In this episode, hosts Maryann Leary and Rebecca Love announce that the Love & Leary Nursing Podcast has been acquired by Nurse.org. They recount the podcast’s origins—starting as a candid conversation about imposter syndrome, evolving through a partnership with The Nursing Beat, and now joining the Nurse.org network. The hosts discuss the importance of saying “yes” to opportunities, the ongoing struggle with self‑doubt, and the value of embracing success as a continual journey. They shift focus to broader themes of nursing advocacy, emphasizing that nurses must learn to advocate for themselves and use their voices beyond patient care, employing storytelling and effective communication to influence policy, education, and public perception. Practical advice is offered on how nurses can find platforms that suit them—podcasts, op‑eds, classroom talks, etc.—and the episode highlights the goal of amplifying nursing narratives to drive change at local, state, and federal levels. Interspersed are promotional messages from Nurse.org about discounted tickets, deals, and upcoming podcast episodes, concluding with a call to follow the podcast and engage with the new partnership.
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The Love and Leary Podcast is where nursing leadership, innovation, and real talk come together. Hosted by nurse leaders, Maryann Leary.
And Rebecca Love.
The show dives into the issues that matter most to today's nursing community.
Each episode features candid conversations, expert insights, and bold perspectives on healthcare leadership, advocacy, and the future of nursing. Whether you're a clinical nurse, nurse leader, or another healthcare changemaker, Love and Leary offers thoughtful dialogue and practical takeaways to inform, inspire, and empower nurses at every stage of our careers.
Hello, Rebecca. How's it going?
Good to see you, Marian. This is such an exciting episode for us.
Dude, so exciting because for folks who've been following us, you may not know because we haven't announced it yet, but the Love and Leary podcast is now with nurse.org. We've been acquired.
It's so exciting. I mean, I think when we look back at the journey of what we did, right, the first time we came together. We hosted a podcast just to talk with you and I about imposter syndrome and how you make it and how you feel about life and how we struggle with those things. And it started with one, a few episodes later, I think we were with the Nursing Beat. And here we are now with Nurse.org, which is just so exciting.
Yeah, it's crazy. And it just goes to show, and I think this is why we wanted to do this quick little episode announcing our transition over to nurse.org is that you never know where things are going to take you, right? I had a mentor once who— I don't know if I necessarily agree with this all the time, and I'm sure my therapist would not want me saying this, but he said, always say yes, because, you know, one yes leads to another opportunity leads to another opportunity, and you just never know. And I was fortunate enough that you said yes, let's Let's do it. Let's get on a podcast and let's talk about stuff that's important to us and important to our nursing community.
You know what? I think this is exactly the thing. I think many of us in our worlds, we don't know when to say yes and we don't know when to say no. And I think you and I have always struggled with that. And we take on a lot. We take a lot of responsibility for a lot of actions. And the reason that we actually started the podcast was because we felt that there wasn't enough nurses out there having conversations on really important topics and narratives that were missing our voices and said, you know what, we didn't want to be restricted by the places that we work, the ways that we operate, the limits of the profession that we're in to basically manage where we're going. And I think that's the power of learning to say yes, figuring out what you can and cannot do, and eliminating those self-beliefs that you have in yourself. Because I still think you and I struggle with that feeling of imposter syndrome at times that, you know—
Totally.
You know, and there was something I read the other day, Marion, um, in the height of the new year. I think I shared it with you, but there was this part of a speech that I read that success is like this never-ending mountain in front of you. As soon as you achieve something, there's still going to be more mountain ahead of you. And I think that really struck me, that success is never going to achieve a top level. You're never going to reach it. There's always something else to achieve.
Yeah. And it's a balance, right? I'm reading the book Wise Effort, which is all about like managing your superpowers, managing your values, managing your effort, and using it obviously in a wise way so that you don't burn out. But you also, you know, you do the things that bring you joy, that energize you, and that help you to get to the top of whatever mountain you're trying to get at, not necessarily, you know, societal's mountain.
That's exactly it. And I think when we're going to go and do this, and now we're going into this new chapter. So, right, we started with one podcast, we joined The Nursing Beat, The Nursing Beat ended up getting acquired by nurse.org. And here we are a few months later, and we're joining the nurse.org, you know, family of really starting to get out there and have those voices. So what does that mean for us? What does that mean for the future of Love and Larry? And Marion, what does that mean? Because I think, you know, the truth of what we like was that it's always just sort of off the cuff. It's open, honest conversations. And, you know, having those conversations we find really important.
Yeah, I mean, I, I hope, I hope that it grows our audience. It continues to, and it will continue to encourage others to use their voices to push the profession forward. And we will continue to have these sometimes hard but important conversations on this podcast. And, you know, keep doing what we're doing, keep working and talking with nurses who are doing important things to also help push the profession forward.
You know, everybody has a personal journey. And I think what we do often as nurses is we believe that what exists for other people cannot necessarily exist for us. And I, you know, I, the truth is for you and I, when we first met, and we talked about this a little bit on our first podcast, we felt like we didn't belong in nursing. We didn't really know where our careers were going. We saw a different future, but we weren't sure how to get there. And I think if there's some advice for other nurses out there and why we're continuing to do this podcast, when both you and I have very busy schedules. We're doing other things. We just want to inspire others to believe that they can do what they need to do and that you don't have to have a special degree. You don't have to come from a specific pedigree to make an impact in the world and what you want to do.
