The Relentless School Nurse: Experience Is Not the End of the Story: It is the Part We Carry Forward

Standing at this threshold has made me think differently about the power of voice. Earlier in my career, the freedom to use my voice was shaped by the expectations of institutions, professional roles, and the careful navigation of systems that do not always welcome dissent. Over time, something changed. Experience accumulates, perspective widens, and the urgency of proving yourself begins to fade. What remains is the realization that voice is not simply a professional tool. It is part of our responsibility to society. Choosing to use that voice, especially when silence would be easier, can itself be an act of resistance.

Experience also begins to feel less like a personal timeline and more like a form of lived memory. Years accumulate, and with them comes a deeper understanding of how the systems around us shape the lives of others. Patterns that once felt invisible come into focus. The cycles of progress, retreat, and renewal that shape public life become easier to recognize.

For those who have spent decades in care, education, or public service, that memory is not abstract. It is grounded in what we have witnessed in the lives of people and communities. We see what happens when public health systems are strong and what unfolds when they are weakened. We watch science guide societies through crisis and see how quickly misinformation can place those same societies at risk. These experiences form a clearer understanding of what sustains a healthy society and what places it under strain.

Across many professions, those who serve the public stand at the intersection of humanity and systems. Whether working in hospitals, classrooms, community programs, or civic institutions, they see how decisions made far from the people affected eventually ripple through individual lives. Poverty, fear, instability, disinformation, and inequity rarely arrive as abstract debates. They arrive as people seeking help, answers, and hope. In school nursing, these realities often appear in the everyday lives of children long before they become part of public debate.

We are living through a time that feels different from many others I have seen. Public conversations have grown sharper and more dismissive. Trust in institutions many of us once took for granted has eroded. The pace of information moves so quickly that time for thoughtful reflection is scarce. Systems that quietly supported American life for decades, public health, scientific research, public education, and the norms that allow a free press and open debate to function, are now under visible strain. When you have spent years working within these systems, it is difficult not to notice the shift. Experience makes patterns visible and reminds us that the health of a democracy depends on people willing to care for the systems that sustain it, rather than assume they will care for themselves.

In many professions, especially for women, there is also a subtle expectation that age should bring a gradual quieting. Step back. Make room. Avoid controversy. Speak less. Yet lived experience does not lose its value with time. If anything, it gains clarity. After decades of witnessing what helps communities flourish and what places them at risk, becoming quieter with age often feels less like wisdom and more like absence.

Experience changes how we understand the structures that sustain a healthy society. Public health, education, scientific inquiry, and the free exchange of ideas are not abstract principles when you have seen their impact across decades. They are the framework that allows communities to function and future generations to thrive. When those foundations weaken, the impulse to speak often arises not from outrage but from stewardship. Speaking from experience becomes a civic act because it carries memory forward—honoring the past while helping protect the future we may never see. Democracies depend not only on protest but also on persistence: the steady willingness of citizens to stay engaged, to bear witness, and to contribute their understanding to the shared work of sustaining a society.

Age does not diminish the strength of that perspective. Instead, it often deepens it. Over time a different kind of courage emerges, less performative and more deliberate. It is not driven by the need for attention but by a commitment to truth. It carries the stories of people who might otherwise go unheard and the lessons of years that cannot be condensed into slogans or headlines.

To speak from experience in an era that prizes speed, certainty, and constant reaction can itself be a form of resistance. This resistance is rarely loud or theatrical. Instead, it takes the form of steadiness, a refusal to forget what has been learned and a determination to carry those lessons forward as both warning and promise.

We are living in a time that tests our collective capacity for grace. Public discourse has grown harsh, division often overshadows connection, and cynicism sometimes presents itself as wisdom. In such a climate, it can feel easier either to retreat into silence or to join the noise of outrage that dominates the public square.

Yet another path remains. Resistance can also take the form of civility—a deliberate commitment to restore respect, listening, and truthfulness to public life. Choosing calm in the midst of noise requires discipline. Choosing kindness in the face of cruelty requires courage. Remaining engaged in civic life, even when it is uncomfortable, reflects a belief that our shared institutions and communities are still worth tending.

Standing at this point in my life, I find myself thinking less about stepping away and more about how to carry forward what the years have taught me. Retirement may change the structure of my days, but it will not change the sense of responsibility that comes from witnessing how much our communities depend on strong public systems and on people willing to care for them.

In many ways, I have already begun to see what that next chapter might look like through my work with Grandparents for Vaccines, a volunteer-led national movement of grandparents mobilizing their lived experience to protect children from vaccine-preventable diseases. That effort is built on a simple but powerful idea: those who remember what life was like before vaccines were widely available have something important to contribute to the conversation. The grandparent voice carries a particular kind of memory, stories of illnesses that once shaped childhood and the hard-won progress that science has made possible. When that memory is shared, it becomes a form of advocacy rooted in care for the next generation.

School nurses and grandparents share something important in common. Both spend their days thinking about the well-being of children whose futures they may never fully see. Both understand that protecting those futures requires attention, patience, and the willingness to speak when something important is at stake.

In the years ahead, I hope to remain engaged in new ways—writing, speaking, mentoring, and contributing to projects that strengthen public health, education, and civic life wherever that experience might be useful.

Perhaps that is what experience asks of us now.

Experience is not the end of the story. It is the part we carry forward