Culture Cure: Mean Girls are Vile. I said what I said.

Nursing culture has a dark side: bullying, incivility, and lateral violence. In this episode of The Ritual Nurse, Riva dives straight into the heart of toxic workplace culture and its devastating impact on nurses’ mental health, resilience, and retention. This conversation isn’t about “having thicker skin” It’s about calling out the mean girl culture that’s been allowed to fester for too long. WE'RE DONE.

Riva introduces three powerful tools from the RISE curriculum that form the Culture Cure Toolkit:

• PEACE – a step-by-step communication skill for resolving conflict without escalating.
• CALM – a de-escalation skill to center yourself and move with intention.
• ROLE CLARITY – a grounding skill that anchors you back into your professional boundaries and keeps toxic systems from draining you dry.

Together, these skills create armor, grounding, and a clear voice for nurses navigating hostile environments. Paired with evidence-based research, this episode dismantles toxic stereotypes and empowers nurses with practical strategies for survival and growth.

In the Coffee, Crystals, & Divination segment, we explore fall rituals, savor black coffee simplicity, discover Garnet as the crystal of the week, and receive guidance from the Ace of Swords and the Lovers.

This is your toolkit for saying goodbye to incivility and hello to thriving in your practice. The mean girl culture is out. Advocacy and resilience are in. #nursefirst

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to The Ritual Nurse
• 1:23 Understanding Toxic Nursing Culture
• 3:26 The Culture Cure Toolkit: PEACE
• 5:31 CALM: Your Tool for De-escalation
• 8:53 The Myth of the Impenetrable Nurse
• 18:27 Role Clarity: Setting Professional Boundaries
• 27:26 Evidence-Based Culture Change
• 35:50 Coffee Crystals and Divination

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Welcome back my beautiful chaos crew. You are listening to the Ritual Nurse, the place where we talk about the messy, the magical and the moments that make nursing both brutal and beautiful. I'm your Ritual Nurse, reva, and today we're going straight into the lion's den. We're going to talk about the toxic side of nursing culture. You know exactly what I'm talking about the whispered comments, the eye rolls, the public call-outs that sting more than they teach, the resources that are just, you know, somehow unavailable. Or oh gee, I forgot we had that. The whole. Nurses eat their young meme. Yeah, it's not funny, nobody's laughing.

Speaker 1: 0:53

That culture has cost us nurses. It has cost us mental and physical health and, honestly, it's costing us the profession. So buckle up, because today we're talking about lateral violence, bullying and incivility in nursing and, more importantly, how we stop letting that mean girl bullshit run the show. First, let's get clear Lateral violence is when nurses attack each other verbally, emotionally and sometimes, in wild cases, even physically. Bullying is repeated, targeted behavior meant to belittle or harm. Incivility is those small, sometimes poorly camouflaged things that people try to brush off rude remarks, dismissive attitudes or making a coworker feel less than humiliating, embarrassing, shaming, cutting down people, and it's not just uncomfortable, it's dangerous people. And it's not just uncomfortable, it's dangerous. Studies show that incivility in healthcare increases error rates, decreases job satisfaction and skyrockets turnover. When we ignore it, we aren't just losing good nurses, we're putting patients at risk. This culture makes you question yourself, drains your resilience and loads more trauma onto a profession that, quite frankly, is sometimes already drowning in it. Here's the kicker. This isn't an individual problem. You are not quote unquote too sensitive. You are not the problem because you spoke up or because you don't have a thick enough skin, or the one I really hate because you can't quote, take a joke. This is a systems issue, one that thrives when leaders ignore it or excuse it, or even sustain it, because leadership is made up of mean girls in the toxic culture. But survival means advocacy. This means communication. It means pushing back against the toxic culture instead of letting it define us. So that's what we're diving into today.

Speaker 1: 3:00

There are three rise skills from the curriculum that really kind of form your personal culture cure toolkit. The first one that we're going to talk about is called peace. This is your tool for conflict resolution communication. Think of it as difficult communications, simplified or distilled down into a skill set that you can practice, that you can outline clearly and that you can follow the steps of to develop muscle memory. So peace stands for pause.

