Keep changing the world without burning out: resilience skills for changemakers and feminists

I’ve spent most of my life among changemakers and feminists and I can say these are the most caring, creative, and burned-out people I’ve ever met.

What do I mean? Here are a few common challenges in the lives of changemakers:

  • Imbalance between workload and organizational resources
  • Discrimination and Marginalization
  • Legal persecution
  • Financial insecurity
  • Trauma and secondary trauma
  • Various types of threats, harassment, online stalking, and violence
  • Lack of support from family or the community

All of these factors make work and life more challenging. Changemakers and feminists experience stress, anxiety, burnout, difficulties in preserving motivation and commitment, and damaged relationships.

To create change, we must have changemakers with the resources to deal with these challenges. But this is where “The Helper’s Dilemma” comes into play. It sounds something like this: “How can I dedicate time to take care of myself when the cause feels more important and crucial than my own well-being, especially when I’m so privileged compared to those I’m helping?!”

I’ve heard this sentiment from changemakers around the world. What follows is often a tendency to deprioritize their own well-being, leading to high turnover rates and prolonged mental health damage.

A Special Note for Feminists

My mission is to support changemakers and feminists in finding the balance between caring for others and caring for themselves, ensuring they have the resources to continue improving the world.

I have been a feminist and a changemaker for 20 years. I’ve seen the burnout that my friends, colleagues, and myself have faced.

As a social worker specializing in resilience and feminist therapy and an embodied facilitator, I have developed this program to promote social change by supporting the people who make it happen.

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