The Ritual Nurse

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! If someone has told you they appreciate you and still gave you an unsafe assignment you already understand the difference between being valued and being protected.  This week we're talking about the second Nurse Love Language: Protection. Not boundaries the buzzword, but the real, structural, embodied experience of having someone in your corner. Of kno...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Lukewarm Love: how NOT to love a nurse (Part 2 of 6) This week we’re talking about the first Nurse Love Language: Initiative. Or, in less clinical terms: "please stop making me carry the entire mental load of the known universe by myself." If you’ve ever felt more exhausted after someone offered to “help,” this episode is probably going to hit a n...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Happy Nurses Week. If you got pizza, a pen, and a “you’re a hero” sign, congratulations. The system remains unchanged. If you got nothing, also congratulations. At least no one pretended. Either way, this episode is not about that. This is the first part of a six-part series about something we don’t name clearly enough: why nurses can be surrounded by “supp...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! There’s a moment after a shift that almost every nurse knows. You get into your car. You close the door. And instead of driving home, you just sit there. Quiet. Still. Not really thinking. Not really doing anything. Just… sitting. This episode is about that moment. We’re talking about what happens to your nervous system during a shift endlessly filled with...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Well. I did it. I put on real pants and turned on the camera. The Ritual Nurse is officially on video and honestly? It feels vulnerable and powerful at the same time. We talk about what it actually took to set up a studio without losing our minds, why sound quality still matters more than aesthetics, and why I wanted you to see the tools we’ve been talking...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! We set a new tone for season three: no resolutions, no optimize-or-else. We protect the person you already are with care that fits real shifts, real bodies, and real lives, and we add video, tangible tools, and community touchpoints to make it practical. • rejecting new year reinventions and optimize culture • defining care that fits inside real constraints...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! This episode was recorded in the middle of stress, exhaustion, and December chaos while I was preparing for my doctoral defense. It turned into a real conversation about nurse burnout, nervous system overload, and what it looks like when the nurse finally needs care too. The moment the brain turns to static is the moment the body asks to be heard. I found m...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! This Thanksgiving episode is simple. It's my love letter to my nurses. MY 'patient population'. MY why.  Not the kind people write on holiday cards. The kind nurses never get but always deserve. In this conversation, we step away from the noise and endless dumpster fires. We talk about what nurses actually carry. The invisible work. The emoti...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! In this hauntingly beautiful finale to the Ritual Nurse spooky season specials, Riva explores the sacred and often unseen role nurses play as modern-day psychopomps, guides who walk with souls through the threshold between life and death. Drawing inspiration from Anubis, the jackal-headed guardian of the ancient Egyptian afterlife, this episode traces how t...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Things got weird. And not just "spooky story time" weird. It was full-on haunted podcast chaos this week as Riva and her daughter hit record, thirty episodes in, and tonight was the first time the tech itself decided to get possessed. Microphones glitching, machines coming alive, random interference everywhere. Is that just October vibes or was so...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! This week, we’re taking a journey through time and trust me, it’s wilder than any Halloween story you’ve heard. Tarot didn’t begin in the dark corners of an occult bookstore or a dusty Romani caravan (yep, we’re busting that myth). It started in Renaissance Italy as a card game for nobles who probably had more coin than conscience. So how did those gilded g...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Happy October, fam!!! Spooky season is here (read my favoritest season besides summer), and so are some big firsts for The Ritual Nurse . This month we’ve got special off-schedule episodes dropping, TikTok Lives (Go follow @theritualnurse!!!) in the works (yes, with crystal pulls and live divination), and some major announcements that are going to shift how...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Walking into HR can feel like stepping into the unknown. For many nurses, it is a place of fear, frustration, and unanswered questions. What does HR really do? How much power do they actually have? And how can nurses really get what they need in those conversations? In this episode of The Ritual Nurse Podcast, Riva sits down with her friend Brynnen, an HR p...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Nursing culture has a dark side: bullying, incivility, and lateral violence. In this episode of The Ritual Nurse , Riva dives straight into the heart of toxic workplace culture and its devastating impact on nurses’ mental health, resilience, and retention. This conversation isn’t about “having thicker skin” It’s about calling out the mean girl culture that’...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Two of my closest friends and healthcare veterans join me to explore how our decade-long friendship has kept us sane through chaos, unending workloads, and the pandemic's darkest days. • Why healthcare friendships are survival gear; self care lifelines OUTSIDE of work • How our friendship began with an unexpected spider encounter and a well-placed slap...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! What's This Episode About? Riva is BACK and she's not playing around. In this raw, powerful Season 2 premiere, she gets real about the moment everything changed: a workplace injury during a code blue in 2021 that forced her to face the trauma she'd been studying but ignoring in herself. This isn't just another "self-care" conve...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! This is your wrap-up report. Your sacred shift sign-out. Your permission to exhale. In this emotional, powerful, and heart-filled finale of Season One, host Riva reflects on the journey we’ve taken together through trauma-informed healing, skill-building, and ritual creation. This season wasn’t just a podcast. It was a guided process for learning how to reg...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! The Four Agreements of Nursing —  This week, Riva dives into a deceptively simple book with a surprisingly deep message for nurses everywhere: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. But this isn’t a book club. It’s a reckoning. Because when nurses are expected to carry entire systems on their backs, absorb everyone’s trauma, and do it all with a charting p...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! This week on The Ritual Nurse , we're celebrating Pride not just with rainbows, but with radical accountability, affirming care, and professional truth-telling. What does it really mean to practice nursing with equity—not just equality? How do we ensure that LGBTQIA+ and especially transgender patients receive safe, trauma-informed care, even when some...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! You’re mid-shift, mid-crisis, and maxed out. You’ve got zero privacy, 30 seconds (if that), and an urgent need to NOT spiral. In this episode of The Ritual Nurse , we’re diving deep into how to emotionally regulate when you’re still on the floor—with tools that actually work. You’ll learn two trauma-informed, DBT-inspired skills made specifically for nurses...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Happy Nurses Week, sacred soul. This episode is your reminder—and your ritual—that you are not just part of the system… you ARE the medicine. This year’s Nurses Week theme is “The Power of the Nurse,” and we’re making it more than a slogan. In this episode, we reclaim that power together. We talk about: Why “power” in nursing isn’t just about staying strong...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! This week’s episode is a love letter to every nurse who’s been overwhelmed, under-caffeinated, and hanging on by a stethoscope string. Host Riva gets real about the kind of week that makes you question your career, your sanity, and your alarm clock. You’ll hear: How Riva survived a 70-dred-hour dumpster fire of a week without losing her cool (It's not...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! The past few weeks, we've had those clinical days — the kind where you laugh so hard with your students that you’re crying in the break room with mascara halfway down your face and someone might have a chux pad stuck to on a shoe. But between the chaos, the giggles, and gagillion mg K+ home remedy (>>??)… something clicked. This episode is for th...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! Ever felt like you're just done — with the shifts, the drama, the expectations, the trauma? Yeah, same. This week on The Ritual Nurse, we’re talking about real boundaries — not just the kind where you say no to picking up a shift, but the kind that protect your emotional, spiritual, and energetic capacity. Inspired by the new series The Pitt (which hit...

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce! This episode is your invitation to stop spiraling in burnout and start stepping into your power—one beautiful task at a time. It’s Riva’s birthday week, and instead of just celebrating with cake and candles, she’s showing up with a bold gift for every nurse who’s drowning in chaos, mental overload, and the crushing pressure to do it all. In this special sol...