No. And I'd like to just talk about something. So I did a guest lecture in a course before the holidays, and it was all about advocacy, activism, And using your voice as a nurse in the profession. And interestingly, you know, a lot of the students brought up that they were nervous about using their voice. You know, they hear about the pushback that nurses get from the institutions where they work. They hear from their academic institutions that they could potentially get pushback or be censored around what they say. And it came up multiple times during this conversation. And I want to say what I said to them was, you have to know what the policies are for where you work, but you also don't have to— like, speaking out doesn't necessarily have to be political, right? Like, we are healthcare experts. We all have an area of focus that we want to help to push forward for our patients and our communities. So speaking up and being an advocate doesn't necessarily mean pushing against barriers or being political or, you know, pushing back against the system. It means advocating for your patients, advocating for your community, putting fact-based, science-based data out into the world. None of that should get you any pushback. That's just good nursing practice.
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It is. And I think you said something very interesting, which is we were always taught as nurses to be patient advocates. What nobody ever taught us was how we advocated for ourselves, our profession, or our own voice. And I think that's the difference. This is the transition that we need nurses to make, which is we are the best patient advocates. We're going to represent them on their treatments, their medications, their delivery, everything that needs to happen around those. You just need to learn how to do that for yourselves. And I Sometimes, we enter into these spaces and these rooms where what we were not taught was the language on how to communicate to those outside of nursing or outside of being a patient. And with that, it is absolutely imperative because no one is going to learn the language of nursing. I wish to say that they would. I wish that they would speak in empathetic terms. And I think, I feel, and I believe and value that when somebody says those 3 terms, that it means something. But unfortunately, that's how we were taught to communicate as nurses because patients That's how we make people trust, believe, and relate to us because they're in their worst moments of life. The truth is, why I think Marion and I are doing this is through the course of our careers, we've started to realize that we've had to learn how to speak differently. The language of what other professions who basically dominate in healthcare spaces, in policy spaces, in legal spaces, and basically national narratives from media and beyond, speak a language much more around business. And statistics or economics. And I think why we have found this to be a powerful platform for us is by bringing nurses onto this platform and having conversations with them, which we can take their narrative and help them amplify their voice with messaging that we support. And also, you know, help them figure out how to basically structure this in a way that's more impactful is something that we've learned the hard way. We've succeeded in some and we fail at many. And it's always shocking to me on what goes viral and what stays quiet. And to your point, Marion, learning to speak effectively is not about politics. It's not just about patient advocacy. It's a way of basically storytelling. And you talk a lot about storytelling because stories are such an impactful way for people to understand complex scenarios in ways that they can feel something about.
Mm-hmm.
And that is what I think, you know, some of the goals of what we're doing and, and what we hope is gonna happen for other nurses who listen to us, that we hope will start becoming their own podcast hosts and narratives at very significant levels across the profession.
Yeah, and this isn't what this episode was supposed to be about. But like, there are so many ways for nurses to use their voices. And again, what I said in that class was find what you feel comfortable with. It doesn't necessarily have to be a podcast. It could be writing op-eds, it could be speaking to a class, it could be— there's so many different ways. And so You just have to find what works for you and the tone and the brand that you want to put out there to represent yourself and that you feel comfortable with. And comfort is subjective and is different to everyone. And so, we need nurses using their voice, but we need you to do it in a way that you feel comfortable with.
That's right. And the truth is, you know what, I often find that using your voice is much more uncomfortable than you realize. Silence is an easier place to be in many of those uncomfortable zones. But the reality is, and Mary and I have talked about this historically, is that nurses are the most trusted profession because when they speak, they do so from a place that is always in the interest of the human good in so many ways. And so, I think what we're so excited about is when we started, we had no idea where this was going to go. It was going to be a single episode and just talking to others because both you and I were in a period of slight flux about who we were, what we're doing next, how much longer we could stay in the fight. And here we are. I don't know, how many years later is this, Mary? And I don't even know.
I want to say at least, at least a couple, right?
Exactly. We're at least 2 years in, and it's fun for us in a way that entertains, uh, uh, and, uh, new topics for us that I don't think we would talk about in the space of nursing or with each other in a way that we're able to when we get on this podcast.
No. And I just want to say, we have— we already have a few episodes lined up, and they're going to be incredible conversations. And they're, you know, a varying range of conversations. You know, we're still going to stick a little bit to the political, but, you know, there's a lot of other topics affecting the nursing profession, and we're going to dig into them. That's what this podcast is about. And so I'm so excited. I want to just say again, thank you to nurse.org for bringing us over and helping us continue to keep the Love and Leary podcast going.
That's right. Hey, you know what? We joined because we believe that a platform for nursing voices is absolutely essential, that we're going to amplify, elevate, and accelerate the growth of nursing and national narratives. And we're thrilled that nurse.org came behind this to decide that they were doubling down on it to be the leading and premier voice of nursing in the country, if not one day the world. Because the truth is, is when nurses come together and have their voices heard, we're going to be able to be unstoppable, finally changing the policies we need to at the most furthest levels across our federal, state, and even local levels and institutions.
And that's— Stopping, stopping and leading. Leading. Leading.
That's right. We're stopping and leading along those lines. So that is our goal, you guys. We just wanted to say, hey, we're now on nurse.org, Love and Larry. And the truth is, is we can't wait to introduce you to the incredible guests that are coming forward on some of the biggest topics facing our profession in ways that we hope you get involved and start to change more for your local communities and for yourself as you listen to the Love and Larry podcast.
So if you're not following us yet, follow the Love and Leary Podcast on any platform you do your podcast listening, and, uh, follow us on LinkedIn, and you'll always know when we have a new show coming out. Thanks for listening to the Love and Leary Podcast. We hope this conversation sparked new ideas, challenged your thinking, and reminded you of the power nurses have to lead change.
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