What happens when we take care of ourselves and allow ourselves to be cared for?
Attending a work conference away from home, I spent a week staying with friends. Over the week I became aware of how rested I felt, despite it being quite active and busy, and how deeply nurtured I was by my friends.
They were warmly welcoming and set up a space for me within their home that felt like home. We shared evening meals together and shared about our days – what we observed, what we learned. It was all very simple really.
As I ponder on this experience, I can feel something within has shifted with my own self-care and self-nurturing and on reflection can relate this experience to my work as a nurse. There are many wonderful technical skills that we can learn and embrace and enhance our careers as nurses and they certainly do make a difference to the outcomes of our patients. But this isn’t about that, it’s about the other half of nursing that is about nurturing and care – which can often be seen as the ‘soft’ aspects of our work.
From this experience of being in a place of true nurturing and care, I realised that the level of care we allow for, and afford, ourselves has an impact on how others will view themselves; an offering also for them to take greater care. And as we deepen our own self-care, we provide richer and greater care for others, by reflection and through our level of service. A beautiful relationship of learning together what true care is… for many of us something that has been rarely experienced.
This is worth pondering on as nurses as we ‘provide care’ day in and day out. This asks us to consider what is nurturing and what is care, what is the quality that we live and how does this influence the care we offer in our work with patients?
My experience highlights that nurturing and care are beyond what we do and that these qualities can be very much felt by another in simple day-to-day activities. But most of all the quality of nurturing and care that we embody and live can support another much greater than we can imagine.
