Lifting up our carers

CLINTON — Life for healthcare workers has reached high levels of stress and danger since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the daughter of a nurse, Bailey Parker and her mom Brittany teamed up to create a banner to help uplift her and her fellow coworkers.

“Of course my child has been the child of a nurse for about 12 years, so basically her whole life,” Brittany Parker said. “So she knows how nursing can be with the pandemic, vaccinations and mandates.”

“So she knows how difficult mama’s job has been lately,” Parker continued. “So she had some free time while being out of school since a classmate had been exposed to COVID. Then I told her we were going to do some projects while at home and this is just something we kind of came up with.”

Parker is a nurse at Liberty HomeCare & Hospice Services in Clinton and says that her daughter spearheaded the banner, wanting to highlight her mom and her coworkers as heroes during these tough times, as well as let them know that everything will be OK because God is with them.

The banner reads: “Be still and know that I am with you,” a nod to Psalms 46:10, which reads: “Be still, and know that I am God.” It is a verse that is often used for consolation in trying times.

“Just the wording of it, with all the controversy that’s been going on about COVID, it’s just a perfect comfort to see the banner and be reminded of that,” said Margaret Norton of Liberty HomeCare. “Plus to know that this came from the mind of child just adds to the overall comfort. She went into such detail with it and threw her whole heart into it and it’s very encouraging.”

As for how the banner came to be, Parker shared some charming insight on their journey with the project.

“You’ll see on the poster that she put a rainbow on it and she told me from the very beginning that she had to have a rainbow on it,” Parker said. “She told me that the rainbow meant that God made a promise to us. So it had to on there because she knew what it symbolized — God’s promise.”

“Then she told me, ‘mama I can put I nurse on there’ and I told her, ‘I don’t know if I can help you with that because I’m not a drawer,’” she said with a laugh. “After she drew that first one I said to her, ‘oh, well that’s perfect.’”

“Mom helped trace the letters and helped cut them out, but all the little drawings you see on it, she did all them,” Parker added. “I may have drawn a few hearts, but that’s all mama could do. The rest was all her. I’m very proud of her for just recognizing how difficult things can be, especially right now. But knowing that she’s taken care just reminds me that everything will work out and that everything will be all right.”