What has your pain made possible?

“Be grateful for what pain made possible.”

I saw that quote on an Instagram reel this morning from a band called 19 Miles Per Hour. It inspired me to take a completely different approach to writing this essay. After reading “Trump Is Winning the War on Nonprofits” by Phil Buchanan and Elisha Smith Arrillaga in Common Dreams earlier this week, I was prepared to share my usual in-depth, research-driven insights on shifting the focus from this narrative to solutions.

But as I write this reflection, I’m realizing that’s just not the headspace I’m in. To be honest, I haven’t been in a solutions-centered headspace in a long time. Living in a capitalist society, we’re conditioned to move faster, want more, dream bigger, and never feel like enough. Working in movement and social justice spaces compounds that pressure, where fighting wars until you win is the norm and worth is measured by wins and the impact those wins have. Operating within these conditions has made me so accustomed to running on empty that I forget to take my own advice. I forget to make space to slow down and reflect on realistic ways I can show up for myself and others in times of crisis.

And we are in a crisis—a war that we are losing.

The article mentioned burnout due to the following reasons:

• new worries about the safety of their staff and those they serve,

• financial distress as more organizations book deficits,

• increased difficulty raising funds from foundations (which are facing unprecedented demand as nonprofits look to replace lost government funding), and

• cutbacks to programs and staff in order to keep their doors open.

To add fuel to the fire, all of these factors make it not only harder to do this work but also to want to do it. It’s no wonder that Trump is winning the war. The lack of sustainability and unlivable wages alone are enough to make anyone wave the white flag. Even as I try to seek opportunities with higher pay, or at least contractual/gig work, so I’m not stressing about living check to check and not feeling guilty about treating myself to a vacation—or something as small as an iced matcha latte—my optimism and imaginative thinking often fall short against systems designed to kill hope.

Optimism only gets you so far. If conditions are unsustainable, no amount of dreaming and imagining a more just future can pay the rent or refill the well once it runs dry. Thinking of solutions is important and part of the deeper work, but what good are they if the people meant to carry them forward are too depleted to do so, with systems constantly working against our good rather than for it?

Yes, having honest conversations about what comes next is necessary because staying quiet and hoping things will magically shift on their own is not an option. And structural solutions need to go beyond individual actions because you can’t expect change at the individual level when most people are just trying to survive under conditions that leave us in never-ending mental cycles of impending doom.

But I keep coming back to that quote. Be grateful for what pain made possible. Even though losing everything financially after being laid off from my last nonprofit job almost two years ago broke me in ways I’m still recovering from, it planted something new in me that’s still growing.

If I hadn’t been laid off, I wouldn’t have started building this platform that reaches thousands of people. Thousands. I wouldn’t have taken the leap to move from DC to LA. I wouldn’t have found my voice, once buried beneath the echo chamber of the nonprofit industrial complex. I wouldn’t have learned to stop tying my worth to a job title and instead to place it in the lives I impact, in big and small ways, by boldly and courageously speaking truth to power about how we can show up more humanly for social justice.

It’s not the solution I had in mind to write about today, but after further thought, I can’t honestly say we don’t know how to not only survive this era but also thrive in it and win. We know exactly what to do. There have been enough webinars, conference sessions, and blog posts to serve as a blueprint for building what’s next, rather than just hearing ourselves talk, as we love to do.

I know that I, and so many of us, are too tired to even think about tomorrow, let alone the next chapter for nonprofits and philanthropy and how to move forward during and after Trump 2.0. Not only are we not ready for a full upheaval and the work it would require, but we’re also simply not ready to reckon with ourselves and take concrete steps to redistribute the power, wealth, and decision-making needed to see real change.

So maybe, for now, we can start small and be grateful instead for what the pain of this time is making possible right now. For you and your life. For your organizations. For your campaigns and for the movements you fight in.

Pain tilled my own ground and planted seeds I’m still watching grow. Sometimes soil that has been packed too hard for too long must be broken up completely before it can hold new life. Maybe that’s where we are as a sector…in the tilling.