“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
“I can’t control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Oct 07, 1931 – Dec 26, 2021
My you Rest in Peace.
The world lost a great leader this month Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. If you read Dr. Hicks’ book on Dignity you will see that Bishop Tutu and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela were the foundation to what we know as the Ten Essentials of Dignity. It was her work with Bishop Tutu that led Dr. Hicks to reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography and creating what she now calls the “Mandela Consciousness” which states that no one can rob me of my dignity unless I allow them too. I try to live that way every day. As Dr. Hicks states in her book “Leading with Dignity” we gain our sense of worth not from what people tell us but from our ability to understand that dignity is something we have at birth. It is our right and only we have the power to surrender it.
In my last post I wrote about the 10 temptations to violate dignity. I wrote about the “I” and the ‘me”. The “me” is our survival instinct. It is our fight, flee, or freeze (Donna Hicks, PhD, Leading with Dignity). It is when we are most likely to violate our dignity and the dignity of others. The “I” is our ability to honor the dignity of ourselves and others. It allows us to think before we react. Over the last almost 2 years I have struggled with allowing my “me” to dictate my responses. It has been an uphill battle for all of us and in times of challenges like we have experienced we often return to our biological responses to stress which are to fight. flee, or freeze. I want to share some examples of what I have experienced over the last 2 years. These experiences have helped me to understand the difficult road we will need to travel to get to what Archbishop Tutu said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
We are 2 years into the Covid-19 pandemic, and we struggle because we see no end in sight. But what I have seen and heard leads me to believe we have more than just COVID that is affecting us every day. We have seen record deaths due to Fentanyl overdoes. We have seen an increase in suicides, depression, and anxiety, especially among our young people. We have seen how the increase in crime and violence has affected our inner cities. Our healthcare system is in crisis due to staffing challenges, COVID cases, and non-COVID cases. The things we are experiencing are unprecedented and our leaders are working hard to figure all this out.
I was shopping at a major department store and the greeter at the door told me stories of the reactions she received from customers who she asked if they would put a mask on. She said she has never been spoken to that way in her life and that it is a daily experience for her. I speak with many of my partners in healthcare and they tell me of the struggles with staffing and that they cannot give the kind of care they want to their patients. I spoke to families who said goodbye to loved ones through a camera because they couldn’t visit because of COVID restrictions. I could still see the sadness on their faces. I spoke to a mother who lost her 20 y/o daughter to a drug overdose. She is still struggling to figure out how this happened. I read a report that the city of Chicago had its highest homicide rate since the 1990s and that 80 percent of those homicides were Black. I have talked to numerous people (Once they found out I was a nurse) about access to care and their negative experiences when they did access care. We have all suffered from the negative consequences of COVID and its trickledown effect into our everyday lives.
What do we do? I struggle with that question every day. I do not have the magical answer. I wish I did. I feel the stress as all of us do. One thing I have learned in my dignity journey is that being open to listening is the first step to change. I love this quote from Archbishop Tutu, “I can’t control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.” This is the perfect “I” statement. I continue to work hard to control how I respond to the challenges life presents to me.
There is a light of hope at the end of this dark tunnel. I believe that even in those moments alone when I ask, “When will this end?” I write this blog because I want to help people find their hope. I Became a nurse because I want to help people find their hope. I honor the dignity of others because that helps me to have hope and that hope helps me find the light in a world covered in darkness.
May we all be able to tap into the Dignity Freedom Fighter within.
Happy New year
Charles Redd RN
Dignity Freedom Fighter
Dignity Freedom Fighter 