Allow my healing journey and its vulnerability to be a source of strength for anyone going through a tough time right now.
You are seen. You are heard. You are loved.
I always leave work on-time at exactly 7:25am unless I’m helping the oncoming nurse. ALWAYS. I don’t hang out or congregate, I just leave. During the majority of my shifts, I remember always giving myself a pep talk every couple of hours.
“You need the money” “Just a couple more hours” and my favorite “What else are you going to do?”
Now that you are privy to my inner monologue understand this was not just at work. I was having these internal conflicts regarding work every day. Days I was not even scheduled to work.
I know…sad.
During my very last shift, a hospice nurse was visiting one of my patients. She completed her assessments and came to find me and said “It won’t be long now”. I asked her how she knew and she said “the signs are there, you know when it’s time”.
And she was right, we both did (know the signs).
But for the life of me I couldn’t understand why I was having such a hard time applying similar “signs” to my own life. It was at that moment when I realized I would not be coming back after my shift ended. I clocked out for my last shift and just sat outside when I got home. It was a chilly morning but I didn’t mind.
My heavy heart felt so much lighter as I enjoyed a cup of tea while listening to my backyard birdsongs.
Knowing when to leave is almost as important as discovering your spirit is out of alignment with your heart. Your spirit will always tell you what your heart may not have been able to translate just yet. Allowing your heart to know peace makes every difficult decision that much easier. I’d come to the realization that I was doing more harm to my body than good by choosing to “suffer through”.
The signs of exhaustion were there if I’d bothered to use that nursing degree of mine:
- lack of restful night’s sleep
- overeating/loss of appetite
- irritability
- inability to focus.
But the signs are not always loud and clear, usually unhealthy and self destructive habits happen gradually over time. Making them harder to notice.
I began to understand myself and my triggers more.
- Being confined indoors to work a 12-hour shift in a high-stress environment was not beneficial in regulating my nervous system. It actually had quite the opposite effect.
- I would anticipate a rough shift days before I was scheduled to work. Which unfortunately kept my mind in work mode further contributing to my clinical anxiety.
- It was becoming harder for me to build that empathetic relationship I was used to with my patients due to constant foreboding.
- My bubbly personality slowly became less and less present at work. The only thing I had to offer was a forced smile.
Now that I think about it I’ve had only a handful of genuine organic connections reserved for a few select patients during this year alone.
That’s my sad and unfortunate truth
In the end I sat with my decision to leave nursing for a while. I did not come to the decision lightly, I have a mortgage and responsibilities for goodness sake.
I also understood this decision must be my own. No outside influences could deter me one way or the other. I had to take a long look in the mirror and sit with this discomfort. For far too long I’ve felt like my life has not been my own, my decisions not my own so i wanted to make a decision that would make me feel both happy and in control.
A bird feeding business.
The idea of combining my love of all things birds and working for myself has offered me an opportunity to do something that I actually look forward to everyday.
Despite my love of bird feeding, nature and being outdoors my knowledge of birds did not extend far beyond that. A lot of time and effort has gone into gaining more knowledge of birds and I take great pride in learning something new that interests me just as I did years ago in nursing school. Unlike nursing school, I have the opportunity to slow down and allowing birds to heal me organically.
It’s really my favorite part of this journey.
Birds seemed to have reset my nervous system in a way that feels like warm hug.
My morning Bird Drop routine
- My mornings usually start around 7-8am and begins with me cleaning my feeding board if it wasn’t cleaned the night before.
- For the cleaning I use just warm water but occasionally dawn dish soap may be needed.
- I have copper in my bird bath so there is no algae at the moment so I don’t need to clean it now.
- When the bird bath does begin to grow algae it’s best to remove all river rocks (if present), clean those, then clean the bath with dawn.
- I begin to add my wild bird food at that time. I use raw peanuts, black oil sunflower, dried mealworms, pumpkin seeds, sunflower hearts and orange slices (subject to change at any moment but these are all safe options)
- Then I grab my tea and wait for the show.
Watching the recent family of Common Startlings visit The Bird Drop reminded me of the fact that birds provide a mutually beneficial relationship to humans. We are capable of providing birds with safe feeding habitats and nesting boxes supporting local bird populations. And humans in turn experience significant mental health benefits from simple care and conservation efforts of bird feeding.
The Bird Drop 