Content warning: This post discusses collective trauma, violence, and vicarious trauma in advocacy work.
I keep returning to a question that has no easy answer: How do we do this work—how do we bear witness to suffering, how do we advocate for justice—when the world feels like it’s burning around us?
This morning, I watched footage of ICE agents shooting a white woman in the head three times in broad daylight in Minnesota. Three times. In broad daylight. And I thought: How do I go on with everyday life after seeing this? How do any of us?
I’m writing this as someone who will soon volunteer to sit with survivors in their most vulnerable moments through SART. I’m writing this as someone who chose to step into rooms filled with other people’s pain because I believed—I still believe—that bearing witness matters.
But I’m also writing this as someone who is learning, slowly and imperfectly, that bearing witness comes with a cost we rarely name.
The Weight We Carry
Jamie Beck, a brilliant advocate and former law school classmate, recently wrote something that stopped me in my tracks:
“When we don’t have time to process what we’re hearing, when we push down the feelings so we can keep doing the work, we don’t leave that pain behind. We carry it with us. We carry it in our bodies.”
That’s vicarious trauma. It’s the weight of someone else’s pain, lodged in your own nervous system. Your body doesn’t know the difference between your trauma and theirs. And here’s what nobody tells you when you start this work: it’s not a sign that you’re weak. It’s a sign that you’re human.
Jamie describes attending a California Senate hearing where she testified alongside a survivor-advocate for the Survivors Act of 2025. As this woman “opened up her heart and placed it in the committee’s hands,” Jamie choked back tears of sadness and rage. The entire room was filled with her pain. They took in her trauma—not just in their minds, but reverberating through their bodies.
This is the work. And it should affect you. If it doesn’t, that’s a red flag.
I know this truth in my bones. Before my formal advocacy training even begins on January 21st, I’ve already sat with victims of sexual assault and surviving family members of homicide victims. Recently, I worked with a mother whose son was brutally shot to death at his workplace. As we went over the facts of her case, she said something that will stay with me forever: “My life is SHATTERED.”
Those words—and the way she said them—they reverberated through the room. Through my body. It is hard to sit with so much pain and overwhelming emotion. But I sat. I listened. I cried with that mother. I made sure she knew she did not have to shelter that pain on her own.
That’s what bearing witness looks like. Not staying detached. Not maintaining professional distance. But being present—fully, achingly present—with another person’s devastation.
That moment taught me something crucial about the work ahead: this is the type of strength I would need. Not the strength to remain unmoved, but the strength to be moved and still show up. The strength to let my heart break and then carefully tend to those fractures so I can show up again tomorrow.
The Compounding Crisis
But here’s what makes this moment particularly unbearable: we’re not just processing individual trauma stories. We’re living through collective, compounding trauma on a national scale.
The American Psychological Association and NIH have documented what many of us are feeling in our bones: America is experiencing a mental health crisis fueled by overlapping traumatic events. The ongoing aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rising political polarization and violence. Systemic racism and racial injustice—the murder of George Floyd and the ongoing systemic violence that followed, creating significant social unrest and trauma, particularly for Black communities. Climate-related disasters displacing and traumatizing entire communities. Economic instability and inflation adding to the psychological burden. Mass shootings that have become so frequent they barely register as news anymore. Intensified immigration enforcement policies causing significant trauma, anxiety, and depression for immigrant families and their citizen children through strict enforcement and family separation.
These compounding stressors, intensified by constant news coverage, contribute to a national mental health crisis, affecting individuals’ ability to cope and heal.
For those of us in advocacy work—for attorneys, nonprofit staff, organizers, social workers, healthcare providers, mental health professionals—we’re not just bearing witness to individual suffering. We’re absorbing the cumulative weight of systems built on dehumanization, operating within a society that feels like it’s fracturing.
As Jamie writes: “You’re the ones translating grief into legal arguments, trauma into intake forms. You’re the ones holding space for stories that break your heart and still getting up the next morning to do it again.”
And in the midst of all this, someone might chirpily say: “Take care of yourself. Don’t forget to practice self-care.”
