Welcome to Your Healing Space: An Introduction to The Ritual Nurse Podcast

Welcome to Your Healing Space: An Introduction to The Ritual Nurse Podcast

Love your faces, and welcome to the very first episode of The Ritual Nurse Podcast! This isn’t just another nursing podcast—it’s your sanctuary for healing, humor, and hope, created by a nurse who gets it. Whether you’re sipping coffee, catching a breath between shifts, or trying to find the joy in your journey, this episode sets the tone for what’s to come.

In this special introduction episode, I share the heart and soul behind The Ritual Nurse. From the chaotic beauty of bedside nursing to the art of crafting rituals that help you heal, this podcast is all about creating a space where nurses thrive—not just survive. You’ll get a sneak peek into our signature segments, like Crystals, Coffee, and Divination, along with a promise to bring you stories, science, and practical tools for reclaiming your well-being.

This podcast was designed for you, the healer who’s been giving so much to everyone else that you’ve forgotten how to give to yourself. Together, we’ll laugh, cry, and dive into the magical intersection of science, holistic practices, and the raw realities of nursing.

✨ Hit play to hear about:

• Why rituals are essential for nurses to create balance and reclaim joy.
• What you can expect from each episode, including heartwarming stories, dark humor, and practical tips to thrive at work and in life.
• How this podcast will help you heal the healer within—because you deserve it.

This is your space to reconnect, recharge, and rediscover the passion that brought you into this beautiful, challenging profession. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode! And remember, all our links, free resources, blogs, and show notes are at TCTH.ORG.

Let’s craft rituals to heal the healers—together. 

Transcript

Riva: 0:12 

Welcome to the Ritual Nurse, where healing meets humor, science and a touch of magic. Hi, welcome to the very first episode of the Ritual Nurse podcast. I'm your host, Riva. Welcome to the very first episode of the Ritual Nurse Podcast. I'm your host, Riva. I'm a proud nurse educator and somebody who's been in the trenches with you for a long time. I'm here to tell you that this podcast isn't just another box to check on your self-care to-do list. It's your safe space to heal, laugh and grow. Whether you're sipping coffee, wrapping up a shift or just trying to make it through your day, you're exactly where you need to be. This is a podcast by a nurse for nurses and, trust me, we are just getting started. This podcast is actually part of my project, which I'll talk about a little bit later, in my doctoral studies on resilience. 

Riva: 1:08 

So who am I and why this podcast? Well, my nursing journey started a long time ago, going to nursing school with my sister and surviving that. First of all, I've never forgotten what it was like going through nursing school. We were non-traditional students. We were both about 30, had kids. I was going through a divorce at the time and, as anybody knows, nursing school is kind of like hell on earth and I've never forgotten that stress level and, as many of you probably also remember, it also seems like the stress level never goes back down. So throughout the years my background in critical care, emergency nursing, some psychiatric nursing I've been a nursing executive all over leadership and administration and education I've noticed one thing Nurses are taught to give and give and heal and nurture and assess. It's almost constantly like just being on all the time whether we're using our critical thinking, whether we're assessing even going through the store. I know you guys have all had this experience where you're just trying to get groceries, to get something on the table for that night or meal prep for the week, or you're just starving and you overhear somebody say something and immediately your nursing brain is already assessing. You've already partially turned around to get a look at them, whether to check their pallor, their color, if they're diaphoretic, what they look like. You can't help it and that on feeling is just a constant hum. That's actually the way psychologists describe anxiety and I noticed over the years that while we're taught all of these different skill sets and incredible methods and knowledge and just this massive amount, this wealth of information, the one entire area that we're never taught is how to take care of ourselves. 

