I’m an average middle-class worker, a registered nurse, pursuing integration of work, home, and community. One seamless, healthy existence lived out in many contexts, seeking to move with openness and curiosity first, then advocacy; Held as a small, beloved part inside a much larger, mysterious story. I draw on many perspectives and disciplines to explore how my/our participation in a broken system may contribute to wholeness, reconciliation, and (if at all possible) redemption.
Pain is additional data, not the whole story. We could say, “I can’t move forward because it hurts too badly.” Or we could say, “I wonder what this pain is teaching me about how to move forward?”
Pain teaches us the under, over, and through of maneuvering. So we listen, and we embrace. Neither avoiding nor obsessing.
Gather all the available data, make an evidence-based decision, and keep moving.