When Resistance Creates a Pathway: Resilience as a Superpower

Apr 18

Within the nonprofit industrial complex, there are no rewards for showing up as your full self to work. Showing up as a compartmentalized employee is what’s rewarded – usually with more work, more responsibilities, and less grace. So when I first joined Our Minds Matter and was introduced to the Connected Cultures program, I was extremely skeptical.

I’ve always had resistance to showing up as my full self at work, worried that the moment I did, I wouldn’t be able to take it back – that it’d be a permanent vulnerability. It can feel overwhelming to show up in that way, especially when you’re not confident in how you will be received. Despite this resistance, I leaned fully into the Connected Cultures program and allowed myself to be curious instead of fearful, hopeful instead of discouraged.

The sessions were nothing as I expected! I’d been so sure it’d be another campy, icebreaker-esque type of gathering with no true intention other than to say we did it – and I was so wrong! I learned quickly that the Connected Cultures space was not just for our staff to show up as their full selves, but to show up as an embodiment of our personal values, morals, and radical ideas. It was a space not just to name resistances and pain points but to find solidarity and purpose within them and us as a team. The sessions were about finding alignment with each other outside of our titles and roles, and remembering that we are people first.

It can be daunting as a nonprofit to actively resist the nonprofit industrial complex, but as an organization part of the ever-shifting mental health landscape, our resistance to this harmful system is even more necessary. Resilience is a skill, and with every Connected Cultures session, we are actively practicing and sharpening this tool.

In order for true connection to flourish, we must first allow ourselves to open – our hearts, our minds, and our full selves.