Riva: 3:29 

Many years ago, when I was finishing my bachelor's degree my capstone project I thought I was taking the easy way out. Our professor said, hey, you can choose any population you want. And I said, okay, I'm going to choose nurses because I thought I have access to tons of them, I'm not going to have to canvas, you know different population areas or settings. And I thought I was being sneaky and taking the easy way out. So I wanted to take a look at how nurses felt at work, whether they felt respected, whether they felt safe and what their overall perception of their work environment and feeling at work was. So I developed a whole bunch of questions. I launched a huge survey and I got thousands of answers, and those answers changed my life Overwhelmingly. On that survey, over 70% of nurses already were indicating that they felt burned out, that they felt tired, their voices went unheard, some of them didn't feel safe, and this was years ago, before the pandemic increase in violence against healthcare staff, and it just changed my life. I didn't realize until reading those answers that I too felt the same way and that it was universal, that it wasn't just a flaw in my thinking, because at that time mental health still wasn't as widely discussed as it is today and in nursing we're still so far behind the times when it comes to that. Because of the stigma that comes with any kind of nurse discussing any type of mental health struggles whatsoever, you aren't allowed to be quote, unquote the weak link in nursing, which is not true, and I'm not saying that it's true, I'm just describing the stigma. 

Riva: 5:31 

So as I progressed through my master's degrees and into administration and leadership, I continued my research on the things that cause nurses to burn out, the things that cause us to gradually lose resiliency and to increase our stress levels. I began looking at the physical component and aspect, as my own health declined, of what this constant stress was doing to myself and my ability to be a nurse. As I progressed into my doctoral work, I knew immediately what my project needed to focus on. Resiliency is defined as the ability to withstand change and maintain homeostasis or equilibrium, and resiliency is affected by so many different factors and I knew I wanted to look at how resiliency affected nurses and what are some of the things we can do to help rebuild that resiliency, because it's not the fault of the nurse that their resiliency is lower. 

Riva: 6:46 

We're not going to get into the politics and all that good stuff about our healthcare system right now. Trust me, that's coming up in future episodes. But this is just a little bit of a background, if you will, about the journey that's taken me here today to where the Ritual Nurse is now being launched as a podcast and is part of this project focusing on healing nurses and I also, of course, do have that holistic and ritual side. I love blending science and healing and humor and broadening perspectives and listening to different ideas and viewpoints. And there are so many ways that people heal. There are so many ways to effectively practice self-care and simply prescribing one thing for tons of people. Well, we as nurses know how that goes. It doesn't work and people won't do it furthermore. So this podcast is a journey. It's a journey for us to figure out all of the amazing ways that we can heal both ourselves and each other and man find some humor and some goodness along the way. As nurses, we have very unique senses of humor, so you can expect that from this podcast and ritual looks unique to every single person, but it is such an integral part of the self-care and self-healing journey, whether it's that mindful breath before a shift or being self-aware enough to feel and know when, emotionally and psychologically, you need to step away for a minute or reassess priorities. It's all part of developing habits and, yes, rituals that you instill to take care of yourself so that, as a nurse, you can actually take care of others. That moment, reading that survey and those answers and pulling up the chart really on SurveyMonkey all those years ago, that's the moment that I knew the trajectory of my nursing and my life changed. That's the moment that I knew it wasn't an accident that I picked nurses as my patient population. You really are my patient population and caring for you as nurses as my community, as nurses as my community, is a lifelong goal and I really can't wait to go on this journey with you as nurses. I have watched my colleagues, my family, really give so much to everyone else all the time and so often you've had nothing left for yourselves. And well, that's where the ritual nurse comes in. So the ritual nurse. 

Riva: 9:53 

What you can expect from this podcast is content designed for nurses. So it's short form, digestible episodes, really kind of unique in its genre. They're going to be about 30 minutes each, no longer than that, because I wanted to make sure I remember during the pandemic listening to podcasts like my Favorite Murderer and book podcasts, and really they were so long. I mean I loved the form. It was great when I was commuting a couple hundred miles a week during the pandemic as a COVID nurse, I could throw on a podcast and it would keep me awake all the way home. But during my shift and during the blocks of time when I wasn't commuting I'd get maybe 15 minutes into the podcast or 20 minutes into the podcast and have to stop and I wasn't able to either pick it back up or get back into it and it was really frustrating and I knew I wanted a different form for nurses to be able to enjoy, at least during a shift, if not during one of those mythical lunch breaks that we hear about. 

