Being Human Writing

On what this work passes down, and what we choose to carry forward.

Written By Sarah Revie (Cuvalo)

No one tells you that you inherit things when you enter this work.

Not just the stories, though there are so many of those, or the systems, though they shape everything. You inherit beliefs, unspoken ones passed in side comments, in handovers, in the quiet moments between meetings.

When you start, you come in with a kind of fire. You believe things can be different. You believe people can change, that if you care enough and try hard enough, something will shift.

And then, slowly, you are taught otherwise. “That’s just the way it is.” “We’ve tried that before.” “Don’t bother with them, they won’t engage.”

No one sits you down and tells you what to believe. It would almost be easier if they did. Instead, you absorb it. You see it in the way people talk, in who gets labeled “difficult,” in which names make the room go quiet.

I’ve sat and listened to the people who are supposed to be supporting someone call their client an “asshole,” a “waste of skin,” a “dickhead.” I remember sitting there, too new to the field and too uncomfortable to say anything, wondering why someone would choose to stay in work that asks you to care, when this is how you speak about the people you support.

The language we use matters more than we think it does.

Because it doesn’t just reflect how we see people, it shapes it.

Not only for ourselves, but for the people around us who are still learning what this work is supposed to look like. When you’re new, you are paying attention to everything, trying to understand what is acceptable, what is normal, what this work asks of you. And language becomes one of the loudest teachers in the room.

This doesn’t stop at language.

I’ve been warned about people before I’ve ever met them. Told they are dangerous, that their homes are disgusting, given just enough information to start forming a picture of who they are before I’ve had the chance to meet the human behind the case notes.

I’ve also heard stories that sit heavier. About how people are treated in spaces that are supposed to be safe, about security guards at shelters using force, about people being hurt instead of helped. These are not secondhand accounts to me. I’ve been a witness to situations like this, again and again.

And I remember sitting with these moments, the language people used, the stories I was being trusted with, trying to understand what I was being told. Not just the facts of each situation, but what they implied, what they suggested was normal, what they quietly taught about whose safety matters, and whose doesn’t.

I’ve sat in rooms where people laugh at trauma-informed care training, or roll their eyes at conversations about equity and inclusion. I’ve heard it called useless, a waste of time.

All while I was still learning, trying to make sense of it, trying to understand how we can hold so much experience and still carry so many unchecked assumptions.

Because these moments matter. They shape how we walk into a space, what we expect to see, what we allow ourselves to believe is possible. And slowly, you realize the work is no longer just something you do. It begins to shape how you see people.

A difficult truth is that I understand where these perspectives come from. It would be easier if things were that simple, if the people causing harm were just bad and the people trying to help were always good. But it isn’t.

The people who taught me this work didn’t start out hardened. They started where I did, maybe even softer. They believed in people, pushed back, tried.

And then they stayed.

They stayed through the losses no one talks about, through the people who didn’t make it, through systems that didn’t bend, through the kind of days that don’t leave you when you go home.

Something shifts when you carry that for long enough. Not all at once, but slowly, in ways that make sense when you’re inside it. Hope gets quieter. Expectations get smaller. Language gets sharper, not because they stopped caring, but because caring started to hurt.

I think that’s the part we don’t say out loud. What looks like indifference is often protection. What sounds like certainty is sometimes grief that has been sitting too long with nowhere to go.

So no, this is not an issue of bad people, or people who don’t care. But I do believe something is being passed down.

Alongside the skills, the knowledge, the experience, there are other things we inherit too. Lowered expectations. Quiet assumptions about who will succeed and who won’t. The habit of bracing ourselves before we even try. And if we’re not paying attention, the belief that some people are not worth the effort.

That’s where I have to pause, and hold both compassion and accountability at the same time.

Because I’ve felt it too. Not in big, obvious ways, but in small moments that are easy to miss. The quick thought that something probably won’t go anywhere, the hesitation before reaching out again, the subtle shift from curiosity to assumption. It’s quiet, but it’s there. That’s how it happens.

I’ve written before about how this work shapes you, how it changes you in ways you don’t always see happening, how it leaves marks, some soft and some sharp. And I meant that.

