live in the infinite

When she apologizes for being hard to love, do not say “it’s okay”. Tell her that loving her is like breathing and without her you are drowning, but you wouldn’t want it any other way.

I would be a great Kennedy

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,  the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

How my bed feels after a long shift....

You have to be strong to be a nurse. You need strong muscles and stamina for the long shifts and heavy lifting, intelligence and discipline to acquire knowledge and exercise critical thinking. As for emotional fortitude - well, I’m still working on that. Most of all, you need moral courage because nursing is about the pursuit of justice. It requires you to stand up to bullies, to do things that are right but difficult, and to speak your mind even when you are afraid. I wasn’t strong like this when I started out. Nursing made me strong.