Humble Heart

Watching Mississippi Burning on TUBI- https://link.tubi.tv/IpwuGEWQMSb. I remember watching it as a kid. Powerful movie. I’ll be using my study of the movie as adult to inspire an essay for a LPN program I need to take. I feel like nursing has a deeper meaning for me due to my eclecticism in life… Being more understanding of our differences as humans allowed me to always have the drive to be the best nurse I could be. Worried about how life looks to the outsider, let alone my family and friends now as I type on April 22, 2025 at 8:49pm.

I have just watched Mississippi Burning now as an adult to get a more wholesome understanding of unity. It seems when depression wants to separate me from fulfilling a dream, it likes to compare me to something I am not.

Part of my desire to be more compassionate; I will purposely watch shows that discuss the perils of others. What everyone from all different walks of life goes through in life.😞 (Watching the “Opiods: Hidden Crisis” documentary next on TUBI click here)

In search of Beethoven is a wonderful movie too. Click here

In other words, saying, someone’s tone when they talk to me might sound like my depression (depressed side of myself) talking to me, saying “You aren’t a real nurse. Not even an RN.”

Albeit, I would love if I had more love to float me through this. There is already so much love from others in my life, sometimes there are little circumstances with explanations that lead me to the conclusion I needed to recognize the healthier love comes to you when you begin loving yourself in a healthier manner. Affirmations every morning type of healthy. Take your favorite quote or bible verse that keeps you strong, and post it somewhere easy for you to see when you get low on life.

Let’s talk about how many times I tried the LPN Program, because I think my personal challenges with life have contributed immensely to my worth as a nurse, shall I ever become one.

Where:

OCM BOCES [2014-2015, 2016-2017] & SCSD Sidney Johnson [2011-2012]

Why I didn’t graduate:

The program was closing, yes, but my working two jobs as well as attending the program had me exhausted. I could have definitely tried harder, if not the hardest I had ever tried in my life. Granted, I hadn’t been through the trauma I just encountered in 2023 from being hit by the car to really make me understand how passionate I can be about my dreams to be a nurse one day. I was always dreaming of homeschooling my children too. And another thing was the finances. Arguments of other debacles I am sure would have risen or still may arise because of society and the dynamic in which I have to work more than I want to sometimes in life. I always believe there’s room to do better and be better. I can still make dreams come true. A part of the PTSD for me sometimes is that I shut my own dreams down by the way I talk about my mistakes and whatever I may have gone through to render my reaction to that mistake in my life.

Maybe I didn’t want to go to work sometimes because of my own depression. And after a breakdown or two I realized we all have to keep trying. We have to. I would go to work with the belief that my love for the field and doing God’s work will heal people.

“It will. It has to.” Is how I would talk to myself.

There was a man known to have a colorful view on race. Which brought about a decent amount of gossip around the nursing home. And I always want to be neutral. My time spent with him was a good learning experience. It was time for me to get him ready for breakfast; dressed and cleaned. So, bending down in front of that man who initially may have been a part of racist groups and was needing wholesome care in a nursing home; I was surely willing to tie his shoes for him and anything else he needed done around his room for him to be ready for breakfast on time that morning. I had no concern for the fact that he was frequently referred to as a “pain.” I understood what that mean after working with some people a little bit more. Finding him to be an intriguing man, full of vivacious character when allowed to open up; it was likely a number of things that made him not able to open up and want to talk, let alone be civil with some workers. It could have been their way of handling his frail fragile skin and their way of saying goodnight to him. It could have been their desire to talk about his tattoos that made him belong to a certain group. For me, it was always possible for me to improve who I am as a person and in my mind to be able to be of good use whether the patient would hate me for being a black woman (Nigerian majority mixed with German, Spanish, Irish and other things) or not. I was always hoping for indiscriminatory love.

I knew from a young age I didn’t like the feeling of hating myself because other people who didn’t look like me hated me. Sometimes I would remember those looks from a couple of Spanish girls in the nursing home. They were scared. I told them don’t even worry about it; he is actually quite pleasant when you get to know him. He just doesn’t like a certain “type” of person. And that’s really meaning someone who is aggressive in how they care for him. Which I completely understand.

