How do I heal from years of working close to death?

You have kept people breathing through the worst hours of their lives, standing right at the edge where they might not make it. Years of that proximity wear a groove in a person, and you feel it now, a worn place you do not know how to fill. That wear is not weakness. It is the honest residue of hard, close work. You cannot spend that much time at the edge and walk away untouched, and pretending otherwise only deepens the groove. What you carry needs somewhere to go, or it stays lodged in you. Filling the worn place does not mean forgetting; it means letting some good and rest back in where the strain hollowed you out. Begin by treating your own recovery as real. Talk about what you have seen with someone who can hold it. Make room for the things that steady you and refuse to feel guilty for needing them. You gave your steadiness to people at their most fragile for years. Now turn a little of that care back toward the one who has been holding the line.