Your labor is not in vain
On Friday, the campaign I’ve worked on to raise awareness of human trafficking was awarded the top CSR campaign of the year by @PRNews. I’m still processing.
I’ve written before that when I left the United States in 2013, I was convinced my one way ticket of living abroad for one year would turn into 5 years, 10 years, and so on until I’d built a life that I loved overseas. When everything in my life became clear in March of 2014 to come home, the women surrounding me would tell you this looked a lot more like kicking and screaming than gratefully, obediently bowing away from something that wasn’t meant to be my forever. I wanted to be connected to anti-trafficking work for the long term, and had no vision of how that could be the case if I enrolled in higher education and moved back to the States.
Fast forward five-year later, and I’ve gotten to spend two years writing research for anti-trafficking organizations, followed by two years of serving on our company’s steering committee to fight human trafficking.
So - on this same week 5 years ago, I was boarding my plane to leave Nepal after doing relief work on the ground with women and babies. I thought this was permanently closing the book on an unfinished chapter.
But now advocacy at 24 looks different than it did at 19.
So if no one has told you lately: your laboring isn’t in vain.
You don’t have to get dirty in order to do something brave.
Your meekest "yes" can move mountains, even before there’s mud on your face to show for it.
It doesn’t take living in a tent camp to chip away at lines that create an "us" and "them."
Maybe closing the gap looks like holding orphans by the hips but maybe it looks like buttoning up your blazer and showing up as if what you’re doing here really counts.
It does really count. I love seeing what happens when we lean in.
Adapted with Instagram.