I remember falling asleep in class. I could have advanced with more support to alleviate the financial stress of being a single parent and having to pay rent & utilities cash, daycare cash, a car payment etc.

There is no reason for my life to be in such a shambles that it looks so completely opposite of what it really is. Every day is a battle with motivation sometimes for me. I need very little motivation to be a mother. For it is something I truly love doing. But trust me, if you don’t respect my passion for caring for others and my need for someone to care for me the way I care for others (meaning you’re being cared for by me as well; we are taking care of one another in harmony) then I cannot be with you. I have taken too many attempts at love and not gotten right my boundaries on my other areas of life. Having a study routine, home routine can be less of a problem once the ball gets rolling. I truly think it’s about having consistent belief in yourself despite the flashbacks of failure. Happy to obtain as much time as possible from working 3 days straight of 12–16-hour shifts whenever I could.

And to be honest it still got the best of me when I was in the program. I know I wasn’t the parent with $100k in the bank when graduating but I had love worth more than that for the children and family that I have. The people at work supporting me and asking me if I needed help mentoring me during the clinicals was absolutely helpful.

The dreams of coming home to a husband supporting me through nursing school while I take care of our children… I would be upset with myself for them not coming true.

“You have to believe more El’Aundra. And harder. Believe harder.”

Why don’t you try spanking me with feathers to inspire me to complete my dreams, instead of smacking me with verbal insults on how I will never be a nurse or finish nursing school? Stop flaunting your money and concern for showering everyone else I work with instead of me. Comparing me to other women you have supported through school or other women you would rather support through nursing school. I mean really, what would or could they possibly mean to me? Be honest with yourself. The confident part of me not caring about that form of disrespect. I was sure that by personality, looks and stature; he would be thinking in his mind

“Man, it sure would be nice to have a beautiful, smart vivacious woman like you to come home to, a beautiful woman inside and you like you to support through nursing school!” Bounding with an overflowing sense of exuberance.

Hell, even to see me care for others. Why are you so mean as a man that you find it more attractive to make a woman like me suffer? And show me in more ways than one what you can do for another woman with the same ambitions? She comes prancing into work with a nice car, talking about the house she just bought and the married man she is dating. Or maybe she comes in talking about how her boyfriend just loves that she doesn’t want to work and she wants to live the soft life. A life where she can focus on caring for the children and furthering her education while “playing house.”

Why is it that I seem to most often get men with ill intended worries. Worries of a man more concerned with making another woman happy at my expense was what these thoughts once materialized into. Which often made me late for work. Driving myself crazy with low grades. Getting an A+ at being a mom. Because I would rather snuggle my babies and watch movies than study sometimes. Being less than wife material would infiltrate my heart and make me feel like all I was good for was caring for someone else. Fuck the homework. I need to care for myself and snuggle with these babies to renew love in myself, for myself. I would get so depressed sometimes I would damn near injure myself with mental anguish in the tone of talking myself down from the highest dream possible because I genuinely cared to impress with a smile despite the pain just to have “help” while I was in school. All the while, questioning if I was really completing my dreams.

The haunting words “I can pay for another female to finish nursing school instead of you.”

I will roll my eyes and likely ignore the advance to be the worst masculine attitude I have ever encountered. Comments like those do not serve who I am as a person. I then become irritated with the lack of respect and more motivated to do what God says that I can do despite the hatred for my attempts that are not successful. Why so much hatred for my desire to be existent as a nurse. Hatred for my dreams of furthering instead of being used as a servant wife to a man that wants me to “not work and be taken care of” to an extent and still being able to complain and talk to me like I don’t matter when I need energy to focus on the exams, clinicals and more in order to be a nurse.

For the sake of my sanity, I say cut the static off. I have enough love in my heart. Nobody can tell me I don’t.

XOXO

El’Aundra