Wholeness Is No Trifling Matter | Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.

Wellness is not passive and healing is not only the absence of pain. Wholeness depends on truth, active change, and refusing to treat survival as leadership. In nonprofit work, survival costs are often absorbed by leaders who manage budgets, bodies, funders, grief, uncertainty, urgency, and the future. Black women leaders are frequently expected to be both strategist and sanctuary, turning pain into possibility while their wellbeing is treated as secondary. Sacrifice is often mistaken for leadership, and resilience to workplace trauma and harmful systems is normalized without addressing systemic causes. Rest is presented as a requirement for vision, not a reward, and depletion can be hidden behind praise for excellence.

"Wholeness requires truth, active change, and a refusal to treat survival as leadership. In the nonprofit sector, the cost of survival is too often absorbed by the people we ask to lead. For leaders on the front lines of justice, democracy, and care, wellness is a daily negotiation with budgets, bodies, funders, grief, uncertainty, urgency, and the future."

"This is especially true for Black women leaders, often expected to be both the strategist and the sanctuary: to translate pain into possibility while our wellbeing is treated as secondary to the work we make possible. Too often, sacrifice is mistaken for leadership. And, too often, resilience in the face of workplace trauma, funding structures, and broader systems of harm, is normalized without confronting the underlying systemic causes."

"Before founding The Highland Project, I learned to confuse urgency with purpose and endurance with excellence. I was praised for being exceptional. But behind that praise was depletion. I was running toward achievement, impact, belonging, safety, and purpose. I wanted to actualize Black brilliance and be of use to future generations. Because the work felt sacred, the exhaustion was harder to name. But my body was telling the truth: no appetite, constant motion, and no capacity to be still."

"Through practice and the teachings of leaders like Octavia Raheem, I learned that rest is not a reward. It is a requirement for vision. The Conditions We Lead Inside At The Highland Project, our research on Black women's views on wealth, the economy, and de"

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