Uplifting messages in mugs brighten spirits of nurses
Retired ER nurse turned potter spearheads community project
Notes and cards bearing words of encouragement were tucked inside each of the handcrafted mugs — about 50 of them — delivered to nurses at the St. Catharines hospital emergency department Wednesday morning.
“They were so heartfelt. Little kids made cards and older people wrote notes. It was really wonderful,” said Barbara Galbraith, a retired emergency department nurse.
“They were just wonderful words of encouragement,” she said, while sharing a few of the messages. “Stay strong … Take time for yourself … Hope you can find time to dance and sing during this.”
Many of the messages were adorned with colourful decorations or rolled into scrolls and tied with ribbons.
Galbraith has been a hobbyist and potter since retiring — shaping clay into beautiful items while also passing her knowledge and passion for the art to students at her Sparrow Pottery Studio in St. Catharines.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Niagara, she found a way to use her talent to offer comfort to nurses working on the front lines, while asking friends throughout the community to contribute too.
Last week, as the mugs she crafted were nearing completion, she reached out through social media, asking people to donate items to fill the cups, such as chocolate, specialty tea bags and words of encouragement.
“Spread the love, not the virus,” she wrote on Facebook, below a photograph of some of the mugs she created.
“The response was absolutely overwhelming,” she said.
In addition to numerous donations of chocolates and tea bags, Galbraith said she received dozens of handmade cards and notes dropped off at her home — enough to ensure each mug was packed full of items to brighten the day for the nurses who would receive them.
“I was able to sometimes put three or sometimes four notes in each mug that came from people throughout the community,” she said.
“It was really wonderful. It was a really neat project.”
Although Galbraith started the project, she credits the community for making it meaningful for the nurses.
“It’s not that I did it. Everybody jumped on board with it. It was the community, my Facebook friends,” she said. “I’m hoping it’s a bright spot in their day.”
Despite spending much of her career as an emergency department nurse,
Galbraith — who retired prior to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic in the early 2000s — said she can’t imagine what nurses today are going through now.
“This is a strange time. I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like this before,” she said.
However, Galbraith said her daughter followed in her footsteps, and is currently working as an emergency department nurse, too.
In addition to concerns about the safety of her daughter and other health-care workers, Galbraith said the crisis is having a deeper impact on medical staff which inspired her to do what she could to help.
“I think there’s an emotional toll on the nurses and it goes further than the disease. That’s why I felt it was really important to support them,” she said.
In addition to caring for patients from a medical perspective, Galbraith said nurses are being called on to provide the emotional support that isolated patients would typically receive from friends and family.