The first sign of civilization was, to Margaret Mead, visible in a healed human thigh bone. She was pointing us towards an important part of the purpose we enact in caring—something that we are rediscovering along with clinicians around the globe.

Even with the resources out there, some days it feels like the pandemic is presenting us with just too much. We’re in some kind of huge phase shift. But even though the new normal is still unclear, we can find our way back to a grounded place.

The moment when we realize that we can’t turn away happens so quickly we often don’t think about it. But when we have those shifts it is worth understanding what enables us to stay present. What is it that we can cultivate within? Today—reflecting on what we need to stay in this work.

There’s a lot of attention give to the experience of seeing someone else’s pain. But what follows—the moment that makes all the difference—is when we move from being confronted with pain to acting. Today, we deconstruct how that can happen.

A paramedic was talking today about the emotional toll of his work. What he witnessed left him with a deep sadness, and one that is compounded with new experiences. But if we take the long view, an evolutionary view, sadness is adaptive. It’s a way our brains and bodies cope with stress. And that contact with stress is something we can shape. 

We know that a new normal is coming, but what it will be like is still blurry. These in-between times are what Raymond Williams called moments when a new structure of feeling is emerging—we can’t articulate it fully yet, but we can sense a bit of the new normal from reading between the lines. How we do this isn’t about thinking harder—it’s about getting in touch with what is just beyond our conscious awareness.

It’s so easy to feel overextended in the midst of this pandemic, and to feel that everything you’re feeling are signs of weakness. But it is possible to return to a place of strength—it’s within you.

We all have cases that stick with us—ones that occupy more of our bandwidth than they deserve. What do we do with them? Today, we’re dealing with emotional fallout, and moral residue. Because it turns out there is a way.

Today, we’re shaking up the language of powering down. We spend so much time in a particular relation to language—at work it’s the language of technicality and expertise. Yet another way language can work is in a completely different mode—to capture the allusive, metaphorical, ineffable aspects of life that don’t submit easily to metrics and outcomes. The powering down today is about shifting your attention—and brain activity—using language from the poet Jorie Graham.

When you are starting to feel tired, it’s easy to let the emotional intensity of the hospital become your everyday fuel. Yet if that becomes the norm, when you walk out to go home, what you might first notice is absence: no overhead pages, no backchannel murmurs, no monitors, no whoosh of PPE in the hallway. But there is another way. Could leaving be a signal to your body and brain that a new phase of the day is starting?