I have been a drama queen since I was child. “Susie, you are the next Sarah Bernhardt,” my mother would say, referring to the famous French actress. Bernhardt actually died 16 years after Florence Nightingale (in 1926) and little more than two decades before I was born. More important, however, that Susan-turned-Sarah became Florence Nightingale in efforts to bring Nightingale’s words to life, is a turn of events that I could not have predicted. More so, that Florence was, herself, a drama queen, raising sarcasm and pithiness to an art form, and so brilliant that hardly anyone could easily debate her, made each time I became Florence Nightingale an indescribable journey into the social justice struggles of the 19th century.

I think that Nightingale did, what most of us would want to do: see an intolerable situation and work to fix it or at least lessen the damage done. She took on the British aristocracy, challenging her predestined role of British Lady (seeing it as next to useless). She equally confronted the patriarchal medical system that she found to be responsible for more casualities than the war itself. It was the pitiful statistic of 41% mortality rate in the British Army hospitals that drew her into service.

The more I read and struggled to put together a cohesive story, the more I dreamt about her. I could feel her anger and impatience. I could feel her frustration with the complacency of the monied public and the entangled bureaucracy that made change near impossible. I further understood her intolerance for what she considered to be inexcusable neglect of the poor and ill. At the same time, I could understand and sympathize with the men who could not really deal with her. She was a feminist, an activist who felt that the rich had responsibilities to those in need and those in power had a greater obligation to the powerless. She had no intention of being easy to get along with or compromising any more than she had to as she felt that each time she did, someone would die. Those were the stakes in front of her.

Now, in all fairness, I, too, can be self-righteous about my own sense of social justice, I have my own skills in sarcasm, and I am passionate about my work. So, my playing Nightingale was poetic. If for only what I see now and my own views, it is easy for me to speak through her about the absurdity of a stiff and unyielding medical system playing out in human suffering. More so, I am such a failure at memorizing anything, that I had to know her work and words well enough to speak them, not just repeat them. Rote was not going to work. I had to know her so well that each time she told her story through me, it would have normal variations and be meaningful to those who were in the room.

Had she been with us on the this Memorial Day, she would have ranted about the Veteran’s being homeless, about the limits…any limits…to medical care for Veteran’s, leaving many uninsured in later life when their health was threatened because of serving their country in their youth. She would have been aghast looking at the profit-making insurance companies that are set up by their very nature, to deny healthcare when it is most needed. More importantly however, as a statistician and researcher, she would stand head to head with the best of the opposition in demanding preventative care as the only sane way to heal patients and the system that cares for them.

In putting together the starting script to tell her whole story, from childhood until death, I read many books and articles about her and writings by her. When I began, in truth, I knew little about her. I knew only that she was the most famous nurse, the icon of all nursing. I now know that she was so much more and that nursing is so much more.

I am a nursing advocate. Although I have been a musician for more years than I would like to admit, I identify most with nurses, with the work, the frustration, and their unending right to acknowledgment and support. It is the latter that I feel is lacking in the culture, in the communities, and within healthcare. From its earliest unofficial beginnings, nursing was perceived as unskilled and dispensable to the patient. Nightingale spent her life building a professional structure around nursing that would include research, administrative and organizational efficiency, an ethical practice based on data, and a skill set that would save lives. She set aside issues that she felt were distractions, such as public opinion and social niceties. People were dying and all these other issues were of no value to her.

Nothing in anything I have read says that she was nice, sweet, kind, easy to get along with. In fact, I am guessing she was a handful to deal with, that whenever she walked into a meeting the men around her (since they were almost all men) would shiver. She was described as more educated than most of the men she worked with. She spoke five languages, was a master statistician, and used her social position to move her ideas forward. In my reading of her, I found her concerns were so focussed on her work that she was not willing to be distracted by social niceties, a trait that her mother and sister took issue with.

On the strong shoulders of my dear Florence Nightingale and the many women who preceded me, I have the right to be a Nightingale. I have the right to stand up and act on what I believe to be right. However, with that right comes responsibility. That is what Nightingale represents: rights coupled with responsibilities represented in action.

Every time we present Florence Nightingale: In Her Own Words, I have the opportunity to again revisit Florence Nightingale, to relive her childhood, her frustrations and determination, and her heroism. I get to act indifferent to criticism and defiant; I get to be the relentless advocate for those who suffer and express righteous indignation in the face of incompetence, even if it was caused by ignorance.

In her last words, when she begins ” In the future, which I shall not see, for I am old…” I well up with tears, knowing that I am living in the future that Nightingale never saw, but one she held in hope and possibility.

Let me know what comes up for you in listening to her story on the podcasts we have made available. The world greatly benefits from all the Nightingales who are now standing and caring for those who suffer..defiant, determined, and destined in ways unstoppable.

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