Those who have been following my public work over the years know that it started off with a desire to bring voice to – and integrate – the individual grief that we carry on behalf of our patients. When COVID hit, nurses began to grapple with entirely different levels of grief. Particularly for my incredible nurse colleagues who work with the adult population, they saw death and dying en masse, in isolation, with their own vulnerability as they awaited their own protection from the COVID vaccine. We didn’t see the same levels of death from COVID in pediatrics, but we most certainly felt our vulnerability as individual frontline healthcare workers, as well as our system’s vulnerability as we scrambled for both human and material resources.

Today, RFK Jr. was confirmed to be Health and Human Services secretary for the United States, about a month into President Trump’s second term, during which Trump has already severely disrupted worldwide humanitarian and healthcare agencies. I am not here to regurgitate or debate all the issues. But this establishment is going to move the public even further away from solid science, reliable public health practices and research, and meaningful support for us on the frontlines. Say what they will to backtrack past erroneous statements and practices, they’ve already shown their true colors.

What I am here to do is to give voice to this deep, sometimes raging grief in the pit of my stomach, over the collective, systemic losses we are facing and will face ahead, with this administration in place.

Hospitals everywhere are already stretched paper thin, trying to accommodate all the patients coming through our doors with short-staffing, IV fluid shortages, and other systemic shortcomings. Family members are more stressed and angry than ever, adding another demand on bedside nurses who are trying to provide patient care and also navigating challenging family members.

We do all we can to help our trauma patients, septic cancer patients, suicide attempt patients, and our patients with hugely complicated chronic diseases. We absorb the influx of flu, RSV and walking pneumonia patients throughout respiratory season and beyond. We ache for all of our patients, but it’s the preventable deaths that hit our hearts the hardest. These ones didn’t have to happen. These ones should be at school, laughing and playing and growing to their full potential. Of course we make room for them too and try our best to save them. We weep for the preventable ones the most.

Where will we find the resources and inner strength to care for an increasing proportion of society that doesn’t trust vaccines, continues to scoff at healthcare workers, and celebrates an administration that acts with recklessness, dishonesty and utter disregard for individual human experience? Today, my heart is heavier than it’s ever been for our world, and for my healthcare community in particular.

Don’t give into despair, my fellow colleagues, but grieve deeply and honestly with me today and in days ahead. I feel all the temptation to grow bitter, to throw my hands up completely, or to devolve into dehumanized-robot mode.

But acknowledging this complicated collective, systemic grief, listening to its voice to guide me to meaningful action and change, and making active choices to hold to integrity, firm kindness, and humble advocacy, are what keep me human in this unbelievably dehumanizing climate.