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Outreach

July 24th, 2022

7/24/2022

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From Our Friends — A New Nursing Award 
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This opportunity has been sent to us from our friend and colleague Kathy Douglas—and her friends—who have established this award to encourage and motivate nurses to feel appreciated and loved. 
Here's the link to apply >>>     Good Luck to All!!! 
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May 10th, 2022

5/10/2022

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'NURSOLOGY' BLOGS UPDATE THE NIGHTINGALE STORY
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In recent months, Florence Nightingale's name and reputation have been maligned because  she has been seen as a 'colonialist' who agreed with the then prevailing racist and anti-indigenous beliefs  held during her lifetime. 
Instead, Nightingale was indeed a staunch advocate for Indigenous children to learn in their own languages and she was an ardent activist who demonstrated respect and appreciation for all races and creeds. To tell this neglected story in-depth and with updated insights, Canadian nurse leader Dr. Adeline Falk-Rafael has created three 'Nursology' blogs to share how Florence Nightingale was an 'upstream advocate' who wrote about and acted upon her commitment that nursing is more than caring for people after they are sick or injured.  Across these contributions, Dr. Falk-Rafael also highlights the work of Mary Seacole — to compare and appreciate the works of both Nightingale and Seacole. 
          Dr. Falk-Rafael's well-researched blogs are available here:
Part I: Debunking A “Bitter Rivalry”: The Notable Works of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale
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Part II: The Nursing/Healing Work of Mary Seacole: Skillful Nurse and Doctress
​Part III: Nightingale's Neglected 'Upstream" Advocacy
          Across the history of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale has been widely praised and she has often been erroneously misunderstood as well.  To today's critiques, she might well have encouraged the widespread activist commitments inherent in the 'Black Lives Matter' movement. She would have championed the growing, deepening concern for the horrors Indigenous peoples have endured from 'colonialists' and others who did not understand or respect the value of Indigenous cultures — like we are encouraged to do today.  In her last major essay — 'Sick-Nursing and Health-Nursing' — Nightingale closed her text with her far-reaching vision for our time and beyond: “May we hope that, when we are all dead and gone, leaders will arise… who will lead far beyond anything we have done!"
          Just as the world has long-celebrated Nightingale's contributions to nursing by honoring her May 12th birthday as International Nurses Day, we can update our own concepts of what 'nursing' meant to Nightingale >>> We can also better understand what we can do — in her footsteps — to live into what nursing is today and what  nursing needs to become for the health of all humanity — in our time and beyond. 