But what does wellness even mean in a moment like this? How do you breathe deep when the world is on fire?
The national landscape and daily news have had a terrible effect on me. I often feel completely disconnected from my everyday, mundane tasks. In light of national—even global—tragedies, things like work due dates and home chores seem insignificant. Yet, they are the fabric of everyday life. So I answer emails, and do the dishes… just to put one foot in front of the other and get to the next moment.
In a certain way, I can hear my forebears—my strong Russian grandmother and even my mother—telling me “chin up, this is the work.” But it is still hard. I feel shell-shocked at the end of a day when the news is particularly bad. It’s as if, as an empath, I have absorbed the grief, the fear, and the anger of the world around me.
Sometimes it feels numb. And that numbness feels dangerous to me. I want to feel—I don’t want to be numb. I never want to be apathetic or completely removed from the issues—or victims—of today. This tension between protecting myself and staying open is one I navigate daily.
And yet, paradoxically, this same dark landscape makes me think that now more than ever, I am on the right path. Yes, the world is dark and full of terror. But this is also when helpers and healers are needed the most. It feels like a calling—and an increasingly urgent one. If not now, when? If not me, who?
I am lucky in having a fantastic support network. My partner Ryan feels the anger and outrage and despair as much as I do. So do my friends. So does my therapist. I am not alone in this, and that helps. It doesn’t make the work easier, but it makes it bearable. It reminds me that we carry this weight together.
What Law School Didn’t Teach Us
Here’s something else Jamie helped me name: many of us were never taught how to actually feel our feelings. Especially those of us who went to law school.
There’s a concept called “paradoxical pedagogy”—the idea that legal education systematically trains students to distance themselves from emotion and human content. As scholars Sarah McConnell and Leah Lunetta write in the Roger Williams University Law Review: “The current push for trauma-informed legal education often rests on a faulty assumption that law students and professors still possess the emotional competencies required for trauma-informed practice, but this assumption ignores the transformative—and often damaging—effect of traditional legal education, particularly in the first year.”
We learn to compartmentalize, to suppress emotion in the name of professionalism and objectivity. By the time we graduate, we’ve become efficient machines. But we’ve often left our humanity at the door.
And the truth is, most of us weren’t taught how to feel long before law school. Many of us grew up with unspoken messages that big feelings were too much. That anger was dangerous. That sadness was weakness. That fear was something to ignore or power through.
Law school reinforced these lessons in ways I’m still unpacking. It taught me to be more risk-averse, more risk-aware. But it also instilled in me a kind of detachment from the world itself. It took years after law school for me to enjoy reading for pleasure again—I had become so used to reading for learning, for information only. Everything became transactional. Functional. Stripped of beauty and feeling.
I had to “defrost” that soft, empathetic heart of mine and allow it to be heard as much as my rational mind. That’s what the past seven years have been about: learning—relearning—how to let both parts of myself exist simultaneously. The analytical mind that my English Literature degree cultivated and law school sharpened, and the feeling heart that makes meaning out of human stories.
I’m learning that I don’t have to choose between them. That the best advocacy doesn’t come from detachment—it comes from the ability to hold both the facts and the feelings, the law and the humanity, the analysis and the empathy.
For the past seven years, my personal work has centered around one deceptively simple goal: to allow myself to feel what I feel. It’s been the most important and most challenging work of my life.
Because here’s the thing: if you work with trauma survivors, if you bear witness to suffering, it should affect you. But feeling something is one thing. Knowing how to process and release those feelings is another. When we don’t know how—or don’t allow ourselves to—the emotions get trapped inside us. And over time, they take a toll. Mentally. Physically. Spiritually.
The Common Trap
Jamie shares a conversation with a criminal appellate attorney who works on cases where people have been locked up for decades after profound miscarriages of justice. When asked how he processes the emotional weight of his work, he said: “I get so much meaning from my work that I just work harder for my clients.”
I’ve heard versions of this answer many times. I’ve probably given versions of this answer myself. And while it’s deeply admirable, it’s also deeply dangerous.
