Liver Oncology
  • Outpatient Heme & Heme Malignancy

Just typing that list made me tired and to be honest, I think I missed a few.

And that list doesn’t really mean anything unless I describe all the people included in those spaces. Because some of y’all were assholes. And I’m not just talking about the surgeon who threw a bloody scalpel at me. I’m not just talking about the patient calling me a bitch because their sandwich wasn’t delivered fast enough. I’m talking about the nursing manager who told me to get “some real experience” before applying to the ICU. (I stand by the opinion that man wouldn’t have lasted half of a shift in the OR.) I’m talking about my nursing preceptor who started rumors that I was sleeping with one of the doctors. I’m talking about the time someone left a note in my lunchbox calling me a nerd and to go back to the OR. I’m talking about the patient who kicked me in the chest….twice, while I was trying to give him pain medication. I’m talking about the nurse who reported me to our educator because I allegedly didn’t know what a neutropenic fever was. I’m talking about my manager who told me I was hired and then gave the job to someone else with no experience and then lied to me about finding me another opportunity.

But as my husband says, “humans are pretty horrible unless they’re pretty great,” so there were also those of you who reminded me of my own humanity by so beautifully putting your own on display. And as long as the previous list was, I promise you, this list is longer. A list comprising of every person in the healthcare industry, (Except for insurance companies.) except I can’t write this list out. I can’t write out every instance, because to be honest, I can’t remember the details of most of them. But I remember the feelings. I’ll do my best to give some sort of tribute to that.

To Pat, my OR mentor, who was always kind, compassionate, and making a joke when we needed it. You boosted my confidence as a brand new nurse, although, I do think you were wild for letting that young kid on the transplant team.

To Betsy and Elaina, thanks for treating me and all nurses with respect, dignity, and as a true colleague.

To Katie, Laresa, Jenna, and Lauren, you made that burn unit not only tolerable, but fun. And if you’ve never worked on a burn unit before, you will never know the size of that compliment. I count each of you as sisters.

To Kyaera & Maddie, you both helped me survive the deepest depression of my life. I owe you everything.

To Molly, since the day we realized we were both Jayhawks, you’ve become the closest work wife I’ve ever had. You’ve come to be someone I can lean on and confide in, and one of my closest friends. I’m in awe of you every day.

Comfort & Joy

On By Tribal QueenIn Uncategorized

One of my patients suddenly passed away this week. That’s not totally abnormal, as I work in a large cancer center and cancer is a horrible, painful, and constantly changing disease. This is my first Christmas season working here however, and the seemingly senseless pain that my patient’s family will now experience….hurts.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”

Why? Why couldn’t my patient have one more Christmas with their family? Life isn’t fair, they say, but why must it also be cruel?

The phrase “Merry Christmas” never totally felt right for me. Merry seems an older word that’s a bit outdated in modern English. Other cultures say “Happy Christmas,” which makes a bit more sense, but it still doesn’t quite fit. A Christmas carol I also thought was always old and outdated, was God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. I think that’s because of the music however; it simply sounds Victorian. But listening to Bing Crosby sing it this year, I think it’s what the world, especially myself, needs right now.

Let nothing you dismay/ Remember Christ our savior/ Was born on Christmas day/ To save us all from satan’s power/ when we were gone astray/ tidings of comfort and joy

This seems the carol with the most truth in it this year. The world has suffered in immeasurable amounts and telling the world to be Merry or Happy this year seems trite and disregards that suffering. Telling us “next year all our troubles will be out of sight” is blatantly untrue. But wishing Comfort and Joy seems good. It seems to fit. It doesn’t diminish what we’ve experienced. It acknowledges the suffering, the pain, that we are all feeling.

My wish for each of you, my hope, my begging prayer to God this year, is that everyone experiences some Comfort and Joy in this dark night. I pray if you truly have a Merry and Bright Christmas, that you use that brightness to spark some Comfort and Joy in others. We can’t help the unfairness of life, but we can ease the cruelty of this life for others.

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It’s been almost two years since my last post. Two years that, for every single human on this planet, has been mostly pain and difficulties. And ours was no different, but like ocean tides, there was beauty as well. There was Laughter and Joy standing tall next to Pain and Hurt.

My mind was so muddled with the reaction by the world to this virus, but so much was clarified for me as well. Priorities, loves, passions, activism, boundaries, all became a pounding in my heart again, a drive to push me again, a spark to experience joy again.