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February 11th, 2022

2/11/2022

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A white man’s response to Black Lives Matter
Racism: This is how it starts: This is how it ends!
 By Rev. Prof. Stephen Graham Wright, FRCN MBE
“Northern men, Northern mothers, Northern Christians have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South: they have to look at the evil among themselves.” Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
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          A council estate, 1950’s, northern working-class Manchester. It was a time when everyone knew their place, knew their elders and betters, and seemed content with the worldly order of things. Life was hard, but so it was for everyone else. Also, that stuff lurking largely in the background, in the unconscious—resentment, guilt, shame, anger, fear—was muffled by the neighbourliness, the bonhomie, the general “we are all in this together”. Sometimes the mufflers didn’t work, and it all got projected outwards—scraps between lads, shouty arguments between neighbours, “not speakin’ to ‘er”, “wait till t’pub shuts t’night, I’ll sort ‘im.”
“Life was hard, but so it was for everyone else.”
          When you feel small, there’s not much to make you feel bigger unless you can find someone else you can make smaller. There never seemed to be much recognition of the class driven roots of our predicament. Mostly it all just turned in on itself; community eating community with slow digestion and the crap only occasionally made visible when the boozer emptied or one gang of lads strayed over the invisible borders between gable end and crossroads, or the heavy bellied girls destined at 15 to be pushing prams to the corner shop instead of pens in school.
“When you feel small, there’s not much to make you feel bigger unless you can find someone else you can make smaller.”
          I remember no racism because there was nobody to be racist about, at least not in person. We were all white for miles and miles around. At least the miles we knew, in a place where nobody travelled then much anyway. It was there all right, the othering of others, but in early childhood it was way beyond my radar.
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          Then it got a bit strange, I can’t quite pinpoint the date, but I was maybe 7 or 8 so that would make it around ’56, and I went to play with Peter and Hazel who lived across the street who must have been better off as their house though terraced was their own, and they had a bay window. I recall no introductions just the boy, stood between them, and his deep brown face. And a girl with pigtails in jet-black hair, hiding behind, holding back. He had his fingers up his nose. I’d have been told off if I’d had my fingers up there.
          But his colour, I was fascinated, awed by it... I had never seen such a thing, not in another living human being. Hitherto just the golliwog or a schoolbook Little Black Sambo. Then we just got on with it and played like kids do. I remember noticing difference, yet still we just messed about, in the street, the house, the backyard. Eventually we played spin-the-bottle like kids do when some inkling of sexual difference is arising. But really, this time, we, the white ones, wanted to see if he, the brown boy, was the same colour all over. I remember his name now, unusual it sounds now as it did then. Streddik. I have no idea if I’ve got the spelling right. His sister’s name eludes me. Their surname is gone too, though as I write there’s a sound keeps humming “Johnson”—maybe it was that simple. 
“ ...either you wanted to be his friend because he was different, interesting and exotic, or you wanted him squashed for the same reasons. ”​
          They, with mum and dad, were from Jamaica, here to find home and work. Later, much later, I surmised that this must be some kind of liberal household to offer hospitality, until they found their feet. I think they stayed a few months, enough anyway for Streddik to join my class at school—Wesley Methodist Junior School; all kids with snotty noses and flat vowels. There were no two 
ways with Streddik, either you wanted to be his friend because he was different, interesting and exotic, or you wanted him squashed for the same reasons. He spent the days in the playground either with a friendly arm around his shoulder or someone’s fist in his face.
​          Then he was gone as swiftly and unremarked as he arrived. I’d found out he was brown all over by the way, just as he found out that we where white all over. It was just curiosity, difference noticed without judgement, neither better nor worse than the other. Just different. And the difference ignored once explored and past interest. ​Yet I noticed something else at that time. Half-heard words from those greatly taller than me who seemed to move in another world so high up. 
Expressions, gestures between mum and dad and neighbours that I had not seen before. Looks, like I got if I was in trouble, passing between them when Streddik or his family was around. And some words, words I’d never heard before. Words so bad they were hushed, or I was sent off.
“​Yet I noticed something else at that time... Expressions, [and] gestures between mum and dad and neighbours that I had not seen before. ”
“And it was about then that I heard the words 'black ones' too.”
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           Not long after Streddik went away, I must have been heading for 9 by then, at school we were given little books of photographs of orphan children. We were to take them home and ask family and neighbours to buy a picture for a few pence, the money to go to Dr. Barnardo’s. Even now there’s a little bit of rage there, kids like me going around to people who had nothing asking for something for those who also had nothing. I noticed nobody wanted to buy the pictures of the black babies, except my mum who bought all of those. Not, I think, because she liked them, but because she didn’t want me to have to return to school not having sold them all. And it was about then that I heard the words “black ones” too.
​          Then we got our first TV, and with my limited screen time I saw little of faces other than white. With two exceptions. There was the Black and White Minstrel Show, which even in 1958 I recall finding a ludicrous, boring musical pantomime, or maybe a film like Sanders of the River or The Jungle Book in which the whites as usual were noble empire builders and the “darkies” held to lesser roles. Yet they stick in my mind because no matter how the films distorted reality, the majesty and dignity of Paul Robeson and Sabu were not lost and hold with me to this day. However, whatever inner promptings I had then about people being beyond colour, the culture in which I was growing up was relentlessly racist.
