6/5/2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week the focus was on courage in the face of adversity. As we continue to see and feel the real impact of budget cuts, program reductions and significant changes in the social services landscape, we will need to continue to have courage to help those who struggle to help themselves. As with any change, there will be good days and bad days. As an optimist I am confident we will get through the difficult times because our heart is in the right place.

When everything is going well, it is easy to fall into a comfortable space. We feel good about our relationships and family, we are proud of our work and if we are lucky we can pursue our hobbies and interests with zeal. Challenging times tend to shine a light on the issues we may not have taken the time to address when all was well. Just that small light on the beginnings of a stressful reality check can be enough to send some people running. But others do not run, they get up each day and take the necessary steps to solve the problems and stay the path. How do they do it? 

Like most people when I think back to my childhood it is all too easy to remember the difficult and ‘messy’ times. In middle school, I remember thinking why can’t I be one of those people who has no problems and floats through life on a cloud of success. That feeling didn’t change until I was in my early twenties and faced some life changing events. Those moments help us to do the hard work of figuring out who we are and what our priorities are. It is in those times that we have a chance to find our inner resilience. 

Resilience is like a muscle, we need to exercise it. I am drawn to the quote from the Dalai Lama because I can envision compassion as a heart that grows stronger when we exercise. If our baseline is having compassion, a heart in this example, I am confident most people reading this article and working in the health or other social services field already have a “big” heart. 

Think of these challenging times as training for a marathon. We wouldn’t jump in and run 26.2 miles without training, your heart and body just can’t take it. Now is time to sit down and plan our training schedule, to determine our realistic goal and the steps to get there. Resilience is having the flexibility to think critically about the past, the present and the future. It may mean altering a mission and vision, it may mean downsizing your services, it may mean trimming some of the luxuries we have become accustomed to but it does not mean giving up. Training for a marathon involves building up our core ‘heart’ and not focusing on the size but on the strength.

So it is time to put on your figurative running shoes and do the hard work it is going to take to finish this marathon. No one person, no group, no organization is perfect, we all have room to grow. The models and definitions of success that we have relied on for many years are no longer applicable. It is time to figure out where your heart is leading you, to strengthen that heart and to demonstrate our resilience by lifting up others and running the marathon together.

Take a moment and imagine what we’d ask ourselves after receiving devastating health news. Will our health insurance cover this (if you have it)? Do we have a way to consistently get to our appointments? Do we have a safe place to live? Can we keep our homes if we miss work due to this? Will my friends and family be there for me?

For those we help, unfortunately those questions are met with extreme uncertainty. For this reason, PWA urges you to consider making a planned monthly donation to PWA. For as little as $30 a month, you can help heat a home in the winter and have A/C in the summer. For $50 a month you help children get a healthy breakfast each day. For $100 a month, you can help provide a housing deposit that allows a single parent to move into an apartment. 

In today’s challenging times, let’s come together to make sure that we can help as many as possible.