Reforming what was never whole
It's time for us to do not what we think they need but what they say they do
I was only sixteen. Coaching the cheerleading team for our town’s rec football team felt like a big deal—especially to me. The girls were just 10 to 12 years old, not that much younger than I was, and yet they looked up to me with wide eyes and open trust. I didn’t have it all figured out (though I surely thought I did), but it was the first time I began to understand what it meant to be a steady, trustworthy presence for someone else.
We were at an away game, about 30 or 40 minutes from home. As the girls stretched on the sidelines, I spotted one of them curled into a ball near the fence, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She had bonded with me the most that season. She used to message me on AIM (remember those days?) and share glimpses of the challenges she was facing—adolescence, chaos at home, things she didn’t know how to name yet.
When I walked over, she was rocking back and forth, silent tears cutting down her cheeks. She kept whispering, “He’s here.” My stomach dropped. She didn’t have to say who she meant. Just days earlier, in a late-night IM chat, she had confided in me that her biological father had sexually abused her.
I was sixteen. She was ten. And together, we came face to face with just how broken the systems are—especially the ones that claim to exist to protect us.
That moment altered the course of my life. I didn’t yet have language for systems change, or trauma-informed care, or survivor-centered practice. But I knew I wanted to do something. I went to college and immediately started volunteering at the campus sexual assault crisis center. That led to an internship at the local rape crisis center. I was young and fueled by fire. I thought I’d go to law school, fix the policies, and make the systems better for survivors.
But I kept seeing the same thing. Survivors returning from courtrooms drained and diminished. Hotline calls with no satisfying legal answers. No justice. No real safety. At 19 or 20, I was reminded again how deep the cracks in the system run.
So I followed in the footsteps of my supervisor, a social worker, and pursued that path. I moved 1,000 miles from home to Chicago for graduate school, filled with purpose. But despite reading thousands of pages and logging more than 100 hours of coursework, I received a mere 20-minute lecture—delivered by a TA—on domestic violence. Nothing on sexual violence. Not one required reading.
And yet in my field placement, a residential treatment center for kids, I saw it every day. Abuse—physical, sexual, emotional—ran through their histories like a red thread. It shaped their behavior, their diagnoses, their so-called “risk profiles.” It shaped the conditions of their confinement.
My first job out of graduate school was managing an anti-trafficking program for immigrant survivors of labor and sex trafficking. We supported people across Chicagoland and provided training and funding to service providers nationwide. For nearly eight years, I had a front-row seat to the system’s failures. An elderly, vision-impaired survivor turned away because the only beds were top bunks and no elevator to get into the shelter. Survivors turned away from domestic violence shelters because their “abuser” was their trafficker, not an intimate partner. A woman from Ethiopia forced into a shelter (out of a friend’s apartment) that didn’t offer culturally appropriate food or language support—because she had to be “officially” homeless to access long-term housing. I could write a whole damn book.
At 22, 25…30… I was reminded again and again: the system is not just broken. It's failing—systemically, predictably, and in ways that too often go unacknowledged or unchallenged.
I continue to sit in the tension between working to reform broken systems and imagining entirely new ones. That tension feels especially sharp now, as the President takes a sledgehammer to what remains of our social safety net—an imperfect but vital patchwork that’s deeply entangled with the very systems that have long failed us.
This work has never been easy. But right now, the stakes are higher than ever. In times of crisis—like the one we’re living through—decisions move at lightning speed. And in that whirlwind, it becomes dangerously easy to lose sight of the people most affected.
I’m not only talking about reckless federal actions. I’m also talking about the reactive decisions happening closer to home—by nonprofit leaders, policymakers, and local officials—choices made quickly, without community input, and too often without care.
The path forward may feel blocked, but we can’t afford to give in to paralysis or cynicism. We must stay focused on those who are most impacted. That means centering their voices, honoring their expertise, and supporting them in the ways they ask us to—not what we think is best, but what they know they need.
That’s where real change begins.