Taking a pause.
I want to bring you into my story and let you know that I’m taking a sabbatical for the summer. I’ve felt a strong call to take an extended break, and it’s been something that our Board of Directors and I have been thinking, praying, and researching about for over a year.
Thirteen years ago, my life changed when I met with a woman at Starbucks in Northpark Mall. I began to learn about child sex trafficking that night and its effects here in the Dallas/Fort Worth community, and I immediately jumped in to help build Traffick911. Two years later, I resigned from my job in the corporate world and began to dedicate my life to serving survivors.
I dove in with the desire to help - I saw a need, and my innate “helper” self longed to serve. What I didn’t know was that - the countless arduous late nights year after year, the soul-shattered lives I had the honor of being near, and the beautifully resilient survivors I now call friends - would break me to the core in a way I would never recover from. Being up close and personal to others’ trauma and brokenness shined a bright light on my own that I carefully kept hidden away - some of it I didn’t even know was there to begin with.
Still, caring for myself came secondary… or last, if I’m honest. There was always another survivor to serve, another crisis to handle, and more money to raise. From my limited perspective, there just wasn't time to turn my ‘working brain’ off, take days off without looking at email, go to therapy, and practice a true Sabbath. These were luxuries others had, but not me. Not with this kind of work. Oh, the dangerous layers of pride that can sneak up in the name of ‘doing good.’
Seven years ago, I started taking my mental, physical, and emotional health much more seriously. I recognized the toll that swimming in trauma every day for a living was having on me, and our team, and I knew there had to be another way. We began institutionalizing things like week-long quarterly vacations (the kind where you’re really off-the-grid), not working on the weekends, and paid counseling with our therapist of choice. Traffick911 began to flourish in a new way. And slowly but surely, I felt lighter, and I don’t think I’d still be here today if these things didn’t happen.
It feels like an act of defiance learning how to build rhythms of rest, solitude, personal growth, and play into our org culture when we do crisis and trauma work for a living. It’s an act of defiance to busyness, martyrdom, hurried, and triggered living. We talk a lot about the idea that our doing should flow from our being, not the other way around. And as a leader, it’s my desire to model this way of living.
Because we’ve chosen to place a high value on rest, I’ve got thirteen years of skin in this beautiful work. And I hope to have so many more in the future.
Things at Traffick911 won’t skip a beat over the summer. Throughout the summer, the team will serve over 173 youth who desperately need a safe and healthy person to walk alongside them. I’ll be back before the Fall and can’t wait to share all I experienced in my time away. Until then, know that your support means the world to me.
Grateful for you, my friend.
Lindsey