After leaving the ICU, I’m still working as a nurse, but in an office as a Clinical Nurse Coordinator for a major cancer center. I speak with patients through a phone instead of through the sedation and a breathing tube. I’ve come to terms with a phrase I only recently heard, Compassion Fatigue. Reading my last post, the fatigue comes through, the burn out comes through, but in May 2020, I would have described most of the pain as anger. If anything, I felt I had too much compassion! So much so, it made me angry.

I’m still really angry. At so many things. And so many people. You know that scene from Jaws, where the grieving mother slaps Chief Brody and says, “You knew. You knew and you still let people swim. And now my little boy is dead.” That’s how I feel about every single person who’s passed away and every politician, healthcare provider, or member of the general public who refused to follow science. You knew getting together for that 300 person wedding was dangerous. And now 60 people are dead. You knew vaccines decreased the risk of death, and you still fought against them. And now more people are dead. We are all that grieving mother. We are all Chief Brody. We are all that idiotic mayor. We are all playing parts in these deaths.

And that’s how I feel about the pandemic–Jaws.

But Compassion Fatigue is the truth behind the anger. I’m tired, I’m literally fatigued of caring without any reaction, any support, without any change. To be honest, I should have left healthcare in 2020, but financially, it would have been simply silly to leave a field I was guaranteed work in the middle of an economic crash. (Well, an economic crash for normal people. Some technocrats have enough to spare to go into space for no reason, but my antiAmazon rant will have to hold for another day.) But the old saying is true. Life is short. It is unpredictable. So I’m throwing it all away and leaving nursing. I’m no longer helping people as a nurse. I can’t anymore. But I also can’t live a life without helping people, without bettering this place. That’s the prime directive of one’s humanity: helping, improving, supporting, loving. If we’re not doing that, we’re not really human.

So I’ve been digging deep the last two years, and this is what I’ve come up with:

What I Value:

  1. Kindness
  2. Courage to dissent in that kindness
  3. Intelligence and reason
  4. Empathy-based action
  5. Nature’s ability to heal and provide for humanity
  6. Humanity’s ability to heal and provide for nature
  7. Sharing good food and drink over connective conversations
  8. Listening and hearing someone regardless of our differences

What I believe:

  1. There is good in everyone and each of us is doing our best
  2. We are stewards of this world and of each other
  3. Caring for this world is caring for each other and vise versa
  4. Everyone deserves to live in a healthy environment
  5. Meaningful connection with others is an act of love

How I want to change the world:

  1. Provide environments free of physical, mental, and emotional aggravations for all people
  2. Rebuild the forests to help cool the earth, enlarge habitats, and provide areas for all to engage with nature
  3. Enrich others’ lives by providing access to nature, engagement with nature, and respect for the symbiotic relationship we are in with nature and our surrounding environments and communities
  4. Connect humans to a) other humans, b) their communities, and c) the local environment and natural community.

What I Want People to Know:

  1. We are should be in a symbiotic relationship with the planet. Renewing and restoring the earth, forests, waterways, prairies, and other natural spaces, will support and provide for humanity.
  2. Refocusing ourselves on community, on individuals within the community, and on providing safe and healing environments for our local communities, will bring balance and renewal to our world.

I want to be outside for most of my day. I want to connect with others, while we play in the dirt. I want to teach people about tree’s connections to other trees, so we can better understand our own connections. I want to think analytically about how to lower the temperature of the planet. I want to fix problems and help other humans. So I applied for grad school for a Masters in Environmental Science. Now let’s hope they let me in.

Goodbye, ICU

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Tomorrow is my last day as a bedside nurse.

And today is Nurses Day, or more legalistically, Florence Nightengale’s birthday. Her official title when you google her is Statistician. And yeah, that’s accurate, but she was a nursing statistician. She brought statistics, empirical data, and the scientific method into the nursing field, and her actions bettered the world you live in today.

Tonight, I came home after my shift to find my face covered in zits. Well, maybe not covered, but a significant outbreak has occurred, folks. Red alert. I repeat: Red. Alert. Puberty HAS RETURNED. All in a 12 hour span.

In the last 2.5 months (yes, that’s pre-pandemic for those of you counting), I have gained 20 lbs.

On average, on the nights surrounding work, I get about 5 hours of sleep. That’s mostly from anxiety. Some of you closer friends may know, but I do fight both depression and anxiety. (See The Pokey Green Monster series earlier in my blog.) Anxiety manifests in me as tension and inability sleep, bitterness, sharp and hateful words, and at times, difficulty breathing. Depression manifests as an inability to move. Like, I’m lucky if I can get up to go to the bathroom. Now you’re starting to understand the 20 lbs and lack of sleep. Alcohol helps, but when you use it as a dependency and evasion tactic, that’s called alcoholism.

