Restoration in the Aftermath

Awdish reflects about recovery and healing in the point of view of a medical personnel. She shares that they are so accustomed to healing others. In exhaustingly difficult times, when they have nothing left to give, they treat the person in front of them with all the humanity they can muster. She has heard people (colleagues, nurses, patients) describe this time as having scarred them, but she would rather reconsider and think of themselves as perhaps wounded instead. One of their nurses described an experience of being the only nurse in the room of a patient with COVID who was arresting. She felt paralyzed, unsure of what to do first. Meanwhile, when she thinks about the lessons of her illness, the lessons of COVID, it feels as if what they have been learning to do is grow a heart that can hold all of it.