September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. If you know anything about me, about where I started my nursing journey, about what shaped the nurse and the leader I have become, you know this month holds a special place in my heart that no title, no role, and no amount of time will ever change.
I spent years caring for children fighting cancer. And I want to be clear about something: each one of them gave me far more than I could ever give them. I watched them smile through tears on the roughest days. I witnessed a resilience that is unmatched in this world and multiplied in ways that are almost impossible to describe when the battle is cancer, and the warrior is a child. Their faces showed me what joy actually looks like. Their innocence, their beautiful, gracious unawareness of the magnitude of what they were fighting, showed me what it truly means to be present in every moment we are given. And the unconditional love that children give so freely, without condition, without reservation, without keeping score that is what made caring for them less a job and more a privilege.
The gold ribbon is the symbol of childhood cancer awareness. Wear it this month. Share it. Say their names. Recognize the children across this country and around the world who are fighting a battle that holds no regard for age, for innocence, or for fairness. They fight anyway. They smile anyway. They love anyway. And this month, I am asking you to do the same.
I want to challenge every nurse, every leader, every person walking the halls of this organization to do something radical this September: think like a child.
Thinking like a child is the ability to separate people from process, from problems, and from possibility. It is unbiased thinking. It is gracious thinking. It is living fully in the moment and appreciating what each moment brings, not what potential harm or uncertainty tomorrow may carry. Children smile when they look up at an adult. They wave hello to a stranger. Not because they were taught to, but because they have not yet developed the ability to judge. They see a person. Just a person. And they respond with openness.
As you walk through the halls of this organization, think like a child. Make eye contact and say good morning. Offer help when you can see someone may need it. Don’t assume the worst; children offer the benefit of the doubt without even knowing that is what they are doing. They simply extend grace because grace is all they know.
And when the walk through the hall leads you to the place where you will spend your day think like a child in your interactions with each other. Be gracious. When a colleague says or does something that doesn’t land well, go to them. Have a conversation. And do it from that childlike place because that is a nonjudgmental place. Children are held accountable for what they have been told to do or not to do. And even in the moments of discipline, they find themselves loving on the very person who had to deliver it…seconds later, because they don’t hold it. They release it. They move forward. They choose the relationship over the offense every single time.
That is the standard. And it is a high one.
But think about what they are doing it through. Think about the child hooked up to chemotherapy who still asks the nurse if she is okay. Think about the one who saves their last piece of candy to give to the person who stayed with them through the hardest part of the night. Think about the one who waves from the bed to every person who passes the door not because they have energy but because connection is instinctual when you haven’t yet been taught to close yourself off from the world.
If they can do that, through that we can do this.
This month I charge you with thinking of their fight. And letting it inspire yours. Not a fight against each other. Not a fight against the difficulty of this work. A fight for the kind of environment where every patient, every family, and every colleague can feel the warmth of being truly seen.
UAMS Cares is not a slogan. It is a standard. Let’s put it into action: on the elevator, in the hallways, in the break rooms, in the difficult conversations, in the quiet moments when no one is watching. Try as hard as they fight. Smile as freely as they smile. Love as unconditionally as they love.
Think like a child. And watch what happens when you do.
Pediatric oncology nurse and author Alison Hendrix once wrote: “Children don’t ask to be brave. They just are.”
They fight with everything they have and still find room to give. This month let’s honor that fight by showing up for each other the same way: fully, freely, and without judgment.
Think like a child. It may be the most grown-up thing we ever do.