Tomorrow is my last day as a bedside nurse.

I have worked in the Operating Room on the urology team during the day and transplant team at night. I have worked the Burn ICU. I have worked in 9 different states as a travel nurse. I have worked in every ICU except neonatal. (Every one needs a hero, and NICU nurses are mine. Ain’t no way I’m touchin’ a baby that small with an IV needle.) I have worked in the Emergency Department. I have worked in union hospitals and non-union hospitals. (Believe me, you get better care as a patient in union hospitals.)

I’ve held hands of people as they died and then put their body into a bag. I have told mothers their sons were alive. I have seen a burn patient take their first walk in new skin. I have seen a patient drain the orange from their skin in a matter of minutes after a liver transplant. I have consoled families. I have broken ribs during CPR. I have been kicked in the chest, punched, scratched, groped, stalked, and threatened. I have walked out of a newly dead patient’s room and next door rejoiced with the other patient that her biopsy was negative. I watched a Disney movie with my patient when his mother couldn’t be there because of a pandemic.

There are some patients from last week whose name I can’t remember. But there are others I will never forget and I truly hope to see them in the afterlife. There are some that I pray for every day. And there are some that I still struggle to forgive.

Tomorrow is my last day as a bedside nurse.

I am so grateful for the knowledge this career has given me. I am so grateful for the empathy and experience which it has graced me. And I am so done, so tired, so burned, so exhausted, so muddled. I don’t function well anymore. My priorities have altered, my relationships suffered. I am hardened. I am harsh. I am bitter and judgmental. I am not the person I want to be. I used to be joyful, childlike. I want that back. Is that return possible? I think so. Look at people like Fr. Roman Braga; he told the silliest jokes to me as a child. And yet, he spent some horrifying years in Romanian Communist camps.

Monday I begin a new job as a clinical coordinator for a kidney transplant team. I’ll be working with the living kidney donors. Benevolent, healthy people willing to give an organ to another. Healthy, happy, kind people: not exactly the people I’m used to caring for. And here I am, in the middle of a respiratory pandemic, leaving the ICU. There’s a lot of guilt about that. From myself, but also from other nurses. We’ve all got to walk away at some point, even Flo did. (Literally, she was bedridden towards the end of her career and suffered from depression.) I have hit my breaking point in that I feel I’m no longer doing my patients any good. I can physically do the job, but humans don’t need a robot completing tasks, they need another human to care about them. And that requires empathy and energy. I am surprisingly low on the first, and running on empty with the second. A large part of that is working through the first round of this pandemic, but let’s be honest, I’ve been worn by this job since day one. A horribly painful and virulent disease exposing our entire nation’s healthcare system as a house of cards…that didn’t help, but it’s not the primary reason I’m leaving.

More on my experience working with COViD patients later, but for now, I have to get up for work in the morning.

A rant to end all rants

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Ygritte the Wildling Kitten

See what I did there? The war to end all wars didn’t end wars, and this rant will, sorry to say, not end my rants either.

I am to the point as a nurse that I don’t really know which way is up. Let’s be honest. I go into work and I am “balls to the wall” until I leave. I am grateful to be able to leave at this point. I know it may very well come to a point in the next couple of weeks when I can’t leave. I’m having trouble processing everything that’s going on outside of my hospital, locally to globally, personally to interpersonally. I’m running on auto. I need help to function, but I’m a travel nurse, living by myself in a studio apartment with my cat, Ygritte. FaceTime with my fiancé and my parents have been keeping me functional. (Point in case: I just typed ‘functionable’ instead of functional. I swear, I’ve already had my coffee. Ha!)

I know it may very well come to a point in the next couple of weeks when I can’t leave.

I am fearful about the future, I know many of us are. I fear that my parents, financé or other loved one will die, and I won’t be there to hold their hand as they do. I fear that my family will suffer. I fear for many of my friends AFTER this is over, that they’ll be in economic ruin. I fear I’ll be forced to miss funerals. I fear that our country won’t learn from our utter mismanagement and lack of preparedness.

I am sad that I won’t be able to go to church for Annunciation or Pascha (Orthodox Easter). I am sad that I haven’t hugged anyone for over a week. I am sad that the last time I saw my fiancé I was distracted by this virus. I am sad that my dying patients can’t have their loved ones at the bedside.

