55. Nonprofit Healing Takes Community Healing: Learning to Move Through Discomfort Together with Rebekah Giacomantonio

The brittleness, burnout, and even breakdown that so many of us in the nonprofit world experience isn’t just an occupational hazard. It’s symptomatic of a much more far-reaching cultural framework, which is why my guest on this episode of What the Fundraising is all about disruption. Rebekah Giacomantonio, a facilitator and community healer, took a necessary pause from her career in restorative justice to restore herself. And she’s sharing with us how living into the fabric of Guatemala’s culture and ethos reshaped her entire life orientation.

By taking a hard break from working and living the American nonprofit gauntlet, Rebekah was able to step into a model of healing that works on collective, interpersonal, and systemic levels. A small community of liberation theology-oriented missionaries helped her understand at the deepest level that there is no right and wrong; only the messy. She learned to pause, breathe, and notice what was in her body. Most of all, she came to understand just how deeply entrenched and reflexive privilege can be. 

In today’s episode, we dive into Rebekah’s journey and her work today, focused on her Interdependence Incubator - a program that supports white women and nonbinary people who want to free themselves of toxic conditioning and harmful behavior patterns. We talk about how to work with shame, disarm defensiveness and sit with ourselves in fearful or reactive moments. The work involves a lot of curiosity and questions but results in expanding tolerance by rewiring our brains, settling our nervous systems, and practicing radical self-acceptance. 

Rebekah’s passion for this work is palpable and the tools she offers are an invitation to look at what’s uncomfortable. There is a lot inside the episode that might be a completely different paradigm shift for you, but we invite you to go there and see what comes up in your body and mind.

Episode Highlights:

(02:54) – Rebekah shares a bit about her background 

(05:00) – An indigenous missionary community based on liberation theology

(06:20) – The essence of what Rebekah found in her Guatemalan journey. 

(07:43) – Healing and restoration cannot occur in this environment

(08:08) – About Rebekah’s restorative justice training and the “aha” moment that lead her here

(08:53) – The personal and collective are inextricably intertwined

(12:57) – Defining and understanding disembodiment 

(15:45) – How to become a more embodied leader 

(18:29) – Simplifying it way down 

(20:14) – The nonprofit world and taking itself less seriously and learning to play 

(22:18) – The process Rebekah’s clients typically go through

(25:40) – About grappling with the grey areas

(26:15) – Liberation lies in the navigation of spaces that hold multiple truths

(28:40) – Stories about people in the nonprofit world suffering mental and physical breakdowns 

(32:05) – White people can opt-out of discomfort because of their privilege

(33:00) – How to name what’s happening in our bodies and settle our nervous systems

(33:36) – How to break cycles of defensiveness and gaslighting

(37:51) - Connect with Rebekah