Working harder isn’t an emotional release valve. It’s just turning up the pressure. Eventually, something’s going to blow.
I absolutely use mundane tasks to distract myself from bad news and emotions. I keep busy to not allow myself to become overwhelmed. I read somewhere that when dogs have a surplus of emotions, they pick up a toy—not to play with, but just to channel their excess emotions into something. When I start reorganizing my Outlook inbox or when I start polishing my silver at home—that’s when I know. It’s my dog toy.
In stressful and toxic work environments, I’ve also thought that working more or harder would protect me from the stress. “If I work through the weekend, I’ll have less to do during the week and feel less pressure.” In my first role in property management, I routinely worked 13-hour days, chasing the promise of relief that never came.
But the hoped-for benefits never happened. More work simply appeared. That’s the thing about work—it will always be there. Instead, I just never got any rest.
This is why building my “Fierce Grace Life Architecture” has become so essential. It’s a conscious attempt to break this pattern before I carry it into advocacy work. Because I know myself: if I don’t build in rest, reflection, and emotional processing from the beginning, I’ll default to the dog toy. And you can’t sustain bearing witness to trauma while polishing silver to avoid your feelings.
Hope as a Vital Catalyst
This is where I need to talk about something that might seem counterintuitive, especially in a moment of such urgent crisis: hope.
Not the toxic positivity kind of hope. Not the “everything happens for a reason” platitudes. Not the performative wellness industry’s version of self-care.
I’m talking about the kind of hope that Dr. Robert Rhoton from the Arizona Trauma Institute describes as “not naïve optimism, but a courageous act of defiance against suffering.”
When Dr. Rhoton was recently asked why he discusses hope when laying out the science of trauma and resiliency, he smiled. Because hope isn’t just a nice sentiment—it’s backed by robust academic research emphasizing its practical importance.
Meta-analytic evidence reveals that hope is a robust protective factor against PTSD. Individuals with higher hope experience significantly fewer PTSD symptoms, and this effect is consistent across age and gender. Hope—more than general self-efficacy or optimism—predicts post-trauma resilience.
For adolescents facing chronic illness, hope is not just a coping tool; it is essential for health, adjustment, and quality of life. High-hope youth find multiple pathways to their goals, view setbacks as challenges, and manage psychological symptoms more effectively.
Among patients with gynecologic cancer, hope mediates the relationship between illness perception and family resilience. When hope is nurtured, families adapt more effectively, demonstrating that hope is not only an individual asset but also a collective resource that strengthens entire support systems during adversity.
Even among vulnerable, community-dwelling older adults facing poverty, isolation, and health decline, hope stands out as a powerful predictor of resilience. Hope mediates the effects of spiritual experiences and social support, enabling older adults to maintain strength and purpose despite severe challenges.
As Dr. Rhoton writes: “Hope is a lifeline. It is the spark that turns pain into purpose, the anchor that grounds us in the storm, and the bridge that carries us from despair to possibility.”
Hope in Trauma-Informed Care
Hope isn’t just important for survivors—it’s central to trauma-informed care itself, acting as a vital catalyst for recovery. Hope motivates engagement, builds resilience, and fosters a belief in a positive future, moving individuals from hopelessness to agency through supportive relationships, skill-building, goal-setting, and empowerment.
Hope counteracts trauma’s effects by buffering stress, reducing symptoms like PTSD, and improving overall well-being, making a brighter future seem attainable.
Key roles of hope in trauma-informed care:
Motivation & Engagement: Hope provides the drive to participate in treatment and envision a future worth living, combating the paralysis trauma can cause.
Resilience Building: It strengthens coping mechanisms and buffers against stress, making individuals more resilient to adversity.
Empowerment: By fostering a sense of control and agency, hope allows survivors to reclaim their narratives and actively participate in their healing.
Improved Outcomes: Higher levels of hope are linked to reduced depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms, and better quality of life.