Speaker 1: 3:39

Before reacting, engage with curiosity, not defensiveness. Acknowledge the other perspective, communicate your boundary clearly and exit or end the encounter respectfully. So let's look at some examples. You're slammed and a coworker snaps why didn't you chart that? Yet Old culture says you fire back or you shrink. Peace says we're going to pause, we're going to take a breath and then we're going to engage. I hear you. I haven't gotten there yet because I'm handling a critical med. I'll update it as soon as I can.

Speaker 1: 4:20

You didn't let their tone pull you into a fight. You kept dignity. You also set a communication boundary and you moved on. Or picture this a charge nurse tries to dump something on you. That's not your assignment and you know that it's unfair, unreasonable and singled out to you alone. Instead of panicking or snapping, you piece it, you pause and you breathe. Say something like actually that falls under X role, not mine. Can we clarify? That's not confrontation, that's professionalism. These types of conversations change culture for a reason. This works well. When the unit bully tries to intimidate or harass you as well, you piece it and you hold your ground. You look professional and they either have to escalate, which ruins their fake persona, or they have to back off.

Speaker 1: 5:20

The next one that we want to look at is calm. So this is your tool for de-escalation in communication, whether it's colleagues, patients, families and calm reminds you to center yourself, assess what you're hearing, listen actively and then move with intention. So imagine a family member. They're yelling that no one's answering the call light. You've got a full patient load. You're already frustrated. You're in the middle of doing four different things at once and you remember calm.

Speaker 1: 5:59

You center yourself first, slow breath and drop your shoulders, because I know, listening to this, even recording it, I found that my shoulders immediately climbed when I started putting myself in the example. So, even listening to this, I bet you anything that if I asked you to drop your shoulders, relax your jaw or unclench your hands, a good many of you would probably not have realized that you tensed up like that. So you're going to take a slow breath, you're going to drop your shoulders and you're going to assess. Is this about care, shoulders and you're going to assess. Is this about care, fear, frustration, really quickly.

Speaker 1: 6:38

Look at it from their eyes and you listen I hear how worried you are let's go check together and you move with intention, calmly, guiding the situation instead of letting it spin you out. Or you could say something like I hear that you need X, y, z and repeat whatever it is. I hear that you need X, y, z and repeat whatever it is. I will get that as soon as I deliver this medication. It will take me about 15 minutes and I will be back to address that. You are clearly validating what it is that they need. You are setting a direct timeframe. You are moving with intention, but prior to engaging in that, you are able to center yourself, assess what you're hearing. It allows you to listen actively and then move with intention. This protects not just the patient and the family but your own mental health, because you are keeping your nervous system and your responses from swinging wildly from one extreme to another, much the same way that we control blood sugars, if you think about it.

Speaker 1: 7:39

So another thing that we're going to cover and talk about in these skill sets is why should we have to develop these skill sets in the first place when it comes to incivility and lateral violence and bullying in nursing? Quite often, as is the case with situations of manipulation and boundary erasure, the person experiencing the incivility or bullying is made to feel like, through some fault of their own, things are difficult, tough, or it's their fault that someone is mean to them, acts uncivil towards them. It's really no different than the picture of domestic abuse that we are familiar with, where the abuser will say something like well, if you had just done this correctly, I wouldn't have gotten mad at you. There's no difference. However, because it is firmly ensconced within the professional culture of nursing, it's almost like they added a further layer to the stereotype that nurses have to be almost kind of impenetrable, that we are armored in some fashion against emotional dysregulation, against any type of mental health instability or any type of normal natural reaction to adversity or negative behavior, which isn't true, because nurses are human. There is nothing about nursing, there is nothing about becoming a nurse that somehow imbues in you an ability to be superhuman or less than human, to be emotionless, to be reactionless, to be tireless. None of that is real. None of that is real.

