Trust & Who We Are

Hey, Readers,

Have you ever noticed people whose energies and personalities seem totally out of line with what they say they do?

I have. In the past, and again today, a similar thing.

In college, for instance, one of my friends and I got into a course that was usually for Nursing students only, because it fulfilled a core requirement we needed and overlapped with our studies in theatre. It was a course on bioethics and how narratives (theatre, fictional stories, non-fictional accounts, etc.) can help have difficult conversations about ethics in medicine. So it was myself, and one of my theatre friends, in a class full of people who were studying to be Nurses.

Long story short, not only did half of the Nurses-to-be in the class have poor attitudes and not seem to care at all about other people's needs, but a few of them actually actively fought back against having to learn about other people's views and needs, arguing that the Western medical system always knows best and everyone needs to just deal with it.

Needless to say, I hope no one I know ever ends up with such uncompassionate nursing care. But it's out there. There are a ton of people in fields like that because the medical field makes money, and has a certain amount of prestige. Thankfully there are also those out there who are amazingly caring and compassionate, and passionate about their work helping people--PEOPLE, not just names on clipboards, not just means to a paycheck. One such nurse is a friend of mine who also happens to be a High Priestess. Another is my partner's mother, who recently retired from many, many years caring for people. A third, though not a Nurse but a Nurse's Aid, is my mother. My mother cares deeply about people, who they really are, what they really want and need.

But, this isn't about Nurses. That was just an example, one of the more startling experiences I had, in that classroom with these people who were meant to care about people and flat out refused to do so. This is about people whose personalities make them seem out of place with what they're doing. Nurses who don't care about people seems a little odd, if the way you think of nurses is as people who care for others. Care-givers. Nurturers. Nurturers who don't nurture? Seems like maybe something else would be more suited to their personality and views, right?

New Year, More Me

Greetings, dear Readers,

It's 2017. A new calendar year. For some reason, even though I know it's an "arbitrary" measurement of time, the New Year does seem to feel like something new to me. At least, it has for the past two years, since I started celebrating the New Year in the way I've always wanted to--at home, with my loves, with no midnight phone calls connecting me to people all over the place, no noise... only what I want to do. It's amazing how, when you create that space you want to be in, create that moment and that experience, how you can feel subtle shifts that never seemed to be there before.

Still, on another level, I don't think of the New Year as anything magic(k)al, in itself. It's still one day leading into another. I do not subscribe to the "New Year, New Me!" school of thought. If you choose to make a change, you can do so at ANY time. And even when you do so, it doesn't mean that you are new, or someone entirely different, or somehow not who you just were. You are different, perhaps, in ways. Some people change DRASTICALLY, for better or worse. They are still themselves.