         At junior school, the black ones were in the books like Little Black Sambo, and we were told where they lived in those places on that great map on the wall behind Miss Cowburn’s desk, where great splodges of the world were coloured red, and all owned by “us”. The black ones were behind the labels on Robinson’s Golden Shred marmalade, little gollywog (even typing that word now seems offensive) figures I collected to send off and get a badge, a badge to pin on the stuffed gollywog in my bedroom.
“ ...whatever inner promptings I had then about people being beyond colour, the culture in which I was growing up was relentlessly racist.”
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“Nobody told us those fortunes were built on the ripped-off wealth of India.”
             Leap forward to grammar school, where I was put in Clive House, because in faux public-school style we boys were allocated “houses” to encourage team spirit and identity... all names of English men who helped make all those red places on the map—Drake, Hudson, Raleigh, Clive. Eighteenth century Clive attended the same school as me; a plaque, proudly displayed, affirmed the honour we had in following him, he the spirited adventurer who set out to make his fortune in India and add to the foundations of empire—a role model for us all.
​            Nobody told us those fortunes and foundations were built on the ripped-off wealth of India and the bodies of dead Indians. The school and the plaque are all gone now, under a bijou housing estate. If it were not so, would there be a demo’ today breaking into that sacred school hall to rip that testament down and cast it into the Irwell?
“And here we were mouthing off about 'wogs' — we ignorant — that the music we so embraced was rooted in the very people and culture we mocked.”
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“It wasn’t just the personal projection outwards of our individual inner insecurities, it was collective too, something that had gone on in a nation of empire that needed to justify (the guilt?) itself of both the subjugation and exploitation of others.”
         Before and after Streddik, I never met anyone of colour for a long time. “They” must have been there, because I worked in Manchester after I finished school, yet if so they were invisible to me...except heard, in the music of Tamla Motown, or Stax, or on TV when we, the lads, would laugh at the “stupid’ dance moves of the Temptations while we waited for the Beatles or the Stones to appear.
            The “N” word was not the vulgar epithet of choice. No, we preferred “wog” (dare I write that?). It seemed to fit better with the wet smoky clime in which we lived, and anyway it was nicely non-specific lazy racism because it included anyone who was different and could as easily be launched at a Jamaican as a Japanese, a Spaniard as a South African. And here we were mouthing off about wogs — we ignorant — that the music we so embraced was rooted in the very people and culture we mocked. Ignorant too of this racism’s deeper roots. It wasn’t just the personal projection outwards of our individual inner insecurities, it was collective too, something that had gone on in a nation of empire that needed to justify (the guilt?) itself of both the subjugation and exploitation of others, and not take a look at the underlying neurotic inferiority that comes with the fall of empire. (The latter is still playing itself out – pace Brexit).                   
​             Empire caused suffering, but it was only the agent of it, it is what lies behind the empire, the consciousness of fear that is the prime cause. That’s the odd thing about Empire, outwardly powerful, but essentially brittle once the driving force that binds it is exposed, as Ghandi saw, and used.
​          Then a time in London and living near Notting Hill and, before I got on the train to the big city, my dad reminding me to “stick to your own”. Anyway, I soon left London, or it left me as the last gasp of the 60’s meant there were better things to do than a city job. Travelling abroad in the summer of ‘70, the only black man I met was in the same hostel - for the two brief days he was there before the owner and three of the hard cases with red-faced fury turned him out yelling “black snake” as he fled down the High Street of Gibraltar. I felt sorry for him and for a moment thought to follow and help, but surrendered to the pressure to head for the pub and celebrate the “win”, and anyway I had growing reasons to conform and not be noticed.                  Keeping my head down, being one of the lads, was a way of ensuring that my own sense of being different would not reveal itself. If someone else was getting it in the neck, my neck was safe.
“Keeping my head down, being one of the lads, was a way of ensuring that my own sense of being different would not reveal itself. If someone else was getting it in the neck, my neck was safe.”
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“Making the 'other' loathed stopped the hidden interior self-loathing.”
“In short, it becomes just so much easier to focus attention on the 'flaw' of the black skin of the 'other' than face the shadows in our own hearts, in my own heart.”
           So, I continued to join in with my low-level despising, along with everyone else I met at home and work, it was much the same. Making the “other” loathed stopped the hidden interior self-loathing. Now there are all sorts of clever psychological words for it. Then it was just the way my tribe and your tribe should remain irrevocably apart, and oh the value of that—of having the defence, someone else to blame when things went wrong.
              Something or someone else to point the finger at so that anyone, anything was preferable to letting that finger point terrifyingly at ourselves. In short, it becomes just so much easier to focus attention on the “flaw” of the black skin of the “other” than face the shadows in our own hearts, in my own heart.
              ​When I came back to the UK the pressure was on to get a job. I ended up in nursing school. There were fierce lessons to be learned and the least of them was how to care for patients. The hospital culture was unlike anything I had ever known, that’d be worthy of a book someday. But when it came to colour differences, it was as if the Universe had decided to teach me a few lessons of her own.