I am angry at individuals and organizations not taking this seriously or blatantly going against recommendations. I am angry that our government tried to hide the seriousness of this. I am angry that our medical system is so heartless. I am angry that our healthcare system is so unprepared, purely because the hospital systems wanted to make more money.

I am grateful that I have food in my fridge. I am grateful that I have running water and bleach wipes and soap. I am simultaneously sad and grateful that I do live by myself in that I can’t bring this disease home to anyone, but also, can’t get one of those long, reassuring hugs after my day. I am grateful to be able to pay rent. I am grateful for a cozy fireplace. I am grateful for dreary, rainy days that make it easier to sleep for my night shift.

I am grateful for available art and music. I am grateful for the daily readings of the Orthodox Church. I am grateful for live streaming of church services. I am grateful for the internet and that I can find whatever services, prayers, music, or fellowship that helps me get through this. I am grateful for the stories and lives of the saints of the Church that give examples of how to live through this difficulty. I’m grateful for BOOKS. And streaming TV shows. And podcasts. I’m grateful for my two new roommates, the Spider Sisters; we are all practicing social distancing within the apartment.

I am thankful for couch to 5K programs. I am thankful for ant traps. I m thankful for camp directors who understand and help me delegate things off my plate. I am thankful for random calls from friends across the country. I am thankful for kitten cuddles. I am thankful for a lot of things right now.

The thankfulness doesn’t negate the anger or the fear. They’re all there, boiling together in a pot.

“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”

Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor

Pray for the healthcare providers, pray for the sick, pray for the dead, pray for the world. Stay home. Live in the moment. Wash yer hands.

Thousands of years of exhaustion

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I am tired.

I was able to donate blood for the first time this week, the first time in 17 years, due to anemia. 470 mls doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a lot when don’t plan, and start your period the next day.

There is not enough broccoli or spinach in the world at the moment. I know–I’ve bought out every grocery store in Portland of both of them. I tell you that as a warning for what comes next. I am blatantly hypoxic and anemic. But here I am, in all that low oxygen, low blood pressure glory, spilling my truth, because I don’t care about being PC. I don’t care about hurting feelings. This is my brain. These are my thoughts.

Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential nomination race this morning. I feel like it’s a full on failure of women. That’s not accurate. But it feels accurate. I don’t want to put unnecessary pressure on her, but she was the best person in the race to run our country. I want a woman in the White House. I want someone running our country who has some semblance of an idea of what it’s like to be a woman in this country and how to make it better for us. Not just white women. Women of color, trans women, non-homonormative women. She was competent, willing, and sadly enough, totally incapable of beating Donald Trump. Not because of her inadequacies, but because of America’s. And all of this right now has me feeling that America either hates, or is scared of women.

Someone told me recently that women shouldn’t be in leadership rolls. Like, anywhere. The White House, the church parish council, the Senate, the Youth Camp Board. He told me women aren’t “made” to lead. It’s not what we’re designed by God to do. This is 2020. I’m in tears. Not because he’s right, but because people actually believe it, and the democratic presidential nomination proves it.

I’m so tired.

I’m tired of being sold short. I’m tired of being demeaned. I’m tired of being ridiculed. I’m tired of being minimized. I’m tired of not being believed. I’m tired of having to fight to even be seen. I’m tired of being presumed inferior. I’m tired of not contributing in a full way. (I don’t want to say meaningful way, because giving birth, raising children, and other historically traditional female rolls are incredibly meaningful and fulfilling. My point here is that it pushes women into only those rolls and stops us from providing, helping, and contributing to others and society in other ways which we may also excel in.)

I’m so tired. I’m so tired of it being so obvious and yet still incomprehensible to so many.

So yeah, this might be the low oxygen, the low blood pressure, but I think it’s more like thousands of years of ridicule and persecution that’s brought me to boil.

The Chastisement of the Waterfalls

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On a trail I don’t need
I follow another compass to my destination.
Turning the corner, the sound in my ear meets her maker,
And I am showered with her buzzing mist,
Matching the constant hush and hum of the rushing waterfall.

Her finger pressed to her lips,
“Why did you come to me, visiter?
To prove yourself to your fellows?
But look around you.
Be silent and look!

Be silent.

For silence is the only way to see.”

She chides my chosen blindness.
“Wake up! Wake up!
You fool, wake up!
You dear fool. You sacred fool.

Awake.