Speaker 1: 9:45

As a nurse, you obviously are human, first and foremost, and you are a human in a position with an incredible amount of responsibility and an incredible amount of emotional capacity that is needed from you and you're placed in situations where it really doesn't matter what type of floor you work on, whether you are at the bedside in the hospital, in home health or in any other genre of nursing you're going to be exposed to secondary trauma. It is the very nature of the work that we do. I tell nursing students all the time no one comes to see nurses because it's a good day. I mean, I guess, I guess if you're in labor and delivery, yes, but even there the emotional upheaval, I mean these are life-changing events that happen and you're still dealing with the emotion, with the possible toxic family situation. I mean there's so much that you're dealing with in labor and delivery.

Speaker 1: 10:50

It is not all sunshine and roses, so there's really nowhere in nursing nowhere in nursing that inherently, by the very nature of the job, you're not dealing with mental health issues and you're not dealing with secondary trauma, whether it's someone else's emotional upheaval, whether it's factual trauma. You know in the ER, in other various settings, trauma. You know in the ER, in other various settings, you're dealing with the human response to adversity and you, as a caregiver, are stepping in in the role of supporter, of caregiver of fixer and, as such, the person who is meeting you as the nurse offloads some of that onto you unconsciously, subconsciously. So there isn't anywhere in nursing that these levels of stress aren't present, that this exposure to trauma isn't present. And treating nurses with this old stereotype of nursing being this holier-than-thou, altruistic, impenetrable super being is wildly inaccurate. It's not real and it is vastly unfair to the humans who wear the title.

Speaker 1: 12:15

As we discuss later in the podcast after the dance break, we'll into healthcare and at the same time how integral and inherently necessary we are to the existence of healthcare. No nurses, no healthcare. That's just a fact. There aren't enough physicians to see the sheer amount of patients. There aren't enough physicians to see the sheer amount of patients. The ratio is statistically impossible. If you do not have nurses, you do not have health care and the responsibility that nurses shoulder, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, globally. I need you to sit with that for a second when you think about and the roles may not even be called nurse in other countries and other places, they may have different names, but they are nurses the role that they fill, the care that they provide, the assessment, the triage, the problem solving, the fixing, the solutions. They're nurses, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, around the entire world. Nurses are on duty. Think about that when you have a role that is that encompassing and that integral to the health and preservation and longevity of patients and healing.

Speaker 1: 13:58

The amount of stress and responsibility is sometimes really hard to comprehend, and so our culture has evolved this very dangerous toxicity. It's been talked about for years and years and years, but it hasn't changed and I firmly believe it is the basis of much of my research. It is the reason that I am your ritual nurse, that I have the ritual nurse podcast, that I have created the rise curriculum, the rise theory of nursing. I firmly believe that things haven't changed because this entire time we have not empowered nurses as individual, human, autonomous beings to safeguard their own mental health, to protect their own peace from everything that this job holds. It's almost like we didn't want to elucidate all of what nursing really is for fear that I don't know, maybe people wouldn't do it, for fear that healthcare would have to change and actually respect nurses and their role and the power that they hold in healthcare. Maybe we didn't want to look at it because it was too big. Maybe we didn't want to look at it because we didn't want to acknowledge that nurses are human and bear the weight of this much responsibility for the lives of others. I don't know, I really don't know the reason to that. Because it feels, when you're in nursing, approaching that discussion, approaching what actually causes the incivility and lateral violence in nursing, and saying these things out loud, feels prohibited. It feels like you're not supposed to talk about these things, which is bullshit. It's time not only that we talk about them, but that we squarely and firmly put nurses first and we force healthcare and the systems around us to change, to eradicate what is going on. So giving nurses skill sets to empower themselves.

