The Year I Stopped Wondering About Time

It was New Year’s Eve, 2023, and I wasn’t celebrating. That year had left me battered, a weary traveller stuck between despair and disillusionment. I felt unprepared, unsure, and hopelessly out of sync, as if life had sprinted ahead, leaving me soaked up in its cloud of dust. It felt like life had just taken off without me and there were no road signs for me to follow. I was filled with deep regret for 2023, I felt like I had wasted time that I would never get back.  

In the quiet of that night, I confided in one of my friends.“I feel like I have nothing to celebrate,” I sent him a text message in response to his ‘Happy New Year Cate’ message. “ I have wasted 2023 and I blame myself for it,” my text message read. It felt like an admission of failure. I knew that failing at something did not make me a failure but in that pit of despondency, failure felt like my first name. My heart ached in places I did not know existed.

That day, I did what I’ve always done: I wrote. In my journal, I drafted a prayer. I laid it all out before God; the sadness, the exhaustion, the nagging fear that I was falling behind, the regret at what I had hoped 2023 was and it wasn’t, the anger at the people who had betrayed me, the anger at myself for allowing bad actors in my life, the sadness at letting God down. The shame of losing genuine friendships and isolating myself in pursuit of nothingness. The guilt of all the people I had hurt. I wrote it all. Raw, unfiltered, painful.

 As tears streamed down my face and fell onto the pages I was writing on, as my handwriting became even more frantic and illegible to anyone but God and I, I felt release. Like I was bleeding my pain from the heart to the journal and God was my audience.  I begged Him to guide me, to not give up on me, and to remind me again why I was on this path. I dared ask Him for one more thing—time. I asked for time to catch up on what I should have done with the time He had given me in 2023 which I spectacularly wasted.

And here’s the thing about prayers: Sometimes, they’re answered in ways you never expect.

Finding me in Nursing

The year began with a decision I didn’t think I’d make once, let alone twice: I quit not one, but two jobs. Walking away felt like freedom. It wasn’t a dramatic exit but a deliberate step toward something better. And when I finally found my place, it wasn’t just a job, it was a team I never expected to belong to, led by some of the best nurse managers I’ve ever worked with. It challenged my comfort zone and opened up skills that I had convinced myself that I did not have. Turns out they were just dormant, waiting to be activated. The feedback from my colleagues and patients keeps me smiling even on a tough shift.

Nurses do not leave tough jobs, they leave unhelpful work environments.

This was no small transformation. Nursing had often felt like a relentless race against the clock, a balancing act of compassion and efficiency. But this new environment? It gave me the space to breathe, to connect and to care in the truest sense of that word. There are moments where I have to race against time because short staffing is a global phenomenon, but I appreciate the moments I get with my patients.

Few weeks ago, for example, an 86-year-old patient reminded me of what I’d always hoped nursing could be. He was upset, angry at the world. Storm Darragh struck the United Kingdom and that left his dear wife stranded in Edinburgh, unable to catch a flight to London to see him as they had planned. The medications and various interventions were not working anymore. His kidneys had long given up before his heart. He was dying, he knew it, his family knew it. Indeed, England’s storms had disrupted his life in ways big and small.

He wasn’t particularly fond of the hospital food or the sterile air of the ward. That night, after giving him a prescribed medication to help him sleep, I asked if I could hold his hand. I do not know why I did this, it just felt like the right thing to do at that moment. He looked at me with weary eyes and nodded. I pulled up a chair and sat beside him, holding his hand as he clutched mine tightly, like a lifeline. “I’ll stay here until you sleep,” I told him. He did not say anything. He didn’t need to.

As his breathing steadied and his eyes closed, I realized: This is all I ever wanted in life. To be there when I’m most needed. To hold someone’s hand. To wipe a tear, to share a laugh, to care, not just because it is my job, but because it’s who I am. I am not a nurse because of the job I hold, I am a nurse in my heart, in and out of the hospital. I am a nurse when I look after my family. I am a nurse when I joke with my friends. I am a nurse when I write, when I tend to my kitchen garden. I am a nurse when I laugh till my belly hurts. I am a nurse when I am not sure what to do but end up doing it anyway, I am a nurse even when I am uncertain if nursing as a profession is what I want to do for the rest of my life. In that moment, nursing was not a job. It was who I am.

Miracles and Milestones

But the year wasn’t just about finding the heart of nursing again. It was about rediscovering myself.

First came two professional courses: Mary Seacole Storytellers Program and the Graduate Certificate in Applied Drama in Healthcare by Health Action Training. These two were transformative. The Mary Seacole Storytellers Program helped me embrace my story. With its high ups and low downs. I found beauty in truly appreciating the effort, commitment and dedication of the person I have become as a nurse. Finally, I found my public speaking voice again. I never told the team at Mary Seacole Trust this but before I came to the United Kingdom, I loved public speaking. I loved spoken word, poetry, storytelling, speech writing and delivering. Somewhere along the way, my confidence left, and the words stopped rhyming. Mary Seacole helped me find my voice.

The Health Action Training Course helped me slow down and breathe. I know how cliché that sounds but as a nurse, I have been good at holding my breath. Always looking at my back to ‘protect my PIN.’ This course helped me appreciate reflection and take care of myself. It helped me understand group interactions and look forward to every day like a new day and not an extension of all the exhaustion from the day before. I recommend this course to every nurse in the world. It is purely online. I believe you can do it.

Health Action Training continues to offer this critically important course in the New Year.

Then came the icing on the cake, the Burdett Trust scholarship, a gift that allowed me to pursue an MSc in Clinical Nursing, a dream I’d long held but never thought would become reality. Let me take you back to 2019 when I left Kenya. I wrote in one of my journals: ‘I will pursue a master’s degree in the UK, and it will be fully sponsored.’ I laughed when I wrote that. Some statements we say scare the living lights out of us. They look impossible and improbable. Yet, I am in that  master’s degree dream. Only that this time, it is my reality.

I shared a post on what I am learning thanks to this scholarship.

In addition, I published my first book, Understanding Kidney Disease in Kenya, a labor of love that felt like a culmination of years of hard work. I also co-authored a chapter in Nicola Thomas’s Renal Nursing Textbook, 6th Edition and wrote health-related articles for Kenya’s leading newspaper, the Daily Nation. I also kept on writing on this LinkedIn Newsletter where I have made amazing connections.  Each sentence, every article, felt like a small victory, a testament to the stories that need to be told.

Here is a link to the book

Then came the US RN NCLEX exam, a hurdle that had loomed large for years. Largely because I always believed I could not do it. I had told myself that I was not good at application of nursing concepts to a point that I had believed it. So, I had avoided the NCLEX exam as if it was a plague. Passing this exam felt like God was whispering to me saying , “you have no idea what you are capable of my child.”

The Year of Grace

It’s funny to think how differently this year started. From a place of emptiness to a year overflowing with grace and gratitude, 2024 has been nothing short of a miracle. Looking back, I no longer wonder where the time went. I see it now in every moment that mattered: In the hand of an elderly patient, in the pages of my first book, in the quiet satisfaction of knowing I belong to a team that values me.

I’m not the same person I was a year ago. And as I look forward to 2025, I’m not racing to catch up anymore. Instead, I’m ready to embrace what’s next, without fear, without regret, and with a heart that’s open to whatever comes.

To anyone reading this, especially if you feel stuck or left behind, hear me out; time is not your enemy. It is your opportunity. With a little faith, a little courage, and a lot of grace, it’s amazing what twelve months can become for you.