This work does shape you. There is no way to do it and stay untouched. But I don’t think the shaping itself is the problem. I think it’s what we do with what we’re given.

Not everything we inherit is harmful.

Some of it is wisdom, hard-earned and carried through years of showing up when it mattered. You learn how to read a room without a word being said, when to push and when to sit quietly beside someone, how to hold things that feel too heavy to name.

I have also been held by the people who came before me.

I have had people with years of experience sit with me while I asked questions I didn’t know how to answer. I have also had people stay with me while I cried about things I couldn’t change. I have been reminded, in moments where I doubted myself, that my persistence matters, that my advocacy has a place and that it can make a difference.

There is so much in this work that is passed down that makes us better.

But there are other things too. The kind that come from pain that has nowhere to go. From systems that didn’t change. From caring in spaces that didn’t know how to hold that care. Those things get passed down just as easily, not as lessons, but as limits we mistake for truth.

I think that’s the tension I keep coming back to. The same experience can become two very different things. It can make you more compassionate, or more guarded. It can deepen your understanding, or narrow it, teaching you how to stay, or to stop trying.

Maybe that’s the real responsibility in this work. Not just to show up for others, but to pay attention to what we’re carrying forward, to notice what has been handed to us and decide, consciously, what we are willing to keep. And once we recognize it, to acknowledge it and be mindful of how it shapes the people around us, especially those who are still learning what this work is supposed to look like.

That’s where I’ve landed. Not outside of it, not untouched by it, but aware of it. Aware that I am being shaped by this work every day, and that I am carrying things that didn’t start with me.

I remember sitting with a healthcare provider, talking about this work and what it asks of us. I told them that I try to hold compassion for everyone, that I hold hope for every person, even when it’s hard. I said it might sound naive, but it’s something I’m not willing to let go of.

My heart dropped when they told me they didn’t feel the same. They said that given what they had seen, there are people in this world who are just evil, that trying to help everyone is a waste of time.

I could see the burnout in them. They named it themselves. This wasn’t someone who didn’t care. This was someone who had been carrying too much for too long.

But still, I found myself thinking about what it meant to hear that, especially as someone still early in this work, what it would mean to be newer, more impressionable, less certain in what I believe.

Because moments like that don’t just stay in the room. They have the power to shape how someone sees this work for the rest of their career, to quietly shift what they believe is possible, to take that fire and dim it just enough that it becomes easier to accept less.

That’s where I have to make a choice.

There are things I will carry forward: the patience I’ve learned from people who stayed when it was hard, the ability to sit in silence without needing to fix it, the understanding that progress doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. Those things matter. They are worth keeping.

But there are other things I am choosing to leave behind: the quiet assumptions about who someone is before they’ve had the chance to show me, the habit of bracing myself for failure before anything has even begun, the belief, spoken or unspoken, that some people are beyond help.

I can’t carry that. I won’t. I’ve seen too much to believe it.

I will stay kind toward those who believe nothing can change. Because I understand where that belief comes from. I have seen what this work can do to people over time. I have felt the weight of it myself.

I have been shaped by the people who came before me. I have been helped by their experience, and I have also been impacted by the ways this work has hardened them. Both can be true at the same time.

Because of that, I think about the people who will come after me, those who are just starting, still learning what this work is supposed to look like, paying attention to everything, even when we don’t realize they are.

I want to be someone who protects that fire, not someone who dims it, someone who encourages curiosity instead of shutting it down, someone who makes space for compassion, even when it would be easier not to.

I will keep challenging the moments where we get stuck, not in a way that dismisses the weight people are carrying, but in a way that gently pushes against the idea that nothing can change. Because I don’t believe that’s true.

I’ve seen what happens when someone is met with patience instead of judgment, what shifts when someone is given another chance. There is something on the other side of that. Even if we don’t always reach it, even if it takes longer than we want it to, it’s there.

I don’t know if we can change everything. But I do know that I will continue to advocate for compassion, for kindness, for empathy, in every space I am part of. Because that is not something I am willing to let this work take from me.

The things we inherit in this work are not always ours to keep. And maybe the most important part of doing this work well is learning how to tell the difference.