Speaker 1: 16:11

Again, in many conversations in years past, this has been framed as if the blame was on the nurse and nothing could be further from the truth. And that's that toxic, abusive mentality again. Well, if you were just you know stronger, if you had a thicker skin, this wouldn't bother you. How are you supposed to handle trauma if you don't have a thick enough skin? You know what I'm saying, and the reason that I can slip into that so easily is because what do you think I heard as a brand new grad in the ICU. We're not even going to get into those system type failures, but as a brand new grad, I was surrounded by this. I heard this, not from everyone, but definitely from a toxic leadership and definitely from people that I was relying on to teach me, to precept me, and it's absolutely not real. So, as nurses, learning these skills and utilizing these skills, you're not the problem, that's the solution, because the more nurses that have these skills, that utilize these skills, the more mean girl bullies are pushed out. You're going to hear throughout this episode, me saying that they either have to get out or grow up, and that's that is the black and white fact. They either have to get out or grow up, because it's done, it is over. This toxic culture is done. We are losing ourselves. The damage to our mental health and our physical health, not just from the exposure to the secondary trauma and the lack of support and lack of teaching of skill sets to navigate that successfully, but because of the toxic culture and the lateral violence. This is something that cannot be allowed to continue and learning these skills and utilizing these skills squarely sets the boundary with every, every single one of these mean girl bullies to either get out or grow up.

Speaker 1: 18:21

We are going to end on that sassy note for our first part and we're going to head into our dance break. If you're heading back to the floor, I want you to hydrate. I want you to take a deep, grounding breath. You've got this. You've absolutely got this. We'll be here for you when you're done with your shift, if you get another break and you want to come back and listen to the rest of the podcast, or you connect with us on your way home. If you're going to hang out with us and you're listening to the rest of the podcast after the break, I still want you to hydrate and get comfy and we are going to dive into the rest of our Culture Cure toolkit, some science and, of course, hypnotizing. Oh oh no, we run the show. Let's get loud and, come on, lose control. Got to live while we get too old. Come on, shine, shine a little tonight. Let's get louder. Come on, lose control. Ain't no limit while we go for more. All right besties, we are back. Let's continue filling out this toolkit.

Speaker 1: 20:04

And we're going to talk about the final tool, and it's called role clarity. So role clarity it's kind of long for an acronym and it's not really meant to be used in the way that our other skills are. With acronyms, role clarity is meant to be a fundamental understanding that you use the acronym to list out or outline the bullet points that make up that understanding. So role has to do with recentering your professional boundaries, owning what is yours, your values, your limits, your responsibilities, letting go of what is not your values, your limits, your responsibilities, letting go of what is not System failures, others trauma, others, lack of professional development and E engaging with integrity. Clarity involves clarifying your why, why you became a nurse, why you stay locating your distress signals. Hey, where does burnout show up first for you? This is part and parcel with the work that we did a lot in season one in developing self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

Speaker 1: 21:00

You're going to align your actions with your values in small, doable steps. You're going to reframe role strain. I am not the system, I am not this problem. I am me and I am independent of it and it is something that I can take action towards. You're going to identify boundaries that protect your recovery. This is what is acceptable to me and this is what is not Tracking patterns of overextension. So when you look at your role, you look at your responsibilities. Where is overextension happening? Where is there a blur of those boundaries or those lines or those responsibilities happening? It's like a constant battery drain. It's like a slow trickle of energy being pulled off of you consistently and constantly. You're going to yield to sustainable practices, not to self-erasure.

Speaker 1: 21:51

We use role clarity when we feel pulled in too many directions, when system demands blur your sense of self or when burnout symptoms start to appear. It anchors you back into your role with precision, separating what belongs to you from what does not, and it helps realign your professional practice with your personal humanity. This skill integrates DBT-based reflection, trauma-informed boundary work and narrative identity repair by clarifying boundaries and realigning with values. It reduces moral injury and compassion fatigue. It helps the nervous system shift out of survival mode and into sustainable presence by restoring agency and self-definition.