How Hope is Fostered
Understanding how hope works in trauma-informed care has shaped how I think about my own sustainability as an advocate. Here’s what the research tells us about fostering hope:
Trusting Relationships: The therapeutic relationship itself becomes a safe, supportive base, combating feelings of isolation and hopelessness. This is why the first principle of trauma-informed care is safety—physical, emotional, and relational.
Skill Development: Teaching coping strategies, emotional regulation, and problem-solving skills that lead to positive changes. These aren’t abstract concepts—they’re concrete tools that rebuild a sense of competency and control.
Goal Setting: Working towards realistic, future-oriented goals (even short-term ones) helps build momentum and hope. Sometimes hope looks like “I made it through today.” Sometimes it looks like “I can imagine next year.”
Strengths-Based Approach: Focusing on strengths and past positive experiences (PCEs), rather than solely on trauma, builds a foundation for hope. Every person we work with has survived. That survival itself is evidence of strength.
Community & Connection: Involvement in community, school, or supportive groups helps individuals feel seen, valued, and connected. We are not meant to heal in isolation.
Some approaches use the H.O.P.E. Framework to integrate hope into care. While there are different applications of this acronym, one powerful version stands for Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences—a science-based model developed by researchers at Tufts Medical Center that promotes Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) to foster healthy development and resilience.
The HOPE framework builds on research from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, but crucially shifts the focus from what harms children to what helps them flourish. It centers on four core building blocks:
Relationships: Safe, supportive connections with family, peers, and adults.
Environment: Living, playing, and learning in safe, stable, and equitable surroundings.
Social & Civic Engagement: Opportunities to feel connected and involved in their communities.
Emotional Growth: Support for navigating difficult emotions and experiences.
This framework provides a blueprint not just for preventing negative outcomes, but for actively fostering positive experiences that build self-worth and resilience. Organizations—from schools to healthcare settings to child welfare systems—can use HOPE to shift their practices, focusing on strengths and creating supportive environments for children and families.
What strikes me about the HOPE framework is how it applies not just to children, but to all of us doing trauma work. We too need nurturing relationships, safe environments, meaningful engagement, and support for emotional growth. We too are building resilience against adversity—including the vicarious trauma of bearing witness.
I’ve been working intentionally in all four areas, and this makes me feel grounded and ready for the work ahead:
My relationships are strong—Ryan, my 12-year friendship with Lisa, my parents, my therapist. People who see me, support me, and share both my joy and my grief.
My environment is one I’ve carefully cultivated—a home filled with beauty, vinyl records, my garden, spaces that feel safe and restorative. The dark academia aesthetic I’m building into my blog isn’t just about style; it’s about creating beauty as a healing tool.
My social and civic engagement is expanding—from my Sunday planning sessions and biweekly time with Lisa, to the museums, opera, and cultural activities that connect me to community and meaning, to the advocacy work itself.
My emotional growth is ongoing—seven years of learning to feel, therapy, journaling in journals I’ve kept for years, the “Fierce Grace Life Architecture” that prioritizes reflection and processing alongside action.
I am still such a believer in hope. Even now—especially now—when it would be easier to succumb to despair. The work continues, yes. But so does the belief that we are in this together. That people are still kind. That we can still show up for each other.
This is what I carry into my advocacy work: not naive optimism that everything will be okay, but the fierce conviction that showing up matters. That bearing witness matters. That holding space for someone’s shattered life and saying “you don’t have to carry this alone” is an act of resistance and repair.
I hope to continue this journey—into formal advocacy training, into SART work, into a new life in Philadelphia built around this calling—with strength and hopeful optimism. Not because the world is safe or just, but because hope is how we make it more bearable for each other.
So What Do We Do?
Hope is not about checking out. It’s about checking in—with your body, with your breath, with your boundaries.
Hope is the lifeline that turns pain into purpose, the anchor that grounds us in the storm, and the bridge that carries us from despair to possibility.
But hope requires practice. It requires tending. Here’s what that looks like:
Permission to Feel
First, give yourself permission to feel. No judgment. No fixing. Just allow.
