January 22, 2016

Suffering is Not Your Duty

January 22, 2016/ Katie Bergman

Compassionate people know that resilience is a practice, not a natural gift. They learn how to give themselves grace—that the burdens of the world are not theirs to carry. They practice self-compassion, know that battling against the darkness doesn’t eliminate them from living in the light. They believe they are enough as they are, even without the prideful demeanour that uses self-sacrifice as a badge of honour.

October 28, 2015

Without the Gloss: Reflections on Overseas Volunteering

October 28, 2015/ Katie Bergman

Accepting the realities of overseas volunteers requires a level of openness and humility, not to mention a shift from sensationalized “success stories” to stories of journeys, appreciating small victories, and swallowing over-qualified smugness for performing mundane and unglamorous tasks.

October 28, 2015

There's Nothing Perfect About Service

October 28, 2015/ Katie Bergman

There’s a problem with the level of criticism hovering over people in caregiving positions. Attaching such strong morality to helping professionals creates unrealistic standards. Demanding perfection sets us up for failure. And so, we dismiss counselors or social workers whose personal lives are in shambles.

December 31, 2014

Writing from the Unexpected Places: How My Story Became a Book

December 31, 2014/ Katie Bergman

Writing my own story was never part of the plan. Then again, I wasn’t planning on winding up vocationally derailed and burned out in a remote Cambodian slum, either.

November 04, 2014

There's More to Social Justice than Awareness

November 04, 2014/ Katie Bergman

It seems that when it comes to justice, we often contort it to fit our own agenda. We define its dimensions according to our level of commitment to it. We speak of it to flatter ourselves, inserting “justice issues” casually but strategically into conversations—as if it gives us more buoyancy in the human struggle for worthiness. We sensationalize justice, without unpacking what it really means or looks like.

October 28, 2014

Here's the Truth About Hope

October 28, 2014/ Katie Bergman

Hope is hard. It’s difficult to build and easy to destroy (tweet that!) It takes a long time to prevail and a short time to disappoint. It’s almost impossible to grasp: it has no texture, no traction, no tangible measurement of its capacity.

July 30, 2014

Parched For Community

July 30, 2014/ Katie Bergman

For me, community started sharing the raw, unedited version of my story with those I had always tried to convince I was invincible. I spoke my loneliness and admitted my struggles—as a humanitarian, as a people-pleaser, as a lonely human being seeking belonging.

And instead of being rejected for disclosing my imperfections, I was greeted by an outpouring of grace: from loving phone calls, prayers, and financial gifts to friends driving twenty hours round-trip to come visit me when I was too fatigued to string together a coherent sentence. Before I finally found a place to settle down, people warmly opened up their homes to me indefinitely. I asked for support, and I received it—abundantly.

July 14, 2014

The Deeper Problems Behind Human Trafficking

July 14, 2014/ Katie Bergman

Ultimately, the problem isn’t human trafficking—the problem is brokenness. As finite and flawed humans, we’re broken in just about every way. And it’s because of the brokenness in ourselves and our communities that exploitation can thrive.

Blog