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​          Here we are, in that first month in school, February 1971; myself in the middle at the back with Christine before me, and Neville to my right. The three white Englanders; Mrs. Walker our teacher stands smiling on the right of the picture at the back, Mohammed next to her and Laxmi from Mauritius top left... (oh how the whole hospital had to give them English names ‘Colin’ and ‘George’ because their own were seen as too difficult to pronounce). Then there was Annie from Hong Kong, sitting on the extreme right, then Brenda from Sierra Leone, Jacquie from Jamaica extreme left and Alberta from Ghana next to her. The Empire had struck back and sent all her children to the motherland. Now will you wake up?
“I don’t think any human being can be defined as a this or a that according to our roles and identities and characteristics.... it is possible to touch a layer of consciousness, the soul if you like, in which 'I Am' is free of any labels.”
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          Dare to admit this. I do not think it is possible to be white English, white working class English, at least of my generation and not be racist (I see in my children and grandchildren a freedom from it). Or rather, and more accurately, to have racism as part of our psyche. I don’t think any human being can be defined as a this or a that according to our roles and identities and characteristics. I think it is possible to touch a layer of consciousness, the soul if you like, in which 'I Am' is free of any labels.
​          But that is a story I have documented elsewhere in Coming Home and Heartfullness, and part of my life’s work nowadays. The discovery of and attachment to an identity can be liberating for a while, perhaps until death for many. But there is a deeper possibility of liberation, of non-attachment to any identity and freedom to dance with them. Masks worn at different balls, to be set aside when not needed or judged irredeemably unhealthy—like racist.
“...if we speak at all it might be to fess up to our own shadows however right-on we think we are, and if we then speak further, it should only be to say we are sorry.”
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​          The flurry of politicians and others who say this is not a racist country are lying—to themselves and everyone else. Of course it is. It’s just that we’re very clever at keeping it subtle, under wraps, difficult to pin down. Those who say it’s non-racist need to sit still, shut up and listen—to the voices of the people of colour, of anyone who has been made to feel “othered” in countless mostly pin-pricky and not just big–slappy ways. The rest of us should keep quiet and we might learn ‘summat’. And if we speak at all it might be to fess up to our own shadows however right-on we think we are, and if we then speak further, it should only be to say we are sorry.
​          So, for starters, let me be personal for a moment; I’m sorry Chris, the black male student nurse I shared a house with. We met when you became a cadet nurse and then you got into training too. I was an arse when we were students. I came out with all the usual stupid shallow things about how black people never produced a Beethoven or a da Vinci. But then you showed me the Benin bronze and sat me down and made me listen to What’s going on and reminded me that the first to come into human consciousness were black. And I’m glad you were a crappy dancer because that eased another stereotype out the window too. I can still feel the barb of shame for the times I did not stand up and counter racist views or actions when I came to them. You never let it mar our friendship and just staying a friend (50 years on) showed forgiveness. In being a friend, you taught me more than you will ever know; there was no substitute for that encounter in changing the me-who-I- thought-I-was.
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“I can still feel the barb of shame for the times I did not stand up and counter racist views or actions when I came to them.”
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“...with the illumination and the healing that comes with self-love and self-regard a kind of forgiveness sets in.”
          In nursing school, I took my first lessons in freedom and it was through the primary way that any hostile ‘ism’ is sabotaged. Encounter. Encounter firstly with other people of different races and cultures may lead us to see that “they” live and breathe and have their being just like “us”. In fact, that there is no “they” or “us” at all. Encounter secondly with ourselves and all those shadow thoughts and feelings; grubbing away at their roots until exposed to the light of day, the light of awareness. Thus, flushed out, they lose their power. I do not think they ever go away; they are part of our story, hard wired into our memory banks and knee-jerk, almost autonomic, responses. But with the illumination and the healing that comes with self-love and self-regard a kind of forgiveness sets in. We come to accept all those hateful stories and — in that acceptance — they are rendered empty, bereft of any further power to captivate or be activated. Love dressed as forgiveness really does conquer all, and it starts at Home.
​          I honour the efforts at many levels to cleanse our culture of racism, but most of them are just moving the chess pieces around into different ways of organising things or legislating for things. The fundamentals of human nature have remained unchanged down the millennia. Each generation has to start again. The deep well of intolerance is still present, just capped over by structural methods.
​          What has to happen, as is the case of some individuals and groups at work to change who we are, is a deep recognition that what is wrong with the world is wrong with our communities and what is wrong with our communities is wrong with ourselves. That’s where we really have to go, a deep exploration of the very soul of what it is to be human, and white, and heal that brokenness in each of us.
”The fundamentals of human nature have remained unchanged down the millennia. Each generation has to start again.”
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          Of course, lot’s of people don’t want to know, or keep their heads in the sand... there isn’t really a problem anyway. We don’t know because we chose not to inquire. At the end of the film Downfall, Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge, is interviewed about life in Germany at the time, and her ignorance, and that of many Germans, of what prejudice was being acted out in the form of annihilation of the “others” in their name. She said, “We didn’t know about it – but we could have asked.”
