I am a poet, but I didn’t know it!

Sonia Denton-Smith 

FoNS Resilience-based Clinical Supervision Project Manager and Lead Facilitator

Here I am about to share my poem with you, something I never imagined I would be doing, nor am I quite sure how I feel about it. Probably because I take little to no pride in the poem for its poetry skills, or perhaps lack of, my inner critic jests! Although I don’t claim to have much knowledge in writing poetry, I am proud of the story and the journey it captures and hopefully its ability to enable you, as its reader, to connect to it.

What I wanted to capture was the heart of why I personally have connected with Resilience-based Clinical Supervision (RBCS). For a large part of my career, I believed that my resilience was something I had to grow in isolation, when in reality this was something I needed to build with others and it was true, my resilience was always at its best when I felt I was working in a supportive team, a team that I trusted and connected with.

It was much later in my career when, through restorative clinical supervision training, I was able to see that this could be achieved by creating safe spaces for teams to have an opportunity to connect, build trust and support one another whilst better understanding the emotional impact of their work. If I’d had this at the start of my career, would it have made a difference? Yes, of course it would have! The endless sleepless nights, the insecurity, the pressure, anxiety and loneliness, it could have all been so different if I’d known I wasn’t alone, and knew it was normal to feel the way I felt.

I would consider myself now to be quite a resilient person, but I do feel that that is something I have developed through ‘toughing it out’ over the years probably because in the working environments where I most needed a resilient team, it wasn’t there, and I was just expected to ‘keep calm and carry on’. It was this lack of team resilience throughout my early career that led me to believe that if I continued to feel the way I did, my career as a nurse wasn’t meant to be and I would need to leave.

It was only through writing this poem that it became so transparent. So although I am not a poet, using poetry has helped me to capture a very small part of my story, but a part that I hope captures the essence of RBCS and what it can mean to one person, one human to not feel alone in their thoughts and emotions and not swallowed up by the pressure to be resilient all by themselves. I hope that RBCS will continue to grow and that those we share our programmes with will continue to create a safe place, within teams to build their resilience together as a community, sharing the emotional impact of their work.

I also hope that sharing my poem may inspire others to try new creative ways to continue their own learning and growth about themselves. What I loved about writing this poem was that it was a very organic process, that there was a huge amount of freedom and that the words were my own and that no one can argue or correct them because they were an expression of my emotions. Similarly, I like this about blog writing, I have never been much of an academic, but I am finding a new love for writing through blog writing. This brings me to thinking about this article In a place where thoughts can bloom by Grace Cook, where she talks through the freedom to explore and discover our own ways of learning, by not always sticking to what we know and trying something different.

Perhaps you are a poet and you did not know it?