For the world in which you reside is so special,
So hushingly and shushingly special.
You fool, awake to the grandeur and sanctity surrounding you.”

The waterfalls know.
Their rushing hushing is chastising you for your chatter.
Awake, you fool.
Be silent and see.

Pour la Beauté

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A ways back, I wrote a piece called Notre Dame Burns and I Can Not Cry. It was mostly about my minimalistic approach to life recently and in that throwing out of unnecessary junk, I accidentally threw out my appreciation and love of beauty for the sake of beauty. I used ND as an example because I wasn’t able to fathom why anyone cared this much about a building, old and pretty albeit.

Since that post, I had the opportunity to travel to France. Notre Dame is closed for the burn renovations, but walking around the outside of it was more powerful than I expected. Because of the nationwide strike at the time, I walked a good chunk of Paris. I wasn’t able to use the metro system as thoroughly, so I hit the streets became better acquainted with Paris on a more personal level. Notre Dame is the center of Paris, the historical and literal center, the beginning of Paris, on a literal island, that many view as almost sacred. It is Ground Zero for both the city and for Parisians. That helped my understanding to the response to this fire. Notre Dame burns, and it is seen as all of Paris burning with it. The Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, Moulin Rouge, all safe. But it didn’t matter, because Notre Dame is Paris.

So there’s my recant of my dislike of the planet-wide response to ND burning. (I do still stand by the opinion that the Amazon burning should have brought together more donors to stop it. That should be more important to the world, but alas, even if more money was donated to stop the Amazon, the Brazilian president probably wouldn’t stop his savagery. )

My nephew was in Macedonia for three months, and flew home to right before Christmas, via Paris. Confession: I have never had a desire to go to France. Maybe the south of France in Provence, but no big desire to navigate Paris since it seemed simply like a prettier version of New York. I’m not a fan of big cities. Give me the cathedrals of mountains and deserted hiking trails over crowded city streets leading to beautiful man-made structures any day. But I also rarely turn down a chance for adventure, so I found myself studying French on Duolingo and flying out in early December.

I get it now. Paris is a big city. It does smell like New York, share its tiny streets, and my anxiety did peak a couple times. But I get it, Paris. You’re great. The buildings as old as my country. The bakeries every block with cheap croissants melting in my mouth. Macaroons. Wine. Musée d’Orsay was my favorite, and it might be my favorite art museum of all time. The chance to stand closely to Van Gogh works and see his brush strokes, was a beautiful moment of my life, one I will cherish for a long time. His ability to take his own pain and manifest it through color and light, has made my own life better. Thank you, Vincent.

The Venus de Milo, The Winged Victory, Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix, Saint Chapelle, Monet’s Water Lillies–this city is full of beauty for the sake of beauty. I would go as far to posit that this is what Paris is–the expression of beauty in our world, a purveyor of beauty, a collector of all things beauty for beauty’s sake.

Thanks, Paris. Thanks for bringing me back to beauty, for showing me the greatness that comes of both simple and complex beauty. For pulling me out of this funk of active disappreciation of beauty and life’s expression. You helped me see humanity’s view of creation in new ways, and now I can begin all again, my own search for and creation of beauty, simply for the sake of beauty.

Honorable mentions to Bordeaux and Marseille, two spectacular cities. Cit de Vin in B and M’s own Notre Dame are well worth the train tickets.

Ginger Anger

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Why and how do I become so angry all the time? It’s like a wild animal takes over my mind and my heart, throwing any rational human side of me to the gutter, stomping out any lasting humanity. It can take hours at times for the animal to finish feeding, stalk off, and even then, the reasoned humanity still lays motionless in that gutter of filth, sulking at the beating and afraid of the animal’s return. It’s a very leery and fearful humanity that finally crawls out of that gutter, dirty, beaten and bruised, and humiliated at the loss to a wild thing.
As reason, logic, and a better understanding of love crawl back into my self-hood, I am humbled by the wilderness, by the strength the wild can still wield on me, within me.

The roar of my red hair is sudden and only silenced by love and prayer.

Tides

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Life is so good. And I feel the need to document that I a) do not have to force my gratitude today, and b) have too much of it to fit on my daily gratitude list or even in a single blog post.

Document this, Elizabeth. Document it and Remember. Store it away for the lousy times. To remind yourself that life comes in ups and downs. That life will not always feel or be good. And that any pain which comes, will wash out with the tide as well.

Do not despair, Future Elizabeth. For God carries us through the tides of both joy and pain.