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Continue reading →: Showing Up Anyway
Life has been busier than usual since getting back from holidays. It is the end of the school year, which means extra activities, projects due, and the usual chaos that comes with wrapping things up before summer. Ten days away also led to a lot of catching up in the…
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Continue reading →: The Peace That Followed
Back from holidays and feeling refreshed. I’m actually quite proud of myself for fully unplugging and not thinking about work at all until the day we travelled home. There was a time when I would use vacations to brainstorm new and innovative ways to try to “change the world.” This…
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Continue reading →: Letting Go of What Was Never Mine to Carry
As I sit here in the Air Canada lounge with my husband and daughter, awaiting our flight to Mexico for a little rest and relaxation, I can’t help but think about the lengths to which I have grown. There was a time in my career when I ate, breathed, and…
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Continue reading →: When an Emergency Becomes Routine
It’s been 10 years since the opioid crisis was declared a public health emergency. I remember when that language first started being used, emergency. It implied urgency. At the time, I believed it. I thought it marked a turning point. That systems would respond in a way that matched the…
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Continue reading →: Why “Just Quit” Isn’t a Real Question
“Why don’t they just quit?” It’s a question that comes up often, especially as the crisis on our streets becomes more visible and more severe. But it assumes something that is no longer true, that people are operating with the same capacity to choose, recover, and stabilize as they might…
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Continue reading →: Living as a Grief Walker
There are parts of this work that are hard. People expect that. They imagine the difficulty in broad terms. What is harder to convey is the accumulation, the steady and unrelenting exposure to loss that does not resolve between shifts. Burnout is common, almost predictable. Many of us enter this…
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Continue reading →: Good Intentions Are Not a Clinical Skill
No one overdoses because staff did not care enough. That is a hard truth, but an important one. Over the years, I have worked in a range of settings and teams, and this is a pattern I have seen repeated. It is not something unique to any one place. Most…
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Continue reading →: When Caring Crosses a Line
Sometimes the hardest part of this work is not the overdose.It is not the pneumonia. It is not even the withdrawal. It is the moment you realize you have stepped just slightly outside your role. There was a time in my career where someone I had known for years became…
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Continue reading →: The Quiet Work of Trust
This has been a busy week at work. The kind of week where there are so many moving pieces it feels like you are constantly carrying them, trying to make sure none of them drop. Ensuring clients get the care they need often means navigating a system full of unseen…
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Continue reading →: Why Some of Us Stay: A Decade in Difficult Work
This work is hard. There is no soft way to say that. It is clinically complex, emotionally heavy, and often done in systems that are under-resourced and strained. I feel fortunate that early in my career I had strong mentors. Looking back, they are likely the reason I am still…
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Continue reading →: The Importance of Noticing
I was up early today to take my dog to the groomer. Driving through town on a quiet Saturday morning, I watched the slow hum of the day beginning. Businesses preparing to open, lights flickering on, and people being gently woken from the sidewalks where they had settled in the…
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Continue reading →: Compassion Without Structure: The Ethical Tension Inside Harm Reduction
Harm reduction is grounded in compassion. It asks us to meet people where they are at. It rejects coercion and prioritizes survival in the face of risk. In street-based nursing, those principles are not abstract. They are practical. They keep people alive long enough to have another conversation. But harm…
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Continue reading →: Harm Reduction Without Accountability Is Not Care
Harm reduction is often framed as the opposite of structure or expectation. As if offering safety means removing all boundaries. As if challenging someone’s choices automatically becomes judgment or punishment. That has not been my experience. At its core, harm reduction is about reducing preventable death and suffering. It is…
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Continue reading →: When Care Loses Its Shape
I spend a lot of time thinking about why some care helps people move forward, and why some care seems to quietly hold them in place. On the surface, it can all look the same: food, clothing, shelter, wound care, a listening ear. But over time, I have learned that…
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Continue reading →: When Help Makes Things Worse
I want to talk about something that is uncomfortable to name, especially in spaces where compassion is the currency and good intentions are assumed. Sometimes, help makes things worse. This is not an argument against caring, generosity, or community involvement. It is an observation formed over years of working in…
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Continue reading →: Why I’m Starting to Write
I have gone back and forth about writing publicly for a long time. I have written plenty in private, in charts, in policy drafts, in meeting notes, and in the quiet margins of my own thinking. What has held me back has never been a lack of things to say,…
Hello,
I’m Stacy
Welcome to my corner of the internet, where I share stories from the front lines of nursing, harm reduction, wound care, elected official and the complicated, deeply human realities of the people I have met along the way. This is a space for reflection, honesty, and the moments that stay with us long after they happen. I hope you’ll join me as I explore the challenges, heartbreak, humour, and humanity found in this work.
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