Well, here we are.
After 9 months of dreaming, planning, wanting to back out, and going for it anyway, it’s time — time to hit publish, queue the posts, and introduce the newest branch of The Resume Rx.
The Nurse Becoming podcast is something I never anticipated creating. And let me tell you why. When I went back to work after having the twins, I worked nights, and my commute back home was about 45 minutes. The perfect length for one or two episodes of a podcast.
It was driving home from work 3 mornings per week, listening to a whole host of podcasts. It was like meditating for me. I listened to true crime shows (the medical ones like Dirty John and Dr. Death are my faves!), podcasts about personal growth, professional development, and starting a business. So much of what I used to build TRRX, I learned from those podcasts. Having someone’s voice in my head, speaking directly to me about how to write weekly emails or how to package up my teachings in an online course, was a really powerful way to connect and share information, and I owe so much to the lessons I learned through those 25-minute episodes.
That’s where Nurse Becoming comes in. I think there’s an opportunity here to take this conversation to a whole new level. If I can speak directly to you, sharing what’s on my mind by using my voice, I feel that new stories can be told without having to obsess over the writing part of it. I spend so much of my day listening to stories, and that has shown me just how powerful a story can be. And so have all of you. Through my work writing resumes and supporting clients through their job searches, little has inspired me more than hearing their stories, their hopes, their dreams, what they feel challenges them. And I feel a responsibility of sorts to share them with you. Because if we can do more to connect further, to strengthen this relationship we’ve worked so hard to build, I feel we will all be stronger and better off.
When I started TRRX, I was editing resumes during naptime and before the night shift in the emergency department. It started as truly a small side-hustle. I had no way of knowing how it would grow, but 2 years later, I’ve been able to grow my team from 1 person (me!) to 5, and I’ve managed to speak to more than 10 thousand nurses through my email list and social media profiles. This platform is more than I ever could have expected it to be, and in a world where the power of words and stories is immense, I don’t want this to be a podcast where you come to learn about evidence-based practices or skills or study tips. I want you to come here to learn about what it means to grow and transform and evolve as a person. I want to use this space as one building — building community, building relationships, and building the futures we have envisioned for ourselves.
I am terrified, but more than that, I am overwhelmingly excited to be sharing this with you today. Something just for us. A space for honest, authentic conversations about what it means to pursue personal and professional growth, all through the lens of nursing.
Many of us enter nursing school at a very young age, and we take on this profession before we are fully developed as people. I think it’s easy to then allow your profession to become your identity and to forget to take the space to develop yourself personally. I know I experienced that tension during my first year as a NP, but there is truly no limit to what we can be. All it takes is a little dreaming, some hard work, and of course, a community of supporters along the way never hurts. That’s the space I hope this podcast can fill for you.
I feel like discussions of personal growth and professional growth often happen in two different vacuums, but I want to empower you and encourage you along your path of self-discovery as a whole person. Of course, this will be a space where we talk about professional development and share resources on how to advance your career and negotiate salaries and find the right position for you. But beyond that, what I want to do is spark conversations that bring the professional and the personal together — because you are not just a nurse. You are not just a
person without a vocation.
There can be so many challenges as nuances of growth for us through both of those lenses, and I really want to have conversations and bring in voices to talk about not just how to be a better professional. But I also want to point the conversation toward how you can improve yourself as a person and make sure that that relationship between your personal identity and your professional identity is being nurtured. I think that is a powerful means of finding what it means to be truly happy and to be the person you want to be.
We are people with true callings — callings to support and care for people at their most vulnerable — and a lot of times we can struggle with the boundary of that. Where does being a caregiver at home end and being and a caregiver at work begin? That is one of the many things I want to explore here. And I hope you will join me on this journey!
For more information about this episode as well as a place to submit your questions or suggestions for future episodes or guests, head to nursebecoming.com.
Thank you for reading! And as always, I am rooting for you.
With love,
Amanda