This is my 40th year as an RN/Nurse Practitioner, and back to RN again in a long and varied career. The challenge is to enjoy the story of this career without being trapped by it. Beyond my role as a nurse is the common denominator of my common humanity with all the patients and people in my life.

The nurse role is a difficult one to shake loose, and tread lightly in my capacity to be free. When the nursey nurse entity rises up, I suddenly have expectations of what another person needs to do to be healthy, what they “should” do to get well.

A family member comes to mind. She has been ill for 2 1/2 years, and fears the medical establishment. Today another friend convinced her to go to the hospital, something neither her sister nor my self could get her to do.

All of her bloodwork is normal.

She lives alone. We are pushing for a social work evaluation to get her another housing situation.

The temptation to control with expectations is all too common. We medical people do that all the time. The real challenge is to help but without conditions. The ego requires my ability to help as one human being to another, but my soul enjoys the unfolding Karmic dance we are all born into.

The expanded perspective sees the whole within the story and the drama. The story and the drama has the great capacity to catch us in rigidity.

My role as a nurse must not inhibit me, especially at this stage in my life. The prison of the mind, especially without a spiritual practice, keeps people trapped in the role. Roles are finite and boring, it turns out. The way to letting go of roles is to just let them go, and let go of ego but still connect to all aspects of the physical systems inherent in our lives, without attractions or aversions.

Not there yet. But writing this helps. OM