On Nov. 5-6, Reflections of Inspiration (ROI), a Western North Carolina nonprofit supporting community groups through educational programming, held its fourth annual Harrah’s Cherokee Casino-based Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Awareness Event for crisis responders and shelter staff, bringing Indigenous and local voices to the forefront of gender violence awareness, trauma-informed care, and relational reflection.
Debbie Bush, training and technical assistance coordinator at the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, led the second day’s final presentation, which tackled a pressing and necessary theme among service providers in this field: burnout and workplace dynamics. She started with a game of bear-mosquito-salmon — a take on rock-paper-scissors — and invited participants to choose a partner. What seemed like a silly game at first became a moment of levity amid two days of difficult, uncomfortable, and perhaps even triggering conversations.
“I just heard you guys laughing,” Bush said as attendees took their seats.
“We work in a field that there’s probably not much laughter,” she explained. “But if you took out a couple minutes a day and just did some kind of weird thing — like that wasn’t that hard, we didn’t embarrass anybody, everybody had fun, and you enjoyed it — if you can just find little things to bring laughter back: hot lunches, all that kind of stuff.”
Bush, who first learned about workplace wellness through Native Wellness Institute (NWI) trainings before becoming a trainer, discussed different aspects of healthy professional dynamics: strong boundaries, staff recognition and appreciation, team connections, and regular check-ins.
Invoking Indigenous traditions, she then asked audience members to turn to the warrior shield outline in their materials packet.
“Decorate it with medicine images, anything that you feel you need to protect yourself and keep yourself healthy,” she instructed.
After participants shared what they’d drawn on their shields, the conversation turned to what happens when work-life balance isn’t as protected in high-stress gender violence response work: burnout. Bush outlined her own experience in this state; she kept going until she simply couldn’t anymore — for months. In that instance, it would’ve helped to notice typical warning signs: suddenly making mistakes, not enjoying work, and relationships with coworkers turning into dysfunctional family roles.
Bush introduced another activity: hot-penning, writing what comes to mind in a stream of consciousness for five minutes with no stopping. When the timer went off, some attendees shared messages of gratitude. Others shared strings of words or phrases — others, anxious thoughts.
She encouraged the room to adopt this practice, even amid a busy lifestyle.
“Take five minutes to clear your head, because we don’t do that. We don’t take that five minutes because that five minutes could be done. We could be doing something else for five minutes. For us to have a healthy workplace, we need to take care of ourselves too,” Bush said. She also advocated saying no, with the caveat that it often seems impossible in professional settings.
One participant, chuckling lightly, said that when she was asked to record her requests in a recent evaluation — which she and her boss would sign — she wrote, “You gave me the right to say no.”
“I had to make sure I got my copy,” she said.
Bush noted another barrier to saying no: there’s so much on the line.
“Most of us came into this field because we’re survivors,” she said. “So, we carry that trauma, and then we want to help everybody, so they don’t get what we felt, but we don’t take care of ourselves like we take care of everybody else.”
Attendees played another round of bear-mosquito-salmon and grabbed ceramic plates they’d decorated with words like fear, compassion fatigue, and restlessness. Ready to let go of what they’d written, they flung the plates one by one into a large container. Each shattered on impact.