Carroll Nelligan, President, Chief Operating Officer

My heart is hurting today as I know is the case with all of you.  This is not a political post.  There are plenty of avenues for that.  We have been faced with many months of challenges and we are all fatigued in different ways.

I am writing about what I know to be true.

Operate out of love.

You are healers.  It is your destiny to bring that into the world.   What I kept thinking about over the weekend is that we are all aligned in that.  We are wired to care, to nurture, to help, to love.  We don’t see our patients through a lens of what color their skin is, their political views, or their income.

When I worked in urban Philadelphia, we treated the worst of the traumatic brain injury cases.  The Philly cop that was shot during a terrible robbery, the Hasidic Jew who was in the school bus bombing, the young boy from the Manayunk projects who had been shot on a corner drug deal, none of it mattered who they were but how we could help them become human beings again.  The love for our patients and the ability to change lives is what drove us.

In so many ways we have all been pushed to a limit.  We have been stripped down to our basic selves and have nowhere to hide, to safely tuck away, to self-care.  You have an opportunity through your work to bring your best selves into the world each day.  To spread love and compassion and to raise the energy of the world we live in.  We have choices to operate out of fear or operate out of love.

I am so proud of the way that we have responded during the pandemic.  We are strong, we are resilient.  Those are not just words on a wall.  We have seen this in action. So many stories of those who redefined what it means to be essential.  It brought tears of appreciation to my eyes.   These are very challenging times.  When one wave hits us, another seems to be waiting in the ocean to pummel us again.  We can breathe.  We can survive. And, we can thrive.

When hearts are hurting like this, focus on the lovely human you are treating in front of you.  Your full and undivided presence and attention to your patients, to your teammates, and to your community is what is needed right now.  We need you on the ground following a moral compass that points in the right direction regardless of what the world is doing wrong.  We need leaders who continue to search for the best answer, not the familiar one.

We are transforming as a nation, as a world, as a human race.  Thank you for all you do as healers in a world that needs so much healing right now.