There is little point in tending to the edges of the riverbanks if what is allowed to flow through is poison.

At it’s most simple moral injury is where what you believe to be true and what you experience do not align.

More than that, they clash in such a way that the bottom falls out of your world and you are left free falling. There’s no backstop or safety net. The foundations are gone. It is it’s own kind of loneliness, trauma and abandonment.

Moral injury is deeply felt. I know this because I have felt it first hand, for sustained periods and on repeat. I have also walked with others in the mire of it. Being brought to the very edge of themselves day after day. Moral injury pertains to our spiritual selves, with manifestations in our physical and emotional symptoms, how we live when we are at our lowest ebb.

It is like the experience of a solar eclipse, where darkness descends at the wrong time of day. The light is blocked out and we are still asked to keep breathing, still required to function, even though we know life is not meant to be like this. Even though all the other days and nights have kept faithfully turning and us with them. Now, we are open mouthed and eyes straining to see how to put one foot in front of the other. When the solar eclipse is past and normality resumes, we are still reeling because we are never sure what to trust again, never sure when and how darkness will envelope our days.

Moral injury often relates to tragic events, personal matters, or is tied up in our livelihoods and so the impact is too delicate or dangerous to talk about. The carrier may contain moral injuries unacknowledged for years.

There is a lot of awareness out there about burnout, wellness and stress. At every corner we are handed well meaning to do lists of how we should manage all this as well as everything else. There is occasionally some lip service given to how workplace environment and structures manifest their own outcomes in regards to staff well being. But mostly the focus draws demands from our resources of resilience.

If we are like a river,

burnout is a drought

moral injury is an oil slick.

If we dry up then next season the rains will come, springs will refill and flow will return along the river beds.

An oil slick is another matter. The damage to wildlife and the entire ecosystem is substantial, deep and profound. It is sticky.

By its’ nature it takes care, attention, dedication, time and tenderness to clear. It is a messy job to clean up. Longer still for life to return to thrive.

Sometimes the moral injury relates to an institution. This is most devastating where on the surface the institution has planted wellbeing walks along its’ riverbanks and wildflowers to protect the bees, but has failed to protect its’ people.

It has turned a blind eye to the pollution seeping in. Or worse, pours waste and debris upstream and remains surprised when everything suffers downstream.

There is little point in tending to the edges of the riverbanks if what is allowed to flow through is poison.