Interspersed with the joys and worries of being a gramma, she recounted her own grandparents – challenges and opportunities of caring for them, grief of losing them, gratitude for being loved by them, and the everyday experiences of now living in their home.

“I can’t see a future outside of our relationship,” she tells me, “but I also can’t see a future outside of residency.”

“I wonder if these medical professionals, in caring for people who face such insurmountable odds, walk around all the time carrying this weight I’m hauling now.”

He spoke to me of the health challenges of those he cared for deeply. His empathy only reminded him that he could not help those in pain.

He had been trying to cope with the grief, and was on a quest for soul-searching and meaning-making.

She spoke about the ways this traumatic event shaped who she is today: a person with an “unshakeable peace” born of deep faith.

She took on the Executive Director position at a non-profit in 2019, just before the pandemic.

This nurse felt like she was asked to be a therapist, social worker, and nurse.

We are expected to research, contribute to scholarship,  earn grants – all on our own time.

Retired from the military, she was brought back into nursing during the COVID pandemic.