​          Maybe more of us palefaces can ask what it’s really like to be black in a white world. Maybe, too, looking at that brokenness in whiteness is one of the ways, in these times of world-wide protest, gathered around the death- dealing kneeling on George Floyd, that those of us who carry these old wounds and prejudices can speak authentically, confess of them. We can give up trying to bury this evil behind chronic niceness to people of colour, or express certain PC views aloud because we know we “should”. In the encounter with ourselves is the possibility of transformation, no, transmutation, turning lead into gold. Black people only have racist problems because white people have racist problems.
“In the encounter with ourselves is the possibility of transformation, no, transmutation, turning lead into gold. Black people only have racist problems because white people have racist problems.”
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          So much of the heavy lifting to raise awareness of the effects of racism has been done by black people themselves. White people can do more. More than dwelling on the shame and guilt from the behaviour and consciousness of our ancestors and ourselves in the past, or the present prejudice that lurks in our being. We can dis-empower the lies that come from our stories of our upbringing and the distortions of the world today. In seeing them, we can choose how to respond to them — healthily or unhealthily. We can’t extirpate hatred and fear from our stories, but we can be honest about their presence; what we thus see can be renounced.
“We can dis-empower the lies that come from our stories of our upbringing and the distortions of the world today.”
“The chains that bound us to fear and otherness, hidden deep and sometimes not so deep in the psyche, crying out to be made free, whole and integrated. ”
Let us remember in the BLM movement that for black people (almost typed in “persons of colour” there —we are all persons of colour) the problem really isn’t yours (although you experience the fierce consequences of it), it’s ours, the white folks who never really got free 
​of our own enslavement. The chains that bound us to fear and otherness, hidden deep and sometimes not so deep in the psyche, crying out to be made free, whole and integrated. Just like the wider world we live in really.
          The statue of Colston, slave trader, was brought down in Bristol. A jury decided in 2022 the perpetrators were not criminals for doing so. There are other monuments to be demolished, invisible, in our own hearts. Harder to expunge than anything cast in bronze, racism is sculpted by fear in each of us. Like Colston’s memorial figure, it took individual and collective action to recognise its presence and its power — and be rid of it.                                             © Stephen Wright January 2022
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About the Author
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Starting out with the curse-blessing of the original dysfunctional family, Rev Prof Stephen Wright emerged from his Manchester working class background to grow his hair long and wander around Europe like a lot of his generation did in the 60’s. He drifted into nursing, and by conventional measures made a 
success of it, eventually becoming the first consultant nurse in the NHS in 1986. He got into conference speaking and course-leading internationally, shuffled around in academia, made TV programmes, wrote lots of books and research papers about nursing, advised governments and WHO and the Royal College of Nursing, and matured his craft in the nursing practice of older people culminating in leading a radical nursing development unit that influenced nursing far and wide. He gathered lots of glittering prizes along the way to add letters before and after his name, which appealed greatly to the Enneatype 3 personality he carries around with him. Thus all the usual trappings of an acclaimed career were in place.
           A hand-break turn in self-perception and a reawakening of the mysticism long suppressed since childhood took him in a different direction in the 90’s — exploring spirituality as it related to himself, health care and as service to others. He trained with some eminent teachers and was mentored most deeply by Ram Dass and Jean Sayre-Adams.  He is a member of the Iona Community and his latest work with Wild Goose focuses on the life of Kentigern/Mungo and offers a pilgrimage route around the Northern Fells of Cumbria. Other books have explored spirituality and health, pilgrimage, poetry and the quartet of spiritual guidance, Coming Home, Contemplation, Burnout and, latterly, Heartfullness. The last of these is the culmination of decades of work and the teachings offered in the Kentigern School for Contemplatives, supported by the local diocese.
            Like many others, he hangs on by the fingernails to participation in the Anglican Church, but it’s where he fits and feels called after a life of nomadism, and where he finds service. He’s a Fellow and visiting prof’ at the University of Cumbria which offers some degree of input still to the academic world as well as conferring some vague respectability to his work.
           He lives with his partner in the English Lake District, enjoys grandfatherhood and his organic garden and at 72 still finds working as a trustee and spiritual director for the Sacred Space Foundation a joy. Here's our link to learn more about the Sacred Space Foundation's story >>>
Image Sources:
​Black & White Hand: https://unsplash.com/photos/7j3nCPOQbDQ
• 1950s Children: ​https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/photos-of-1950s-london-a3768851.html
• Black girl with pigtails: https://unsplash.com/photos/lt-JRmS3VrU​
• Black Boy: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photo-of-boy-sitting-on-stair-1328404/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels
• Little Black Sambo Cover: https://www.abaa.org/book/136214653​  
​• Black Child's Face: https://pixabay.com/photos/child-face-african-africa-poverty-4617142/
• Hooded Head Down: https://unsplash.com/photos/Ew33MrOqVp0
• School of Nursing: From the author's archives
• Jump for Joy: https://unsplash.com/photos/ZKdtR_3gVw4
• Saying Sorry: https://www.pexels.com/photo/upset-woman-listening-to-friend-sitting-nearby-6382482/
• Shame: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ethnic-woman-frowning-face-and-pointing-at-camera-5699866/
• Together: https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-women-lying-together-on-the-floor-4556783/​
• Happy Hug: ​https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-daughter-hugs-her-mother-6190858/
• Toppling a Slaver: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/europe/edward-colston-statue-bristol/index.html
• Stephen Wright's image from his archives. 
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NIGH's STORY WRITTEN in three Languages!

