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Editor’s Note
Dear Readers, It is impossible to begin this letter without context. Was it just a year ago that I was frantically rewriting the introduction to the last spring edition of the Health Humanities Journal as news changed daily, looking up the formal definitions of “epidemic” and “pandemic,” and thinking what a peculiar moment that issue would reside within? Did I really believe the naïve hope that we would be able to distribute physical copies on campus in the fall? I have since been disabused of that idea of a contained moment, and even with the vaccine I find it difficult to imagine a return to normal on any timescale that matters, stuck in the nonphysical here reading pandemic literature and wondering how I can begin to justify the pages my thoughts take up. In this year of continual tragedy and loss, it is very difficult to avoid what seem like the two most available reactions: anger and exhaustion. We can see it in the pieces within this journal. There is justifiable frustration at the vast number of preventable deaths. One writer mourns his grandfather while despairing at simple measures of caution not taken. Another shares her outrage at doctors lacking empathy after a devastating cancer diagnosis. There is an examination of a short story where young people, furious at all they feel cheated out of, turn their blame on the elderly, and an essay on the future of nursing education ends with a litany of questions confronting mounting challenges and inequalities. Alongside these, a patient faces feelings of failure after surgery, and a daughter chronicles descriptions of her mother’s grief after the loss of a loved one that I can’t help but see mirrored in our own experiences in quarantine over the last year: dwindling motivation, disrupted sleep, fragile emotions, avoidance of what is really going on. And yet, these are not the only responses available to us. The fact that the world has not completely deconstructed over this last year is proof of the incredible ability to continue on, hunting for solutions and silver linings, painting our own if need be. In this journal, there is also hope for activism within nursing education. Alongside characters accepting only hate, others refuse to relinquish their optimism and sense of self. Honest attempts to understand the suffering of others—or if not then at least to offer sympathy
