Page 18 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

P r e f a C e

Opening-Entering: A New Beginning Almost Thirty Years Later

I sit in the quiet of Mexico, my secret, sacred space, on my birthday
with a sense of nostalgia and my questionable notions of life and
cycles of time. I sit in the quiet, reengaging with my very first book
on the philosophy and science of caring in nursing. The original work
(1979) presented this framework as the foundation, the soul, the core
and essence of nursing as a discipline and a profession.
I now ponder a total renewal, revision, and update of this work,
bringing life to it at this point in time, having undergone and expe-
rienced several life evolutions, changes, even transformations of self
and systems, including the deepening of the “theory.”
I reconnect with my life cycle as well as the career cycles of my
work, both as the beginning and ending and as the continuing cycle of
this time. Just as the high tide comes at noon and the low tide recedes
at sunset, I place myself with the rhythm of the sea. My mood is in

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