Courageous Well-Being - the story of one little song
Hello hello! Earlier this week, a book I’ve been looking forward to, ‘Courageous Well-Being for Nurses: Strategies for Renewal’ by Donna Gaffney and Nicole Foster, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, hit the stands!
A book like this is so important in these times as the infrastructure of healthcare systems continues to deconstruct and nurses especially feel the grinding down upon us. It is so hard to know how to cope and what to do to stay sane and engaged with patients. Even before the pandemic, this was a problem and I can personally relate to what it feels like to be burned out, yet addicted to the cycle of working in a stressful environment. To leave the day feeling defeated because you were unable to carry out the most basic forms of care due to time constraints and energy depletion, while also still feeling empowered by having a purpose in fighting the good fight was a common paradox that kept me feeling unsettled.
Donna Gaffney emailed me shortly after I released ‘Take Good Care’ in 2021 mid-pandemic to tell me about her book and asked if I’d like to contribute a story about what it was like writing songs with my co-workers on the Palliative Care Unit at Vanderbilt. I had already been working on my memoir (still in progress) centering around how creativity is essential in the healing process, especially in the setting of stressful environments. I was delighted to have an opportunity to contribute to this book and I decided to share the story of how Anna Marie Henderson and I wrote our song ‘Stop for a Minute’ which became our own personal anthem for survival and self-care.
Excerpt from my story:
As I made my way to Anna’s house outside Ashland City, TN, I was so grateful to have a day off. Lately, life on 5 Round Wing, the Palliative Care Unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) had been chaotic at best. I’d spent the last seven years there, while also growing my music/songwriting career. I’d always crafted nursing this way - relying on it as the gift that keeps on giving, but also capitalizing on the flexibility of a nurse’s schedule. But since Covid-19 became a household name, my music life had suddenly evaporated and the hospital’s needs were creeping up quickly. I had thrust myself into working more and more and had yet to realize my carefully curated career was at high risk for injury…
Nursing creates many opportunities for empathetic interactions, especially in my unit where I am frequently participating in end of life care, establishing a plan and having conversations about what to expect. There is rarely time to process and integrate the intensity of the work. I was drawn to Palliative/Hospice care because I felt like I intuitively knew how to do it. I felt ‘called’ to help people transition from this world. I had always leaned on music as a way to dissipate some of my stress after deeply connecting with people I’d most likely never see again after an intense time. Lately I’d been experiencing some compassion fatigue and felt stress building in my system without a discharge plan.
My co-worker Anna Marie Henderson is a ray of light. She is one of those people you are so happy to be on the unit with. Soon after she joined our team I knew she was a natural born healer. One day I heard the most joyous sound coming from one of her rooms and it was her gorgeous voice singing Amazing Grace with her patient. I knew I wanted to write with her.
She enthusiastically said yes and invited me out to her house on a day we both had off. She said she hadn’t written many songs but she loved to play gigs with her husband Lenny and had been performing since a very young age, and wanted to ‘help me out.’ The day before our session I’d gotten a call from the Associated Press asking if they could ‘sit in’ on our co-write. To me that was a strange question because it felt a little like inviting the media onto a date, but I also understood nursing was currently under a microscope and the world was looking for a feel-good story. I didn’t know if we could achieve anything great, and I didn’t know how Anna would feel about it, but being the star that she is, she wholeheartedly agreed…
We went on to finish the song and record it at The Bomb Shelter Studio. It was written about in the Associated Press and also picked up by Rolling Stone Country. We went on to be on the local news in Nashville and were a featured story on News Channel 5 .
Here’s the song:
It goes to show you never know what one little song can do. It’s one of the most magical parts about creating! I am always humbled by the opportunity to receive songs from the universe, and collaborating with others makes it even more special.
As we unpack this world that has changed so much by the pandemic, healthcare is still suffering greatly and nurses are leaving the bedside in droves. Even I have changed jobs in the last year, and my new position, still at Vanderbilt, is very different than my time on the Palliative Unit. I miss certain aspects of that, but there is so much that I don’t. The beauty of nursing is that you CAN change directions, and there are so many new ways to go. For me, to continue my music life, I had to make a choice to conserve my energy by scaling back from some of the intensity, and being a nurse for over 20 years at this point, I am OK with the decision to work more on the sidelines.
I really enjoy writing about nursing though. As I work through the many stories I have, I sometimes wonder, do people want to hear about this? I hope so! Let me know!
xoxo Megan