Meet Kristen.
In case you missed it, that’s not her real name.
This campaign is all about the need for anonymity, so our nurses aren’t targets of retribution. But what’s real is her story. She lives and breathes it every day. Kristen is a nurse on a COVID positive unit who recently posted a gut-wrenching rant about her previous night’s shift on social media. She didn’t name any patients; she didn’t slander her employer. But she did speak up about how this pandemic is tearing her apart.
What Kristen did was beg her friends and family to adhere to health orders on her Facebook wall. To stop spreading untruths. To take seriously this pandemic because she knows she and her colleagues know, they don’t have much left to give.
She wanted to offer perspective. To let people, know that this lockdown isn’t personal. It’s not a slight against mini soccer or softball. It’s not man made to hold you back from your favourite dive bar. This isn’t a ploy to control you. You aren’t being tracked. Seriously, this is NOT about you.
This pandemic is about our collective well-being. It’s about the people we’ve lost. It’s about the nurses, the health care aides, the support staff, the docs and the therapists. It’s about everyone in the system that is burnt out, running on fumes, hanging on by a thread. But as an essential employee, someone on the frontline, she’s in a vulnerable place. After all, nurses are supposed to be nice and selfless. They are public SERVANTS after all.
‘Kristen’ was asked to remove the post.
Behind these masks are people who are trying their damnedest to hang on. Who definitely want to see their best pals again for happy hour, who like you want to move through the world freely, but at this point, more than anything, they just want to make it. Not give up. Or worse, be gagged for speaking up.
Behind Kristen’s mask, she’s asking for your help. Please have the couRAGE to stay strong and stay home.
