These are notes from the inside — of leadership, of change, of staying whole in the face of systems that often ask us not to be. The Olive Pages is where care and clarity meet, one reflection at a time.
The Olive Pages
Fieldnotes on care, clarity and staying whole.
Trauma-Informed Organizations: Culture, Systems & the Future of Staff Well-being
Humanitarian organizations don’t become trauma-informed through slogans, policies, or campaigns. They become trauma-informed through how people experience the system…in decisions, communication, change processes, and the way leaders handle the hard moments. This post explores what a trauma-informed organization feels like and why system care, not individual resilience, must shape the future of staff well-being in a sector already carrying so much.
“Trauma-informed systems don’t erase the difficulty of humanitarian work, they simply refuse to become another source of harm.”
What Trauma-Informed Leadership Looks Like in Practice
Trauma-informed leadership isn’t therapy, it’s the steady, grounded, human way of leading that people in humanitarian work have always deserved. It looks like clarity instead of confusion, repair instead of avoidance, and boundaries that honor dignity rather than distance. In this post, we explore how trauma-informed leadership shows up in everyday moments…in tone, communication, decision-making, and the small signals that shape how safe (or unsafe) people feel at work.
The Myth of Resilience in Humanitarian Work
We praise humanitarians for being resilient — but rarely ask what it’s costing them. This post rethinks resilience as survival, silence, and sometimes self-erasure.
"If your strength is measured only by how much you can endure, we’ve already failed you."