Speaker 1: 22:34

So, for example, a provider throws some shade because a patient's transport wasn't ready. You clarify transport is actually coordinated by X department, but I absolutely can call them for you right now. You didn't absorb blame. You clarified, aligned and reinforced your role. That saves you from the resentment spiral and it also puts that person on notice that they cannot walk over. You See, this is the other thing that is really important, and it is unspoken but tangible that when you utilize these skills, the person who is attempting to overstep your boundaries, to be abusive towards you let's just call it what it is is put on notice that you're not the one, and you've done so in such a professional way that they only have two choices escalate and look like an absolute asshat. It ruins their fake persona, their charming demeanor or their professional role that many bullies in our culture have cultivated or they have to back off, and when that happens with a bully, they actually hesitate before doing it again. Now it may not be a one and done with every bully. Some have become so conditioned and so practiced in their ability to abuse others that it may take more than one time of letting them run full force, face first into this boundary and see what happens. And again, the professionalism and the way that these skills allow you to center and ground and communicate and move with purpose means that they only have those two choices they're either going to escalate and it's going to look bad for them, or they're going to back down. So let's ground this in some reality. Let's get science girl about this for a minute.

Speaker 1: 24:25

My doctoral research has dug into how resilience training impacts retention. But first, however, I really needed to understand why nurses were being impacted traumatically by their own colleagues, not just the secondary trauma, primary trauma exposure of the work environments. One of the strongest themes was that role confusion directly feeds lateral violence and bullying. What the hell is role confusion, gonna tell ya? When roles aren't clear, stress builds in direct proportion to the amount of responsibility carried. As compared to the amount of responsibility carried as compared to the amount of autonomous decision-making that they have over those responsibilities, people fill those gaps with hostility, gossip, power struggles. It bleeds out laterally. That stress that has nowhere to go vertically goes horizontally. Studies show that nurses in environments with very poor role clarity or role clarity at all experience higher rates of incivility, much lower job satisfaction and are more likely to leave the profession within the first year or their job within the first six months. This is evidence-based research that's been done within the past five to seven years.

Speaker 1: 25:44

I started my doctoral research about five years ago. It wasn't at the doctoral level five years ago, but that's when I started my research and here's why role clarity, calm and peace work so well together. One sets your internal compass, one keeps you calm and grounded in the moment and the other gives you the words to enforce it. It's like armor and a sword and good footing. Clarity reduces vulnerability, Communication reduces escalation and together they cut off the fuel source of the toxic culture. You take the wind right out of the mean girl. So here again, here's that mantra. Okay, we have mean girl, bullying and nursing. Here's the cure. Calm is your grounding Role, clarity is your armor, peace is your sword. With these three they either get out or grow up. This isn't just theory, this is evidence-based practice.

Speaker 1: 26:37

Clear role definitions and structured communication reduce turnover. Clear role definitions and structured communication reduce turnover. They improve teamwork and they decrease incidence of lateral violence. In other words, these are not just skills, these are actual culture cures. As we reduce role confusion and as we reduce experiencing lateral violence in nursing, we greatly reduce the amount of impact to nurses' mental health and physical health, the negative impact to their well-being. That happens.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Research shows that workplace incivility erodes psychological safety and directly contributes to nurse turnover. Structured conflict management strategies like PEACE improve team cohesion and lower stress. Training in de-escalation, like calm, has been shown to decrease violent incidents and improve patient outcomes, not just outcomes between colleagues and when roles aren't clear, role stress spikes, burnout follows. Role clarity reduces that stress and improves job satisfaction. And it improves communication and boundaries between providers that keep things healthy. That we're a family. There's no boundaries, messy environment that's not healthy. That is not healthy at all. And in fact, a lot of that is grounded in trauma bonding. And trauma bonding is not healthy either, because trauma bonding's sole existence depends on you remaining in the pit of despair and trauma as the reason for the existence for the bond. So no, this is not about being quote unquote too soft. This is about not allowing others who don't have emotional intelligence, communication skills or professional development harm people because they can't act right. It is about using evidence-based strategies that are proven to protect nurses, their mental health, their well-being and sequentially protect their patients.

Speaker 1: 28:32

So let's put it all together. So this is your Culture Cure Toolkit Peace for grounded, protective communication strategy. Calm for staying level in the moment with colleagues, patients, family. And role clarity as a fundamental understanding to handle systemic conflict caused by role confusion.

