This piece is part of a series offered by the GilChrist team during the month of October about practices of healing, in honor of GilChrist’s 25th anniversary on October 15.
“Nursing is concerned with promoting health, preventing illness, caring for the sick, and restoring health.”
—Jean Watson, Theory of Human Caring
In 1860, Florence Nightingale revolutionized healthcare with a “simple” emphasis on fresh air, proper diet, and hand washing. Since then, the art and science of nursing have developed into a vocation that knows true, holistic healing is not merely a system of bigger bandages and better medicines. It is a series of paradigm shifts: from the learnings of medical students to the educating of our patients and communities.
For me, GilChrist is a proving ground of that truth:
As a person and culture and society and world, we must begin to see that while our social, civil, political, and environmental wounds may scab over time and time again, to truly heal will mean learning a new way forward that cuts less and less deeply; leaving fewer and fewer scars behind.
“When my child falls off their bicycle, I do dry the tears and mend the scrapes and bruises…sure. But I don’t teach and hope for a future of better and better bloody knees. They and I hope and learn and wait… for better bicycle riding.”
—Samantha MacCallaster