Professionally, I am an artist and retired registered nurse. Although I have been an artist throughout my adult life, nursing came later.  

When my children were small, and I was breastfeeding my youngest, I was contemplating returning to school to become a registered nurse. I had a dilemma that many families face: searching for a way that fit me and my family to bring in additional income. 

In my life I have been blessed with many inspirations, one of those was my Godfather who was both poet and nurse. I admired him, and his path intrigued me. Could becoming a professional nurse combine my natural caregiving tendencies as a mother and community member with my love of creating and giving as an 
artist?  Would this path for me be life-giving and practical?

One day my sister-in-law, also a nursing mom, was visiting with her young family. I mentioned my thoughts. Her little son overheard and had questions. She queried him, do you know what a nurse does? “Yes,” he confidently responded … “she gives milk to whoever needs it.” While not exactly correct in the literal sense, this was a young child’s loving and sweet response spoken directly from the heart and family experience.

Many years later my children are grown, but I have never forgotten those useful words and the inspirational truth contained there-in. I did become a registered nurse. My nephew’s words, “she gives milk to whoever needs it,” is a continuing 
point of navigation in my life, generally and specifically as a nurse and artist. 

Nursing a baby is a singular joy and deep connection based on love and mutual need between mother and child. Knowing this, I find it lovely and very meaningful that nursing a baby as in breastfeeding and nursing professionally share the same root of mutual caregiving and receiving. As a registered nurse my desire to attend and advocate for others is met with my patients’ profound need of care for body and spirit. I strive to holistically assist them in leaning toward the healing they desire. It is my hope that this is a reflection of God’s sustaining love for us both.

“Be an apostle of beauty,” an exhortation from Pope Francis is another point of life navigation for me. As an artist I am driven to create, but “be an apostle of beauty?” This calls me to right action and deep responsibility to create with clear attentiveness to love, noticing, and sharing the elemental and inherent beauty of life and creation that surrounds us. As an artist I know in my bones “that beauty saves me” and in the words of Dostoevsky “can save the world.”   

Through tempest and sunshine, life has taught me the greatest comfort and indeed joy in life is in open-hearted giving and receiving love. Love manifested wonderfully and differently in each of us.

Elizabeth (Schickel) Robinson has always lived in Loveland, married and raised a family here. Family, faith, service, community and creativity are most important to her. She is an artist driven to notice and bring beauty to others including creating commissioned works of art for hospitals and churches. She cares about our culture and wants to build opportunities for community and connection to God, each other and creation. She recently retired as a Registered Nurse at Cincinnati Children’s where she was privileged to care for patients and their families. She strives to live with her eyes wide open, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary in life and nature that surrounds her.