Speaker 1: 28:53

When we talk about surviving bullying and incivility in nursing, it's not just about getting through the moment. This is about protecting your whole sense of self. This is why we pair these three skills together as this toolkit. These skills are not just about surviving bullying. Let me repeat that this is armor for you and this is tools for you. Calm will keep you grounded so the chaos cannot unseat you, can't shake you.

Speaker 1: 29:23

Peace is going to make sure that your communication is guided by professionalism and your boundaries. For people that don't like conflict, don't handle conflict very well, peace as a skill set can really help strengthen your communication. As you develop that skill set as a muscle memory role, clarity locks you back into who you are as a professional, so that their garbage doesn't stick. And when you put these together, the mean girls lose their edge. They either get out or they grow up because your regulation, your relationships and your role clarity make their games ineffective. This isn't about playing nice. You do not have to be tolerant of incivility. This is about survival and past that the mean girl. Bullshit is out. The era of silence is out. What's in is advocating for yourself, developing communication. What's in is nurses who aren't just barely surviving, but thriving Nurses who are rising in their profession. It took so much to get here. You deserve to be put first. You deserve to be empowered with skills and tools to enhance everything that you have worked for to thrive in where you choose to nurse, wherever that may be.

Speaker 1: 30:53

And one final piece of advice that may be surprising to some, maybe not surprising to some. If you are in an environment, a toxic workplace environment, and you utilize these skills and punitive action is taken against you for it, leadership makes it impossible for you to do so. Get out of it. One single person utilizing these skills does make a difference. Multiple people utilizing these skills forces change. But if you are in an environment that becomes unsafe, don't stay there. Have gotten to be in leadership because they are the bullies and, as within any other abusive presentation or disorder, they have surrounded themselves with enablers. Those types of cultures take complete undoing to reset, and not all workplace cultures are that extreme, are that bad. But if you happen to be in one, that is, if the floor you're working on happens to be that way do not sacrifice yourself. Learn how to use these skill sets, because no matter where you go in nursing, you will need them. But get out of that environment. You do not owe it to anyone to stay. You do not owe it to anyone to harm yourself in the process of trying to provide care to others. That is not nursing. That's the definition of self-harm. And remember, with these skill sets, the mean girls either have to get out or grow up, and you deserve to be first.

Speaker 1: 32:48

We are going to head into our favorite segment, our coffee crystals and divination segment, and I am going to start by pulling our crystal prescription for the week. And while I am shuffling, let's talk about our fall drinks. It is September. I know a lot of you are probably pumpkin spice besties and while I do love pumpkin pie, I do not love the actual pumpkin spice, whatever it may be, additive, whatever that is in pretty much most of the coffee drinks out there. I don't know why I never have. I don't know. It's just me, I guess, because I really do. I love sweet potato pie and I love pumpkin pie, but yeah, that just doesn't do it for me. I do love apple, I love cinnamon. I find it a little weird in coffee.

Speaker 1: 33:52

For me, however, what I've been I don't know really kind of gravitating towards is the actual scent and aroma of coffee and really kind of going back to basics. Kind of going back to basics, so in my personal health journey and looking at calories consumed, proteins, fats, carbs, and just really trying to heal a lot of my physical self. I am really trying to find ways to treat myself without going to weird extremes or weird dietary extremities and just go back to basics. So a beautiful cup of black coffee. I'm not lactose intolerant, so cream works for me.

Speaker 1: 34:40

Adding some flavoring, you know, is good. I do have the sugar-free. I've actually been trying to test and see how sugar-free syrups or additives affect my blood sugar response, how my body reacts to stevia or Truvia, sucralose, you know, concentrated sweeteners, to see if my body's perception of the super concentrated sweetener actually negatively impacts my blood sugar. So there is a company that makes flavors that are specifically designed for use in products that are keto, low sugar, used in a variety, a bunch of different capacities, and they're called O flavors and their flavors are weirdly oddly on point and they have so many menu. So you can add flavor in a very, very small quantity with a lot less of the super concentrated sweetener, or you can add more yourself, you know, whatever, whatever it is that you prefer. So really kind of a hazelnut butter, pecan, I don't know, kind of toasted nut kind of direction is really starting off this fall.

