Last evening was an interesting one. My husband, Drew, and I enjoyed a spicy and fun Pad Thai Shrimp dish that I proudly made for us. Then we bowled a bit, talked and listened to music.

Since Drew had sort of injured his elbow at work he couldn’t bowl that long and sat down, looking at tractors on his tablet. I played a few games myself and then felt tired of bowling and playing golf all alone. So I sat down and hopped onto the computer.

I poked around on Facebook a bit, something I almost never do. While I do get on Facebook to check on my business page, my coaching groups and other nurse groups I am in- I rarely just sit and scroll through the timeline. It was fascinating.

I read and saw things that I kept exclaiming out to Drew: “I can’t believe this! Listen to this post. What are these people doing?” (Do people really post that much on Facebook? Wow).

One article really intrigued me though. I had not heard of this before and it was posted by a colleague of mine that I hold in high respect. So I clicked on the link and found myself engrossed in the article.

And by engrossed I mean glued to the screen, reading every single word and not skimming at all (as I usually do through very long texts). She really captured my attention. Not only did the author share the teaching point (about oil pulling) and how it was beneficial to your health, she shared an excellently written, come-alive, filled with colorful language story.

I thought (and said aloud) to myself: “I’ve got to find out more!”

Well I clicked through all of the links on her website: the About tab, the Press page, the Contact section. One click on ‘Consulting’ led me over to a new page, called Blog-Doo. Now I was thoroughly captivated. ‘What the hell is Blog-Doo?’

It was a site about two women who help people with their blogs. And it was so much more than that. These highly creative and totally transparent women had nailed it. Right down to the mouse hover when you’re on their site: it’s an old weegie board piece. Wow. This was something!

So what does this have to do with us, here on our nursing blog? Why am I telling you all about these two gals and their craft as website witch doctors?

They are totally doing what many of us do not.

Living life.

Living their authentic lives. As themselves. No holding back. Doing what they dream. Expressing who they are. Being truly them. (Now I don’t know these two girls and I’m not able to say with 100% certainty that this is ‘true’ yet check out the site. See for yourself. I’ve never seen anything like this before and the loving care that has gone into each page, the creative expression of self. I just don’t see how it can’t be truly ‘them’).

So again, to relate this back to us. As nurses. Are we living our authentic lives? Are we truly expressing the ‘self’ that we are? Or have we lost touch with our true being?

Nursing is an extremely large profession. We are all over this nation, and the globe, in a variety of different capacities. Many of us work in teams and gather together in multiple ways.

We have nurse associations- often at a national, state and local level. We have nursing memberships, forums and networking groups. There are nurse meet-ups and specialty certifications. We’re often traveling in packs.

Does that ever impact our unique identity as a ‘nurse’? Even further does being a nurse take away from who we truly are as unique human beings?

I encourage you to think about your authentic self today.

What lights you up? What do you believe in? What values do you hold? Are you allowing yourself to express the true human being that you are? Or are you suppressing something to fit into some kind of mold? Are you holding back because you don’t want to stand out from the crowd? Are you compromising your sense of self just to fit in?

The one thing I know is this- after poking around last night on the world wide web- I realize that there are more than I could ever even imagine unique individual beings out there. All doing wonderfully beautiful things to help this human race. I’d like to think that hopefully I am expressing my unique self in a way that helps another person. And if I haven’t been doing it to the full potential- I vow to strive closer and closer to this each and every day.

I’d love to hear from you! Thoughts? Reactions? Comments? Feel free to leave a note below. Thank you for reading and enjoy your health today!