Every year as we enter the holiday season, I am mindful of the many emotions and experiences that come with it. For some, the holidays are a time of true cheer and festivity. For others, this season brings with it more tensions than tender moments. For most of us, it’s likely a mix of both. We can have both a heart of full of gratitude and a well of deep concerns.
Last week, I sat with a college student working two jobs while carrying a full course load, trying to piece together enough stability to graduate without drowning in debt. I thought of another young woman, abandoned by family but not by the nonprofit leaders who refused to give up on her, even as she navigates the long, nonlinear path of healing from trauma.
I also experienced nonprofit leaders and their boards meeting audacious goals and exceeding expectations, and communities gathering across differences to serve families in need. I sat with leaders who say "no" to despair and “yes” to service not because they're naive, but because they've learned something about human resilience that changes everything. I delighted in seeing a young woman find support for her healing journey and college students find a place to consistently lay their head. There are so many stories of resilience, hope, and transformation all around us. They shift the narrative.
Two things are true simultaneously right now. We live in a season of genuine scarcity and real generosity. Of acute need and authentic response. Of despair and defiance, a quiet refusal to give up on each other or that we can somehow be better together. This tension — this both/and — is where I enter this season.
Our vision at the Murdock Trust is human flourishing for the common good. A vision that is an urgent conviction, and while it may be deeply hard to conceive and achieve, it cannot be relegated to being a luxury belief. The pathway to flourishing looks different for each of us, and that is why we see it as a true honor to partner with nonprofits that provide so many innovative solutions to the challenges that feel even more acute around the holidays, and perhaps even more acute this year.
So, as we enter the holiday season and all that it brings with it, I do so with a full heart focused on three things simultaneously:
Urgency — because need does not wait and neither can we.
Hope — not the lightweight kind that ignores real pain, but the grounded hope that comes from witnessing communities choose each other. When many choose sides, my hope is that we choose each other and the difficult work of resolving the differences we can. I've seen it. It's real. It works.
Gratitude — for every leader, every board member, every volunteer who shows up in November knowing it's hard, and does it anyway. For the nonprofit directors I meet with who carry the weight of their communities' flourishing without flinching. For the boards that resource bold vision. For neighborhoods that refuse to let anyone face the holidays alone.
Let me end with words I hope we all say often this holiday season: thank you! To all those that show up to work every day for the flourishing of all our neighbors, thank you. To all those who, even as you face your own challenges, find ways to spread kindness and cheer this season, thank you. May you each enter this season with honesty, hope, and togetherness — whatever that may look like for you.
-Romanita Hairston, CEO