9/7/2021

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NIGH's Story Written in Three Languages
The story of the development of the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health — often called NIGH — has recently been published in three languages — English, Portuguese and Spanish — in the trilingual open-access nursing journal called 'Revista Latino-Americana de Emphermagem.'  This story began in 1999 in London, UK at the Centennial Congress of the International Council of Nurses when three Nightingale scholars met to discuss Nightingale's 21st century legacy. As it happened,  Nightingale
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At the Sprachshuleaktiv on Pixabay
herself had written about this same  year in an 1873 essay: ““What will the world be in 1999?  What Nightingale  herself had written about this same  year in an 1873 essay: ““What will the world be in 1999?  What ​we have made it....What 1999 will be, whether all these things are the same then as now, or worse, or better, depends, of course, in its proportion upon what we are doing now, or upon what we are not doing now...” 
                This trilingual article features NIGH's founding credo “We, the nurses and concerned citizens of the global community hereby dedicate ourselves to achieve a healthy world.” — the opening sentence of the Nightingale Declaration for a Healthy World — also available in English, Portuguese and Spanish and many other versions.
               This article was authored by NIGH's International Co-Director Dr. Deva-Marie Beck and is available — via open access —  in three links.  You can download and read each of the full language versions here.
Creating the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health: Theoretical reflections to follow in Florence Nightingale’s footsteps >>>

Criando a Iniciativa Nightingale para a Saúde Global: Reflexões teóricas para seguir os passos de Florence Nightingale >>>
Creación de la Iniciativa Nightingale para la Salud Global: Reflexiones teóricas para seguir los pasos de Florence Nightingale >>>
Thanks! Obligada! and Gracias! to the Co-Founder and Former Co-Editor of Revista Latino-Americana de Emphermagen —  Dr. Isabel Amélia Costa Mendes,  Emerita and Full Professor at the University of São Paulo, Ribeirao Preto College of Nursing in Brazil.
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Nurses Cry Too!

5/4/2021

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Nurses Cry Too!
With a keen desire to honor and appreciate nurses during the COVID pandemic and beyond, our Nurse friend Kathy Douglas joined with her friend Artist and 'Grief Doula' Rashani Rae to create this awesome offering.  Starting with their vivid cover graphic—to share tears so great as to fill an ocean—Kathy and Rashani pack their book with 62 powerful full-color art collages and insightful prose to​
to companion our grief, our caring, and  our commitments to serve the fragile human condition.
“A beloved book and beyond a book... an evocative, poetic, ecstatic and inspirited sacred and experiential calling... to you—YES YOU!”
Jean Watson, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, AAN 'Living Legend'​
Launched on Florence Nightingale's 200th Birthday, May 12, 2020, this exquisite book is a peaceful refuge for contemplation, inquiry, reflection and inspiration for those who traverse the joys and sorrows of nursing.
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A GREAT gratitude gift for the nurses in your life—or even for yourself!  
​Available from Amazon including an amazingly low-priced Kindle version. ​
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20 AMAZING Facts to Know                      about Florence Nightingale