You’re not broken. You’re not too sensitive. You’re not bad at boundaries. You’re a person trying to make change in a world that too often breaks people open.
The grief that lives in your chest after a client is detained—that’s real. The rage that simmers every time a cruel policy gets implemented—that’s valid. The numbness that creeps in when you’ve witnessed one injustice too many—that’s your nervous system trying to protect you. The guilt that whispers “you should be doing more” even when you’re already at your limit—that’s the lie that will destroy you if you let it.
Create Space
You can’t feel your feelings if you never stop moving. Constant productivity is emotional anesthesia. To feel, you need space.
Somatic Practices
Jamie offers several trauma release practices that help our bodies discharge what they’ve absorbed:
Shake it off. Literally. Shaking your arms, legs, and torso while breathing deeply is a natural way for animals—and humans—to discharge stress.
Grounding exercises. Place your feet flat on the floor. Name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. This helps bring your nervous system back to the present.
Tapping. Gently tap on points like the side of the hand, eyebrow, or collarbone while naming what you’re feeling.
Vocal release. Humming, singing, sighing, or making sound while exhaling helps regulate the vagus nerve and release tension.
Somatic check-ins. Ask your body, not your brain, how you’re doing. Where are you tense? What does that part of your body need?
Connecting with others. Sometimes, we just need to be seen and heard. Sharing the weight helps us carry it.
Expression
Once you do feel, you need a way to let it out:
- Therapy—a safe space to process emotions
- Breath work—reconnecting with your body and releasing what’s stored
- Meditation—or just stillness
- Movement—walking, stretching, dancing, yoga
- Crying—a completely valid and necessary physiological release
- Creative expression—art, music, writing, anything that makes room for what’s inside to come out
- Time in nature, especially in silence
Other practices that can help reconnect you with your emotions include somatic experiencing, EMDR, trauma-informed yoga, guided imagery or visualization, and sound healing.
Building my “Fierce Grace Life Architecture” has been about identifying which practices actually help me process and release emotion versus just distract from it. Some things I’ve discovered work for me:
My Sunday planning sessions give me space to reflect and set intentions rather than just react to demands. My gentle morning routine—waking at 7:30, moving with Pepper, lavender showers—helps me start the day grounded in my body rather than immediately in my head. Phone-free evenings create boundaries that protect my nervous system from the constant barrage of information and crisis.
But some of the most powerful practices are the simplest ones: Sitting in sunlight. Feeling the wind. Lighting candles and putting a log on the fireplace on cold evenings. These aren’t productive. They don’t accomplish anything. And that’s exactly why they matter.
Walking in nature brings me into flow states. Journaling—in journals I’ve kept for years—helps me process what I’m carrying. Time with Ryan, museums, opera, film, tending my garden. Reading for pleasure again, after years of having to relearn how.
Therapy has been essential—a space where I can feel without having to hold it together for anyone else.
I’m still experimenting. Still learning what my body needs on different days. But I’m learning to trust that tending to myself isn’t selfish—it’s how I stay capable of tending to others.
Everyday Acts of Resistance
Jamie reminds us that these aren’t indulgences. They’re resistance. They’re how we stay soft in a hard world. They’re how we keep our humanity in systems that so often erase it:
- Letting yourself cry without apology
- Naming what you’re feeling and giving it space to move through you
- Taking five minutes to walk outside, stretch, breathe
- Turning off the news—not to ignore reality, but to protect your spirit
- Sleeping. Laughing. Texting a friend. Staring at the sky.
- Saying no to one more thing, even if it feels important
- Asking for help, and accepting it
- Taking short breaks even when it feels selfish—especially then
- Trusting that you don’t have to burn out to prove you care
These small acts are not indulgences. They’re resistance. They’re how you stay soft in a hard world. They’re how you keep your humanity in systems that so often erase it.
The Full Range of Human Experience
Here’s something else I’m learning: feeling emotions doesn’t just mean sitting with the hard ones like sadness, anger, and fear. It also opens us up to the full range of human experience: joy, wonder, love.
When we bottle up our feelings, our bodies don’t get to pick and choose. We don’t just suppress the painful ones—we shut down everything.