Riva: 11:04 

Core themes that you're going to expect from the podcast include everything from trauma-informed care, self-healing, mental health, resiliency, the ritual of self-care, a lot of humor and, yes, actual science. I'm definitely a science girl and there's going to be signature segments. I'm so excited to do these with you. So we have crystals, coffee and divination. This is a lighthearted segment that shares a weekly crystal prescription, a featured coffee or tea and a really fun divination reading to add that little bit of magic to your day. And, of course, as always, you take what works for you and leave the rest day. And, of course, as always, you take what works for you and leave the rest Real stories. So these are honest, real stories from nurses and healers, both heartwarming and hilarious, that we're going to feature, and also tips and tools, so practical strategies to combat burnout, increase distress tolerance, establish a work-life balance and even for those of us that are in school of one form or another, whether it's just beginning the journey or in your doctorate, tips and tricks for success, good ways to do things, unique ways to use technology to automate things. Those are all going to be signature segments that you can expect from the Ritual Nurse Podcast. And, of course, we'll have special touches, a nod to holistic practices, everything from fun things like tarot and herbs and tea making and, of course, the magic of cats that elevate healing. 

Riva: 12:45 

So another thing that I wanted to touch on is why rituals matter. So the concept of ritual is really unique and for nurses, rituals can be life-saving. They ground us, they heal us and they remind us that we are more than our roles at work. Whether it's setting intentions with a morning cup of coffee, carrying a crystal for courage or simply taking a mindful breath before a shift, rituals create space for us to prioritize our own health. The ritual nurse is here to help you discover, refine and celebrate the rituals that make you you, because when you're at your best, the healing and nurturing that you can provide others is life-changing. 

Riva: 13:32 

So my promise to you this podcast, it's more than a project. This is a promise to you, a promise to show up authentically, to celebrate our wins, to hold space for when we're struggling and to create a community where nurses don't just survive, we actually thrive. I know, I know buzzwords. I know, but it's not and not here. I've been an executive, I've been in administrative boardrooms and the eye roll. I really think they were going to get glued to the back of my skull with the amount of buzzwords that I heard in those spaces. But thriving is the actual description of what I want us to do. It's psychosomatically, emotionally and mentally being at the best of your capacity at that moment for what you need. So together we'll laugh, we'll learn and we'll heal. 

Riva: 14:33 

My promise is to keep this real, and that means real. Sometimes I can cuss like a sailor and sometimes I'm all bows and ribbon and lace it just depends on the day, how it's coming at you and what we're discussing. But, above all, it's definitely going to be real. It's going to be accessible and tailored to you, because I know what it is like to feel burned out, overworked, overlooked and just utterly overwhelmed sometimes. We're going to tackle it all together and we're going to get through it. So I really, really invite you to subscribe to this podcast and to join this community. I know it's a short intro and a lot of promises, but it's real and there's millions of us around this globe. 

Riva: 15:33 

This adventure is just starting and I can't wait to see where we go and to get there together. I can't wait to hear your stories. I can't wait to see where we go and to get there together. I can't wait to hear your stories. I can't wait to connect with you. Subscribe to the podcast, check out our website. We're going to have incredible things coming up. 

Riva: 15:55 

I can't wait to do our first Crystals Coffee and divination segment with you next week, um, and just talk about practical ways to start the debriefing process, about where you are not during a tough shift or after an incident or after a tough code. We'll get to those. But just the slow and gentle process of taking a look at you in the same vein that we turn our nurturing and critical thinking eyes on our patients. Take a deep breath, I know, I know Shoulders went up, maybe jaws clenched, maybe you held your breath for a second, maybe you shook your head. Maybe you said F? No, I hear you. Just hold on with me. The process is going to be a lot less painful than you think and you're going to be supported the whole way. Thank you so much for trusting me to be part of your journey. Remember, you're not alone in this. Together, we're creating rituals to heal the healers. So I can't wait to see you next week and I can't wait to meet you and join you on this. 

Riva: 17:20 

This is Riva. I'm your ritual nurse. This is your ritual nurse, Riva. Thanks for tuning in to the Ritual Nurse Podcast. You can find us wherever you listen to podcasts, so don't forget to subscribe and stay connected For all our social links free education classes, blogs and podcast notes with resources. Head over to tcthorg. Until next time, love your faces.