Speaker 1: 36:09

For me it's been kind of fun and also practice of self-care. Oh, there we go To really look at and examine kind of what I'm crafting for myself, which, again, it's the whole reason that we have this coffee. Part of the segment is because we're learning how to make a ritual of self-care, because if you ritualize it, it's special, it's different, it's something you can't blow off. It becomes significant to you in your routines and your schedule. So it's been really interesting kind of exercising that aspect of self-care and right now, oh, I've never even seen this.

Speaker 1: 36:50

So our crystal prescription for the week is Garnet, and it is this gorgeous image of a Garnet that's a lighter. Of course, you'll see it on socials. I'll post the picture. So let's read what Garnet has to say. It says Ignite passion, confidence and vitality. Ignite the fiery passion within you with the bold energy of Garnet. With a flick of the flame, garnet burns away inhibitions and taboos, while giving you self-confidence and a major boost. And, to top it off, it's like a zesty lighter for your libido too. Allow Garnet to fuel your drive and spark a sense of purpose. It's time to set the world ablaze not literally, though and show everyone the unstoppable force you truly are. Get ready to burn bright and radiate a fierce energy that's impossible to resist. This is so fitting and so perfect for this culture cure toolkit. Absolutely, garnet. I love it. All right, let's see what our divination is for the next two weeks.

Speaker 1: 38:00

I tried not to edit out a lot of the card shuffling and sounds and things like that from the podcast. I guess you know in some part that could be considered messy editing. However, I really do draw these live and so it's really important to me that when I'm doing this and the messages that come through, that people are able to really connect that with. You know the message, what we've just been talking about, and know that it's not I didn't go through the deck and pick these out beforehand. Again, I've had, you know, suggestions of taking the podcast to video also and simultaneously we do have a studio I am recording from our studio. The studio is actually run by mythical family, which is our community group. You can find us at mythicalfamily or mythicalfamilycom, and so we do have the studio space to do so. Oh, goodness, goodness, goodness.

Speaker 1: 39:07

So two cards jumped out, so one at the very beginning of when I was talking and one right now. So we're going to read both of them. The first was the Ace of Swords, which is appetite, and the second was the lovers Rose Quartz. So let's dive into our message. Let's dive into our message. The Ace of Swords signifies focus, mental clarity and truth. Appetite, mental clarity, wisdom and expression. This is the mental breakthrough you've been waiting for. Fresh ideas and new ways of thinking are flowing to you. Channel this energy into starting and focusing on a new endeavor, while keeping a successful mindset, or use this to clarify and empower your communication and allow your wisdom to flow through it.

Speaker 1: 39:58

The next card we're looking at is the lovers Love, relationships, choices. Rose Quartz signifies unconditional love, trust and forgiveness. Who doesn't love love? The lovers can often indicate a new relationship is on the horizon. It may be romantic, but it can be any relationship that has great communication. It can also indicate making a choice by following your heart. This card, I think, is really significant, because I think what it's signifying is focusing that love squarely on yourself, because these tool sets are giving yourself great communication. These tool sets are making you build a relationship with yourself. You're getting to know your own boundaries, you're getting to define where you begin and end and where the nonsense begins and ends, and keeping that from overlapping. So I think these are absolutely incredible. You have the ace of swords, you have the lovers and you have garnet to ignite.

Speaker 1: 41:01

Next time on the podcast, I'm sitting down with my friend Brennan, an HR executive. Yep, that's right HR in the hot seat to talk about culture change from the other side, how HR and nursing can actually partner with each other and are supposed to actually partner with each other, instead of fighting about things. I promise you're going to be surprised and most likely want to follow Brennan around everywhere. She's that honest, she's that real. She's not going to pull any punches Until then. Remember, healing starts with us because we deserve to be put first, not because it's our fault that people can't grow up or act right and we are done putting up with toxic culture. Always remember to care for yourself first so that you can care for others. You're going to heal first so that you can nurse better and, as always, I love your faces.