Sometimes, having the ability to identify someone else's suffering is as painful as being the one with pain. Not knowing how to help or not having the tools to do it always breaks my heart. I really loved this poem, it made me think that no matter how many times people tells us they are fine, we know deep inside it's just a way to avoid what they are really feeling.
Naye… you put that ache into such honest language. That helpless knowing—where you see someone drowning but all you have are words and gloves and a chart that doesn’t speak—gods, it guts me too.
You’re right, it’s the recognition that haunts us… the way we carry both our power and our powerlessness in the same hands. Thank you for letting this poem echo somewhere in you. That means more than I can say.
Beautifully written, I’ve always wondered what nurses and doctors do with the emotional burden of human care, especially considering the matters of life and death. This also extends to people who are caretakers to those terminally ill. What a humanising piece on the moments in between, moments with little comfort for you to watch and just live through helplessly.
Ane… you just articulated something I’ve never found the language for: the in-between. The part where we stand next to someone dying—not fixing, not saving, just witnessing—and somehow carry that weight home like it’s stuck to our skin. You’re right—there’s no protocol for that grief. No code for the ache of knowing the chart says one thing, but her eyes told me she was leaving.
Thank you for seeing the humanity in that space. For naming the helplessness that’s always just beneath the surface. This piece came from that crack. And I’m so grateful it reached you. 💊🖤
I can’t shake this one.
You wrote what medicine can’t chart—what the body knows before the mind catches up.
Her eyes weren’t data points. They were universes full of unspoken truth.
I felt it in my chest—like a door unlatching somewhere I didn’t know was locked.
You named the moment that most of us stumble through in silence.
Thank you for being brave enough to write it—and gentle enough to stay with it.
Peter—this moved me more than I can articulate.
You saw the exact ache I was trying to write toward—not the pain, but the knowing underneath it.
“Her eyes weren’t data points” might be one of the most devastatingly true things anyone’s ever said about this piece.
Thank you for staying with it. Thank you for not looking away. I’ll carry this reply like a second heartbeat.
Sometimes, having the ability to identify someone else's suffering is as painful as being the one with pain. Not knowing how to help or not having the tools to do it always breaks my heart. I really loved this poem, it made me think that no matter how many times people tells us they are fine, we know deep inside it's just a way to avoid what they are really feeling.
Naye… you put that ache into such honest language. That helpless knowing—where you see someone drowning but all you have are words and gloves and a chart that doesn’t speak—gods, it guts me too.
You’re right, it’s the recognition that haunts us… the way we carry both our power and our powerlessness in the same hands. Thank you for letting this poem echo somewhere in you. That means more than I can say.
Beautifully written, I’ve always wondered what nurses and doctors do with the emotional burden of human care, especially considering the matters of life and death. This also extends to people who are caretakers to those terminally ill. What a humanising piece on the moments in between, moments with little comfort for you to watch and just live through helplessly.
Ane… you just articulated something I’ve never found the language for: the in-between. The part where we stand next to someone dying—not fixing, not saving, just witnessing—and somehow carry that weight home like it’s stuck to our skin. You’re right—there’s no protocol for that grief. No code for the ache of knowing the chart says one thing, but her eyes told me she was leaving.
Thank you for seeing the humanity in that space. For naming the helplessness that’s always just beneath the surface. This piece came from that crack. And I’m so grateful it reached you. 💊🖤