Recently, I spent a week ‘off the grid’ on a solo writing retreat at one of my favorite places on earth: Orcas Island in Washington State’s San Juan Islands. In my experience, going off grid, off e-mail, off social media, off any news is both deeply restorative and refreshingly loopy. Restorative, of course, because the electronic umbilical cord connection with the world creates a constant anxious buzz that is typically only apparent when it is absent. Refreshingly loopy because the cessation of that baseline buzz creates space for our brains to make sudden strange connections and leaps into uncharted territory.
One of these loopy leaps for me happened through the nurse log. Anyone who has ever lived in or traveled through the soggy, glacial-scoured forests of the Pacific Northwest, is familiar with the term ‘nurse log’–an example of which I include in this post. Nurse log, as in a decaying part of an older tree (log, or stump, as in this photo) that provides the ideal environment of moisture and nutrients and even shelter from competition, for a new tree to start its life. An example of resilience, adaptation, and thriving in the face of adversity. An example of the circle of life.
A metaphor for where I am in my nursing and teaching career: on sabbatical, gone fishing, taking a break, lying fallow and untilled, at least from my usual clinical and teaching responsibilities. More time to study important things, like the state of homelessness, the role of narrative in health and healing, the history of charity health care–and the lifecycle of evergreen trees. More time for travel–not to faraway lands–but to places right here at home. More time to cultivate and appreciate quiet.
It strikes me that we don’t allow enough space and time for quiet. We now recognize the importance of quiet in hospitals to allow patients to heal from illness, trauma, and surgery–although actually providing this for patients is spotty at best. I was reminded by Health Care for the Homeless, Seattle/King County Public Health nurse Heather Barr recently that emergency and transition shelters for people experiencing homelessness are often chaotic and cacophonous places. She advocates the addition of quiet rooms and quiet hours when she works with shelter staff around implementing trauma-informed care. People who are struggling with PTSD are often triggered by noise. I’ve often observed the role of a healing quiet space in public libraries for homeless and marginalized people who otherwise don’t have such sanctuaries. As health care providers, as caregivers, as teachers we should remember the gift of stillness and of quiet.
JOSEPHINE ENSIGN 