12/16/2020

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20 AMAZING Facts to Know  about Florence Nightingale
by Deva-Marie Beck, PhD, RN, DTM  &  Barbara Dossey, ​PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, HWNC-BC
DATELINE December 2020 — 
​During the last days of the Nightingale Bicentenary & beyond….
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‘Lady with the Lamp’ from A Famous Poem
Nightingale became the famous ‘Lady with the Lamp’ because of the widely popular poem ’Santa Filomena’ penned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) the American poet and educator who was inspired by soldiers' letters written from the Crimean War. From Florence Nightingale, Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 185-186.
She Appreciated A ‘Marriage of A Kind’
Because Nightingale wanted to focus only on her work—and not on the demands of family life—she never married. But still, she much appreciated her 'marriage of a kind' with Professor Benjamin Jowett, a leading Oxford Scholar and Headmaster of their day. Their deep, supportive and inspired friendship lasted more than 30 years until his death in 1893. From Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 329-331.
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A Friend of ‘Alice in Wonderland’
Lewis Carroll, the author of 'Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass'—whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832 - 1898)—was a close friend of Nightingale and Jowett. Wikipedia.
Her Recorded Voice Is Still Available Today
Nightingale’s voice remains available to us today because of the American Thomas Edison—whose assistant, Colonel George Gourard visited her in London in 1890 and created a recording using Edison’s early phonograph invention. Nightingale agreed to this recording to 'perpetuate the great work' of her life.  From Florence Nightingale, Mystic, Visionary, Healer, p. 398.
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She Advised Five High-Ranking Viceroys
Nightingale was highly-respected by many of the British leaders of her time. During the 1870s and 1880s, she advised a series of five high-ranking Viceroys who served the British Empire as leaders in India. Lord Ripon was one of these Viceroys (from 1880-1884) and Nightingale's close friend and long-time supporter of her work. From Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer  pp. 358-361.
She Inspired the Young Mohandas Gandhi
When Nightingale died in 1910, the young Indian Nationalist Mohandas Gandhi wrote an inspired tribute to her humanitarian example in his fledgling newspaper, the Indian Opinion. Soon thereafter, he moved to South Africa and formed a team of Indian volunteer stretcher-bearers during the Boer War, establishing his lifelong commitment to peace because of this experience and his appreciation for Nightingale’s commitment to serving wounded and dying soldiers. From Florence Nightingale Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 414-415 and Wikipedia.
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She Advised Queen Victoria & Prince Albert
Nightingale was a close friend and confidant to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, advising them to consider major British Army reforms after the failures of the Crimean War. They famously wished that Nightingale could actually work at their official ‘War Office.’ From Florence Nightingale Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 190-191.
She Participated in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair
At Queen Victoria’s request, Nightingale crafted the last of her major works--Sick-Nursing & Health-Nursing’—an essay  within an anthology titled ‘Woman’s Mission.’ This was part of the official British submission to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair—the first such international Exhibition to officially celebrate the contributions women made to civilization and to humanity. From Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 388-389 and Florence Nightingale Today: Healing, Leadership, Global Action, pp. 151-171.
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She Invented the Data 'Pie Chart' Wedge Diagram
Nightingale was one of the world’s first statisticians and used the data she collected to advance needed policy reforms throughout her career. When she collected and interpreted data about the deaths of wounded Crimean War soldiers during the Crimean War, she realized that illustrating these numbers with a 'Wedge Diagram' chart would assist Parliamentarians and other leaders to understand and care about her findings. From Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 204-205.
She Championed Women’s Rights
Despite claims otherwise, Nightingale was an ardent champion of women’s rights in many forms. She established a woman’s right to have a career away from family obligations with her own life choices. For instance, she also encouraged women journalists—including her friend the famous writer Harriet Martineau—and became a women journalist herself. From Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 214-216 & 277-278.
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She Respected Catholic Nursing Sisters
Although she was born into the Anglican faith, Nightingale was deeply familiar with the Catholic faith and respected the example of Catholic nursing sisters. In fact, when she was in her late teens, she studied hospital administration books of Catholic nursing orders in the original Italian and French texts. From Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 115-116.
She Is Widely Loved Across the World ​
By the time of her death in 1910, more than 20 nursing schools based on her system had been established around the world. Today, she is still widely loved and appreciated across Asia—in China, India, Japan, Korea and Thailand—and throughout the British Commonwealth's 54 nations. Stamps from many of these countries remember her work. From Nightingale & Friends Encircling the Globe: Words & Works of Healing & Compassion.
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Her Social, Cultural & Environmental Concerns
Nightingale demonstrated that health is sustained when social, cultural and environmental health determinants are maintained. For instance, she identified environmental factors—fresh air, clean water and sanitation. She also worked to achieve social factors such as education for women and girls and cultural factors such as freedom of spiritual beliefs. See: UN SDGs as 17 Health Determinants.
She Connected Deforestation with Climate Change
Nightingale was keenly aware of the damage of deforestation and warned that tree-cutting would impact the climate. She particularly noted the widespread cutting of trees in many parts of India and wrote about her concerns in the then popular Fraser’s Magazine.  From Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 271-277.
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She Anticipated Today’s ‘Global Goals’
With her wide-ranging work on many related concerns, Nightingale fully anticipated current United Nations Global Goals—the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000-2015 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from 2015 to 2030. In her name, today’s nurses are becoming advocates for these Goals—increasing public concern to achieve them. See: Nightingale, NIGH & the UN Goals of Sustainable Development and Connecting the Dots: For Global Health & Development.
She Inspired the International Red Cross 
Henri Dunant—founder of the International Red Cross—credited Nightingale with his inspiration to establish this work in 1863. Since 1907, more than 1,500 Red Cross Nightingale Medals have been awarded to distinguished nurses serving worldwide. From Florence Nightingale Mystic, Visionary, Healer, pp. 323-324.
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She Is Respected Across the Islamic World
Because she served Turkish and British soldiers during the Crimean War, Nightingale was deeply appreciated by the Turkish Sultan Abdulmecid I—then the political and spiritual leader of Islam. His respect for her has carried across the Muslim world ever since. In Turkey, she is often honoured with candle lighting ceremonies at the Florence Nightingale
College of Nursing at the University of Istanbul. The Flame of Florence Nightingale’s Legacy Prayer was first recited during such a ceremony at Nightingale’s own Scutari Barracks at a United Nations Conference in 1996. 
She Was Indeed A Mystic, A Visionary & A Healer!
“We know Nightingale best as the founder of modern secular nursing. But that is only one side of her multi-faceted life. The source of her strength, vision and guidance was a deep sense of unity with God—which is the hallmark of the mystical traditions as it is expressed in all the world’s great religious traditions. This aspect of her life has been vastly underestimated. Yet, we cannot understand her legacy without taking this into account.” Text from the Preface to Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer,  pp vii-viii. and p. 442 (Nightingale & Western Mysticism)
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Celebrated at the National Cathedral in Washington DC
In the year 2010 — the Centennial of Nightingale’s death in 1910 — a Global Commemorative Service to honour Nurses was convened and webcast across the world — with thousands of nurses attending on site at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, where a stained-glass window features Florence Nightingale’s work and life. To honour Nightingale’s wider work to achieve ‘Health-Nursing,’ this gathering called for achieving  United Nations ‘Global Goals.’ Highlights of this Service are still available to enjoy @ ‘For the First Time! Nurses Advocated for Global Goals’
A Light in London!
While the COVID 19 pandemic limited onsite celebrations of Nightingale’s 200th Birthday, her name and face were still featured in lights on London’s famous Parliament Buildings—directly illuminating across the Thames River—to the 
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Guys & St Thomas Hospital—the site where a Nightingale Nursing School was founded in 1871—a hospital that Nightingale, herself, helped to design. Details @ Commemorating the 200th International Nurses Week!
                                List of Image Credits—Used with Appreciative Attribution
1) ‘Lady with the Lamp’ https://www.florence.co.uk/posts/7-things-you-didn-t-know-about-florence-nightingale
2) Benjamin Jowett, 1854 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Jowett#/media/File:Benjamin_Jowett_by_Richmond.jpg
3) Folio Society Edition of Alice in Wonderland https://storgy.com/2019/11/27/the-folio-society-alice-in-wonderland-by-lewis-carroll-illustrated-by-charles-van-sandwyk/
4) Edison's Phonograph 
https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/93942342212802990
5) Lord Ripon https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/lord-ripon-the-viceroy-of-india-to-pass-the-factory-act-important-reforms-and-achievements-1374410-2018-10-24
6) Gandhi during the Boer War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gandhi_Boer_War_1899.jpg
7) Queen Victoria & Prince Albert https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/200973202101360420/
8) Chicago World’s Fair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition
9) Nightingale’s Original Wedge Diagram https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nightingale-mortality.jpg
10) Harriet Martineau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Martineau
11) Villanova Stained Glass Window https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/nursing/about/building/artwork.html
12) Nightingale Stamps https://www.nighvision.net/nightingale--friends.html
13) Health Determinants https://www.colleaga.org/article/what-are-determinants-health
14) Global Climate Change https://digitallylearn.com/global-warming-effects-acid-rain-greenhouse-ozone-depletion-deforestation/
15) Global Goals https://www.hiclipart.com/free-transparent-background-png-clipart-jrone
16) International Red Cross Flag 
https://en.delfi.lt/politics/lithuania-provides-eur-55-000-in-humanitarian-aid-to-ukraine.d?id=77542401
17) She Is Respected Across the Islamic World  https://www.nighvision.net/nightingale-prayer1.html
18) Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer https://www.nighvision.net/featured-publications.html
19)  Florence Nightingale Window https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/234609461816052227/
20) 200th Nightingale Lights Up Parliament http://www.vimeo.com/417815342
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WOW! A 2020 Nightingale Maze       Created in a Nightingale Town!

