Are We Complicit, Or Are We Just Surviving? Navigating the Fine Line Between Survival & Resistance

May 29

We’ve been told that the United States is a land of opportunity. That if you work hard, keep your head down, and play by the rules, you’ll be rewarded.

But whose rules?

And what happens when the rules begin to resemble something else entirely?

It Didn’t Start With Camps or Marches—It Started With Compliance

History tells us that fascism doesn’t arrive all at once. It creeps in through language. Through policy. Through silence. Through restructuring departments like DEI, rewriting curriculum, banning books, and criminalizing identities.

It arrives when people—out of fear, exhaustion, or desperation—go along to get by.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

What does it mean to be a career coach, strategist, or guide in times like these?

* When the labor market is designed to reward compliance over conscience.
* When the most resourced industries are often the most extractive.
* When our clients are trying to choose between their mental health and their mortgage.

The truth is: you can’t “opt out” if your survival is at stake. But you can start to build a map that doesn’t lead deeper into the machine.

We Need a New Kind of Coaching

Not the kind that tells people to "rise and grind."

Not the kind that tells people to ignore the alarm bells in their bodies.

And definitely not the kind that encourages them to “find purpose” inside of systems built on harm.

We need coaching that helps people:

Build exit ramps, even if they’re years away from leaving.
Decenter shame for not doing more.
Create micro-resistance within their work lives (boundary-setting, value alignment, collective action).
Understand their complicity without being consumed by guilt—and without abandoning responsibility.

You Don’t Need to Burn Down Your Life to Make a Stand

Sometimes resistance looks like quitting. Sometimes it looks like staying—but with eyes wide open and a plan in your back pocket.

Sometimes it looks like choosing joy. Like redirecting your labor. Like only saying yes when your soul does too.

And sometimes, resistance looks like surviving—but *refusing to forget who you are while doing it.*

So What Now?

This moment asks a lot of us. But not perfection. Not purity. Just discernment, truth-telling, and courage—*especially in the small, everyday ways we show up for ourselves and others.*

We don’t all have the same bandwidth to fight. But we can all start somewhere:

* Supporting mutual aid.
* Creating trauma-informed spaces for career discernment.
* Speaking the truth in our content, even when it’s uncomfortable.
* Refusing to market a dream that doesn’t exist anymore.

Final Word: This Is Bigger Than Career

But it includes them. Because how we work is how we live. And if our work requires us to betray our values, it’s not just unsustainable—it’s soul-eroding.

Let’s build something else. Together.