Learning to Care While Carrying the Movement

The future of our movements depends not only on what we fight against. It also depends on how we care for ourselves and each other while doing the fighting. Movements are not sustained by vision. They are sustained by people.

For years, I thought my commitment to women's rights was measured by how much I was willing to sacrifice.

I said yes to every meeting. Every campaign. Every urgent request. Every crisis. I answered calls late at night, traveled long distances to support grassroots women, facilitated difficult conversations, wrote proposals under impossible deadlines, and carried the emotional weight of stories that were never mine to keep but somehow became part of me.

Like many women in movements, I wore exhaustion as a badge of honor. I believed that rest was something that happened later—after the funding was secured, after the advocacy succeeded, after the crisis passed, after justice was achieved.

The problem was that "later" never came.

My story begins in the spaces that shaped me: grassroots women's groups, feminist networks, and community organizations. Spaces filled with courage, wisdom, and extraordinary women determined to create change despite enormous barriers.

These spaces taught me about collective power. But they also taught me about the hidden costs of carrying it.

I remember sitting in meetings where everyone spoke about empowerment while quietly navigating tensions no one wanted to name. I learned to read the room before speaking. I learned when to push and when to stay silent. I learned how influence worked, not only through titles and positions, but through relationships, history, and unspoken alliances.

I became skilled at navigating power. What I did not realize was that I was slowly losing connection with myself in the process. The work was deeply personal. Every issue we fought for reflected the realities of women I knew. Women surviving violence. Women carrying families through poverty. Women excluded from decision-making. Women holding communities together while their own needs remained invisible.

How do you hear these stories and not carry them home? How do you advocate for justice without feeling responsible for every injustice? How do you build movements while trying not to break yourself? These were questions I did not know how to answer. Like many activists and organizers, I confused endurance with resilience.

I thought resilience meant pushing through exhaustion. I thought resilience meant always being available. I thought resilience meant carrying more. The truth revealed itself slowly.

It showed up as fatigue I could not explain. As frustration that surfaced in places where it did not belong. As moments when I found myself emotionally depleted despite being surrounded by people and causes I cared deeply about.

One day, I realized something that changed how I understood leadership. The movements I loved were asking women to challenge systems of exploitation while often reproducing cultures of overwork. We spoke about liberation but rarely about rest. We spoke about justice but rarely about burnout. We spoke about collective power but often treated care as an individual responsibility.

I began to understand that self-care was not separate from movement work. It was part of movement work. The lesson came from women themselves. Not from a workshop or a leadership manual.

From women who knew that survival required boundaries. Women who understood that no one could pour endlessly from an empty cup. Women who reminded me that saying no was sometimes an act of political resistance.

I started making small changes. I stopped believing I had to solve every problem. I learned that every conflict did not belong to me. I stopped measuring my value by my level of exhaustion. I created rituals that helped me leave work behind at the end of the day. I sought out trusted friends, mentors, and fellow feminists with whom I could speak honestly, without performing strength.

Most importantly, I began to see care differently. Care was not withdrawal. Care was sustainability. Care was what allowed me to stay in the work. The greatest lesson, however, was learning that individual care is not enough.

Women's movements have taught the world about collective action. Yet sometimes we forget that collective action also requires collective care. The strongest spaces I have experienced were not those where people never struggled. They were the spaces where struggle could be acknowledged without shame.

Spaces where leaders could admit they were tired. Spaces where people checked on each other after difficult meetings. Spaces where accountability was practiced without humiliation. Spaces where sharing responsibility was seen as strength rather than weakness. Those spaces felt different. People stayed longer. Relationships became stronger. The work became more sustainable.

Today, when people ask me about leadership in women's movements, I no longer think first about strategy, funding, or influence. I think about care. Because I have learned that movements are not only sustained by vision. They are sustained by people.

And people cannot continue transforming the world if they are constantly being consumed by the work of transforming it.

At WOVANT Development Organization, we create time to collectively refresh, exercise twice a week; we slow down by working from home one day in a week; every meeting begins with checking on each other etc. Its a collective affair.

The story only I can tell is the story of learning that caring for myself was not a distraction from the struggle. It was part of it. It is the story of understanding that rest is not the opposite of resistance. Care is not the opposite of commitment. Boundaries are not the opposite of leadership.

In fact, they may be what make all three possible. After years of working alongside women who carry communities, organizations, and movements on their shoulders, I have come to believe something simple but profound: The future of our movements depends not only on what we fight against. It also depends on how we care for ourselves and each other while doing the fighting.

#WOVANT

#SelfAndCollectiveCare

#WomenLeadingChange

#FeministLeadership

#UgandanWomenRise