Windsor, ON: We are all stories waiting to be told. This was the idea that led to the development of Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare (HDGH) through their newly launched Stories of Grit & Grace campaign.

Today, the specialty hospital in Windsor’s west-end unveiled an important legacy campaign; one they hope will recognize the pandemic’s historic place in healthcare history and begin to reconcile a shared experience of over 1,100 HDGH team members.

HDGH’s Stories of Grit and Grace will see more than twenty-five members of the HDGH Family, including physicians, nurses, social workers, leadership, and board members, individually recount their COVID experiences. Stories will tell learnings, triumphs, hardships, and courage not only as healthcare workers but more also as mothers, fathers, sisters, friends, colleagues, and humans during this time.

“We thought a lot about how to collectively leverage on a time in our shared organizational history where we have come together while at times, fragmented, tired or broken. OUR PEOPLE, our more than 1,100 staff of loving compassionate healthcare professionals took a few roundtrips to hell and back. It has not been easy. It’s still not easy. This campaign is not only a way of saying thank you but also intended to share some very unique, personal and powerful stories,” said Janice Kaffer, HDGH President and CEO.

The two simple, yet powerful, words were chosen purposely to reflect the struggles, courage, and invisible spirit of the HDGH team, reflective of GRIT. It will also highlight the start to a recovery process, the kindness shown to one another, and the strength required to make it to present-day – GRACE.

“I had a lot on my plate and being away from friends and family to try to help was impossible. I felt like I had nowhere to turn for physical help and I couldn’t let my mental health overtake my body,” one HDGH staff member poignantly wrote. “I realized that my mental health struggles and addiction weren’t going to win this battle…I went to rehab in Guelph and got better before I died from it.”

“I didn’t know why I was supposed to be a nurse until I already was one, and it even took a pandemic to show me,” were the words from an HDGH RN Emmelie Sloan, who transitioned from graduation to working in healthcare during COVID all in a matter of months.

Stories of Grit and Grace will rally on a culture of strength and perseverance entrenched in HDGH’s more than 130-year history of healthcare excellence. The HDGH stories have the ability to soothe or spur action, grab a reader’s heart and most importantly see more clearly the dotted lines that connect us all.

“We are all more similar than we are unlike. Stories of Grit & Grace will showcase who we are. HDGH is an organization, a hospital, a workforce, a team that can come together for one goal even when things get gritty - to serve the healthcare needs of our community. We all have stories of our journey’s through grit leading us to grace. A hundred years from now, when we are reading back on the pandemic of 2020/21, we will read firsthand of its impacts through those right on healthcare’s frontlines,” Kaffer concluded.

Stories of Grit and Grace will be hosted through www.StoriesofGritandGrace.org, where each week new faces will be introduced through the hospital’s Instagram account (@hdghwindsor) linking to their emotional, highly-personal experiences.

HDGH is encouraging everyone, even members of the community, to tell their story using the hashtag #HDGHStoriesofGritandGrace

Watch the Stories of Grit & Grace launch video here.