Doing the Thing She Loves
FINDING HER NICHE Lodesha Taylor is starting to feel settled after moving to BC from Jamaica nearly four years ago.
Lodesha Taylor has fond memories of the days and nights she spent as a nurse and midwife at Kingston Public and Victoria Jubilee hospitals. "For me, the best part of the job, the part that was most rewarding, was delivering babies," she recalls.
Even now, after so many years, you can hear the delight in Taylor's voice as she reflects on these experiences. It was this passion for her work that buoyed Taylor through the perpetual challenge of working short-staffed. "You had to work twice as hard, but at the end of the day you'd make your way home knowing you'd made a real difference in someone's life."
Taylor, the youngest of four children, grew up in a leafy, community-minded, middle-class neighbourhood in Kingston, Jamaica. All through high school she had imagined pursuing a degree in pharmacology. But, after graduating, she soon realized that she would have to take a number of pre-requisites to get into the program. "I wanted to be a pharmacist, but I also wanted to be independent as soon as possible. Nursing offered a pathway to the freedom I was craving," she remembers.
Taylor graduated from nursing school in 2007, got married and began working on a medical-surgical unit and in maternity. In 2010 she completed her studies in midwifery. It was around this time that Taylor began to feel the pull of elsewhere. Two of her siblings had already left Jamaica, including a sister who was nursing in Atlanta, Georgia. Taylor had initially thought that she might join her sister in the US. But, after a visit to Toronto and Mission to visit friends, she began to imagine a new life for herself and her family in Canada. "I liked it so much better than the US," she says. "It felt more calm and family-oriented and the people seemed happy."
"It's possible to reach your goals and overcome the obstacles in your path."
Taylor began the immigration process in 2013 while simultaneously navigating the complex and expensive processes required to obtain a nursing licence in British Columbia.
In March 2017 she and her family settled in Kitimat.
"It was culture shock, to be honest," she says of her arrival. "I had grown up in a city with lots of people and now I was in what felt like a small town in a snow valley – and with the summer so short."
But, Taylor loved her work. Kitimat General Hospital (KGH) had hired her while she was still in Jamaica and had facilitated her work permit through its nominee program. And, once she began practising her profession here in BC, she recalls the work environment being exceptionally welcoming.
For her son and husband, the transition was more challenging. Taylor soon realized that, while her work environment was nourishing and collegial, the larger social environment was less so. "It wasn't easy being one of only a few Black families in the city," she says. "For me, I was happy at work, but for my husband, and in particular my son, it was so difficult."
Taylor recalls how her son began to retreat into silence following repeated incidents of racist bullying at school and in the community. "I watched how my son began to lose confidence after having arrived here ready to take on the world – ah man it was so hurtful, I just cried."
In early 2019, Taylor made the difficult decision to send her husband and son to Mission. A few months later she joined them. They had been in Kitimat for just over two years.
The move was good for her husband and son, but Taylor went from being a nurse who was "just seen as different" at KGH to one who was frequently made to "feel alone." She says the contrast could not have been more pronounced. "After the relocation I just wanted to get back to practising nursing, but I felt like there were many people who were just not ready to work with me, to give me a chance," she recalls.
On far too many occasions Taylor remembers feeling as if she had been "put in a box" by others because she is Black and they think she doesn't know nursing. "That somehow gave people the right to treat you as if they look down on you."
Today, nearly four years after moving from Jamaica, Taylor is finally starting to feel settled. She recently began working at a new job amidst a diverse and welcoming community of nurses and health-care workers.
She says it has been a long and challenging road to get to this point, but she is grateful to have found her nursing niche in surgery. "I want other nurses like me, other Black nurses, to know that it's possible to reach your goals and overcome the obstacles in your path – it's what we all want, a chance to feel like you belong and to do the thing you love." •
UPDATE (Winter 2020)