And as hard, messy, and complicated as it is to feel the full rainbow of emotions, it’s also powerful and liberating.
There’s a concept in trauma work called “glimmers”—moments of grace that remind us we’re safe, we’re connected, we’re alive. They’re the opposite of triggers. While triggers send our nervous system into distress, glimmers bring us back to regulation and peace.
When things are the hardest, those small glimmers are the easiest for me to notice—they are ever-present, if I pay attention. The warmth of Pepper’s belly. The sound of Lisa’s laugh. My mom’s generosity. The warmth of the sun on a winter day or the smell of rain. These aren’t grand gestures or major events. They’re tiny moments of grace woven through even the darkest days.
When I’m feeling well, I’m able to expand my awareness and acknowledge the bigger things—the love of my family, the long-standing friendships I have, my privilege and access to great resources. Opera nights with Ryan. Museums. My vinyl collection. The garden I tend. The beauty I create in my daily life through small rituals and attention.
Protecting space for these glimmers—both small and large—isn’t frivolous. It’s survival. It’s how I remember that even in a world on fire, there is still warmth. Still beauty. Still connection. Still reasons to keep going.
This is what I mean by fierce grace: holding both the unbearable pain and the persistent beauty. Refusing to let the darkness eclipse every moment of light.
We Need You Whole
The world is burning. And you are still here.
Not because you are invincible, but because you are committed, and tender, and full of fight.
You deserve rest that doesn’t need to be earned. You deserve care that is collective, not conditional. You deserve communities that don’t just admire your strength, but nourish your soul.
Your emotions matter. Your limits are real. Your rest is righteous.
We need you whole—not because the work requires perfection, but because you deserve wholeness for its own sake. Because you matter, independent of your productivity or your service to others.
As I prepare for my Philadelphia move in November 2026 and envision building a life centered around advocacy work, I’m getting clearer on what “wholeness” means to me.
I am determined to remain kind, soft—to not let this work harden me or make me cynical. I want to lead a life of purpose and beauty, where those two things aren’t in opposition but in conversation with each other. Where I can bear witness to suffering on Tuesday and go to the opera on Friday. Where I can hold space for someone’s shattered life and still tend my garden.
I want to have boundaries—real ones, not the kind I override when things get hard. But I also want to feel like my work aligns with my values, that I am doing what I feel is right, not just what is necessary or expected or financially prudent.
This is what I’m building toward: a life where my empathy is an asset, not a liability. Where feeling deeply doesn’t mean burning out. Where I can do meaningful work without sacrificing my humanity on the altar of productivity.
Wholeness, for me, means integration—not compartmentalization. It means bringing all of myself to the work: the analytical mind and the tender heart, the strength and the softness, the grief and the joy. It means building a life that doesn’t require me to split myself in two.
That’s the promise I’m making to myself as I step more fully into this calling: I will protect my capacity for wonder. For beauty. For rest. For love. Not despite the darkness of the work, but because of it.
As I continue my own journey into victim advocacy, as I prepare to build a new life in Philadelphia centered around this work, I’m learning that sustainable advocacy isn’t about becoming harder or more detached. It’s about staying tender. It’s about finding ways to metabolize the trauma so it doesn’t calcify inside me. It’s about believing that hope—the courageous, defiant kind—is not just a nice idea but a survival strategy.
As trauma-informed care teaches us, hope is what moves us from hopelessness to agency. It’s what allows us to reclaim our narratives and actively participate in our healing. And if we’re going to help survivors cultivate hope, we must tend to it in ourselves first.
Jamie ends one of her newsletters with these words, and I can’t think of a better way to close:
“If nobody ever gave you that permission, let me offer it now: You’re allowed to feel it all. Not just for your clients, but for yourself.”
In grief, in solidarity, in fierce love—and in fierce grace.
If this resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you. What practices help you stay grounded? How do you hold space for both the pain and the hope? You can reach me through the comments or contact form.
You’re not alone. And you don’t have to carry the weight alone either.