9/11/2020

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WOW! A 2020 Nightingale Maze Created in a Nightingale Town!
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Learn how to visit & see all the details >>>
​When Canadian farmers—the  Hunter Brothers of Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick—were planning their annual corn maze, they were unsure whether or not it could even be open to visitors. But, they knew that the theme had to show appreciation for our hardworking health care workers during the 2020 Covid pandemic.  What better image than that of Florence Nightingale, their town’s namesake, to represent this profession?

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Nurse Leader Shares                                    A  POEM for Home Care Nurses

8/20/2020

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Nurse Leader Shares a POEM for Home Care Nurses
Maria Theresa ‘Tess’ Panizales tells how "when I wrote this poem, my thoughts were on home care nurses. As I reflect on this today, it's about the NURSE  — wherever you are."
​THE REASON I’M HERE
Feeling why I’m here,
Looking for the answer from nowhere.
Help me understand the many faces of life,
In what I am, and in what I see.
 
“Yes, I’m not in whites or blues,
Casual as I appear in all my hues.
Am a nurse, a home care nurse,
For you and your family to care.”
 
I
You are reclined and quiet,
Eyes staring blankly, foreheads with knots.
Arms clasp around, with hands in fist,
Body barely ready to move, unable to twist.
 
“Let me be with you,
To ease the pain and sorrow, too.
Speak to me not only with words,
But with your heart, and eyes.”
 
II
Along the path another one comes,
Talking is not a problem.
Evoking feelings in many ways,
A vast display of body movements.
 
“Talking is a relief, and
Am one to listen.
Decipher the meaning,
Beyond the talking, and moving.”
 
III
Two spirits entwined,
One cannot do without the other.
Asserting to be together,
To do everything for the other.
 
“Anything I can do to keep them,
Let me think and explore.
Possibilities can abound, given
Support from all around.”
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Never ending always a beginning,
Of life I see, through years of caring.
Nurses masked
the many facets of life,

Lingering around, discovering;
Unearthing miracles through caring.
IV
Tiny feet, tiny hands,
Mother tired but happy at the end.
Discovering what to, how to,
In everything a mother should do.
 
“Glad to witness another of life’s’ miracle,
Together skillfully working to tackle,
Mother and Baby’s struggle,
To lovingly meet the challenge in bundle.”
 
V
Long years of happiness,
Surviving all challenges.
Now in bed, looking peaceful as can be,
Delicate and frail; withering with time.
 
“Lifeless you may appear,
Am here to nurture life.
See me, am here for you,
To care, help live life within you.”

​EPILOGUE 
Never ending always a beginning,
Of life I see, through years of caring.
Nurses masked the many facets of life,
Lingering around, discovering;
Unearthing miracles through caring.

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Maria Theresa ‘Tess’ Panizales, DNP, RN, has 35 years of nursing experiences from academia, public health, hospital and healthcare corporate leadership and management roles. She has most recently served — prior to the COVID-19 outbreak — as a health care consultant for an international healthcare management firm based in Malta. She also volunteers internationally. Based on her latest work in Mongolia, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree — ‘Honoris Causa’ — in June of 2017. Tess has extensive research publication in peer-reviewed journals and has presented in various international and national conferences. She completed her Doctor in Nursing Practice as a Public Health Nurse Leader at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Here's her poem's video version
Hands image credit from UN MUKT The Senior Hub
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India's coronavirus cases continue        to soar, but a slum in mumbai has a different story

8/3/2020

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People who have recovered from the coronavirus wait to donate blood plasma at a screening at a school in Dharavi, in Mumbai, on July 23. (Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images)
Full story "How a packed slum in Mumbai beat back the coronavirus, as cases in India continue to soar", can be found in The Washington Post by Niha Masih 
          How did Mumbai's sprawling slum of Dharavi draw praise from the World Health Organization in July for its "aggressive action" in containing the coronavirus while the rest of the country's cases continue to soar? 
At the moment, India is third behind Brazil and the United States in confirmed coronavirus infections however, according to Bloomberg News, cases are climbing at the fastest rate in the world. Due to a combination of customized solutions, community involvement and perseverance, Dharavi has managed to escape in the midst of the crisis and the world should take notes. 
          The odds were staked against the slum, located in the epicentre of the country's cases and 99% of the city's ICU beds occupied by mid-June. Approximately 1 million people are packed inside Dharavi's one-square-mile area. The strict lockdown first imposed in March, left thousands of the slum's daily-wage residents on the verge of destitution.  Conventional solutions such as social distancing and contact tracing became near impossible to enforce. So how did Dharavi earn its praise? Read the full article HERE.
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Covid-19, sdg's and the global south

7/24/2020

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From Our Friends at the Inter Press News Agency...
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Mand​atory protective face masks in Cuba, from Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
The Inter Press Service (IPS) News Agency was created in 1964, believing in the role of information as a precondition for lifting communities out of poverty and marginalization. The IPS mission is as follows: 
  • "“giving a voice to the voiceless”– acting as a communication channel that privileges the voices and the concerns of the poorest and creates a climate of understanding, accountability and participation around development, promoting a new international information order between the South and the North."​ 

The SDGs, COVID-19 and the Global South:
​Insights from the Sustainable Development Report 2020

By Guillaume Lafortune, Finn Woelm, Grayson Fuller, and Alyson Marks
"Every year, the Sustainable Development Report (SDR) tracks the performance of all UN member states on the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – adopted in 2015 by world leaders. This article discusses progress made on the SDGs in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia, as well as the likely short-term impacts of COVID-19 in these regions where reported daily cases and virus transmission are growing rapidly. It identifies five key measures that international cooperation efforts should urgently include to address the immediate consequences of the health and economic crises in vulnerable countries and population groups." Read the full article here.
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