Listen to this post here
Why would you need to “heal” from the nonprofit sector?
The sector hurts us by:
1. By normalizing poverty wages and working for free, and wage theft.
2. By taking your revolutionary energy and trapping it in an ineffective work loop,
3. keeping you too exhausted to question the system
4. By replicating authoritarian and nondemocratic work environments where workers have all of the responsibility and consequences and little power, and the board has most of the power and no consequences
5. The gaslighting mindset- “You want more money? Don’t you BELIEVE IN THE MISSION?” trying to shame you when you ask for more
6. The trauma bonding that makes you grateful for scraps
7. By keeping us stuck, for years, in a dead end of endless demands and no time to rest or breathe
8. Sometimes we are primed to enter these toxic nonprofit environments because of our families. You have to unlearn what seems normal.
Mazarine, people are dying, why this book? why NOW?
Because I’ve learned in the last 7 years that if we don’t heal- PERSONALLY, and understand systems of oppression that hold us all back- then wea re just going to keep recreating those systems.
We need strong movements, now more than ever.
But we can’t have that if we keep:
- Being silent about the genocide in Gaza and the ICE raids in our streets
- Not understanding how we recreate white supremacy in our workplaces
- Reproducing ableism through not acknowledging the ongoing pandemic and not masking
- Pretending our feelings don’t matter
My new book, Healing from the Nonprofit Sector will help you name and claim what’s going on. And step forward authentically.
- Whether that means advocating for a union, more democratic workplace structures
- Acknowledging the gaza and sudan genocides, the pandemic that’s continuing, the climate crisis in your communications,
- Or stopping overgiving and self abandoning at your work,
- Or even leaving the sector entirely
By the end, you’ll be able to NAME what feels wrong and make a more informed choice about what to do next.
This might be bringing up some feelings in you.
It’s ok if you feel isolated, numb, powerless, despairing.
It’s ok if you feel rage, fear, and everything in between. We have to acknowledge all the feelings, even the hard ones, to come out on the other side.
You may have heard of PTSD, but have you heard of Post traumatic growth? This too is a reframe, a bit of narrative therapy.
But we can’t move forward until we first look at the story we swallowed that is making us sick, vomit it up and swallow a new story.
If you want to share your story, leave a comment and I’ll be in touch.
I’ll read your anonymized story on my youtube channel and your story can become part of how we all heal.
Let’s name it, together.
Mazarine
