When the New Job Doesn’t Fix What’s Broken: Support for Aid Workers Still Grieving

"I just want my old job back!"

That's what someone we know blurted out at dinner recently, mid-conversation, without meaning to. They'd landed a new job months earlier. It's fine. They're doing work they care about — at least somewhat. But as the conversation wound through everything the last 18 months had cost them, that sentence arrived anyway: not composed, not planned, just true.

It's the kind of thing that slips out because the illusion of being fine takes real effort, and sometimes, mid-sentence, at a dinner table, the effort runs out.

You update your LinkedIn headline. You accept the offer letter. You tell everyone — your partner, your friends, your former colleagues still job-hunting, yourself — that you landed on your feet. And then, on a random Tuesday, someone mentions USAID in a meeting and something in your chest tightens like a fist. Or you're filling out an expense report for your new job in software sales and you remember filling out the same kind of paperwork for a program that kept girls in school somewhere you can't say out loud without your voice catching.

Being employed again does not mean you are okay again. For the humanitarian and international development professionals whose careers were upended over the past two years, "employed" and "okay" have turned out to be two very different things — and it’s important we talk about the difference.

The Job Search Ends. The Grief Doesn’t.

Most of the support available to laid-off aid workers has focused, understandably, on the job search itself: how to translate "led a $12M WASH portfolio across four countries" into language a hiring manager outside the sector will recognize, how to network, how to survive the silence after another application disappears into an applicant tracking system.

But almost nobody prepared you for what happens after you land the job.

No new role, no matter how good, is a time machine. It cannot take you back to a version of the world where your sector wasn't gutted, where your former colleagues still had their jobs, where the work you built your identity around still existed in the form you built it in. You can be grateful for stability and still be furious about what it cost to get there. Both things are true. Neither one cancels the other out.

Holding both at once - the gratitude and the furry - is exactly why KonTerra Counseling built a new support group: Employed But Seething & Grieving, a four-session series for current and former aid workers who've landed somewhere new and are definitely not okay.

Why Gratitude and Rage Can Coexist

If you're living in this in-between space right now, some of this will likely sound familiar:

You're relieved you can pay your bills again — and you still feel a low, steady unease that this, too, could be taken from you without warning. You've settled into the routine of a new role, but you're still searching for a way to live out the values that used to be built into your job description by default. You're surrounded by new colleagues who are perfectly kind and have no idea what the last two years actually cost you, so you keep the complexity of it to yourself.

And there's the sheer strangeness of the shift itself. You used to make sure a rural clinic had a reliable cold chain for vaccines. Now you're troubleshooting a CRM. The drop in scale — and in meaning — can feel almost disorienting, like you traded a language you were fluent in for one you're still sounding out.

None of this means you made the wrong choice by taking the job. It means the transition is more than a title change.

The Invisible Wound: Moral Injury

There's a term for part of what you might be carrying, and it's worth knowing because it's not the same as burnout: moral injury.

Burnout is what happens when the demands of a job exceed your capacity to meet them. Moral injury is different — it's the wound that forms when you're forced to act, or forced to stand by, in ways that violate your own values. Watching your sector dismantled while feeling powerless to stop it. Making an "impossible choice" — take the stable job or keep fighting for a mission that no longer has funding — and living with the residue of that choice long after it's made.

Moral injury doesn't heal the way ordinary stress does. It responds to being named, processed, and witnessed — not to a new job description.

Why A Job Search Support Group Isn’t What This Is

This distinction matters, because it shapes who this group is actually for.

This is not career transition support. If you're still actively job hunting, there are excellent resources built for exactly that — but this isn't one of them. It's also not individual therapy, and it's not designed for anyone currently in acute crisis, who deserves more intensive, individual support than a group format can offer.

This group exists for the space after the job search: for people who have already landed somewhere new and are discovering that landing wasn't the same as arriving.

What The Group Actually Offers

Over four sessions, the group creates room to do the work that a new job title can't do on its own:

Unburden the guilt of survival. Choosing stability wasn't a betrayal of your former colleagues or your former mission. It was an act of survival — and there's a real difference between the two that's worth learning to feel, not just know intellectually.

Grieve what was dismantled, out loud, with people who don't need the context explained to them first. The shock, the outrage, the loss of a community, and a future you'd built — all of it gets to take up space here.

Separate your worth from a sector that collapsed. Who you are was never only what organization your email signature belonged to. Untangling the two takes deliberate work.

Ease the sense of constant alert — the part of you still scanning for the next earthquake, still bracing for the ground to move again, even in a job that's objectively stable.

Redefine purpose and identity without pretending the loss didn't matter, and find a way to integrate the last two years into the story of who you're becoming, rather than getting stuck reliving them.

Who This Group Is For

You might be a strong fit if you:

• Are a current or former international humanitarian or development professional whose work was disrupted by cuts to foreign assistance

• Are back in the workforce, whether in a new sector or still in aid work

• Feel a disconnect between your current job and the values that used to shape your work

• Still carry real anger or grief you haven't had anywhere to put

• Feel isolated from both old colleagues and new ones — surrounded by people, understood by few

• Want a small, closed cohort of people who don't need the last two years explained to them

The Details

KonTerra Counseling's support group for current and former aid workers runs for four bi-weekly sessions, beginning Wednesday, September 16, from 7:00–8:15 PM ET, held online with a limited group size to protect the safety of the space. The cost is $297 for the full series, and payment plans are available for anyone facing financial constraints — because we believe access to this kind of support shouldn't depend on ability to pay.

As your facilitators, we (Donnica Wingett and Raven Ellis) have spent the last 18 months working directly with aid and development professionals navigating exactly this transition. We’re not approaching this from theory.

If the gap between "employed" and "okay" sounds familiar, you don't have to bridge it alone. Register here to join the next cohort.

When Doing Everything Right Still Isn't Enough: Support for Immigration Legal Professionals

I've sat with enough immigration attorneys, paralegals, and advocates to recognize the same story wearing different case numbers. You can't remember the last time you won a case. Not because you stopped fighting hard enough — because they keep changing the rules. You've spent your evenings learning to file habeas petitions you never expected to need, squeezed in between court appearances and the calls you still have to return. Law school never taught you how to tell a client something unbearable in a way that leaves them with any hope at all. You've had to learn that on the job, over and over, this past year more than most.

If you work in immigration law right now — as an attorney, a paralegal, a case worker, an advocate — you already know that "burned out" doesn't quite cover it.

A System Under Strain, Not Just a Heavy Caseload

Immigration legal work has always demanded stamina and moral clarity. That's not new. What's new is how much more of both it's demanding right now.

Policy shifts that used to happen occasionally now happen fast enough that yesterday's guidance can be obsolete by the time you walk into court. Caseloads that were already unsustainable have grown heavier. And underneath the paperwork and the deadlines, I watch you absorb something harder to name: the fear and trauma your clients carry, case after case, without much space to set any of it down.

Burnout is the word most people reach for. But burnout is what happens when a job's demands outpace a person's capacity to meet them — more hours, more cases, less recovery time. What a lot of immigration professionals are actually carrying goes further than that.

The Weight Under the Weight: Moral Distress and Moral Injury

There’s a difference between being exhausted by the work and being wounded when the realities of the work conflict with what you believe is right.

Moral distress is what you feel when you know the right thing to do but the system won't let you do it — when you can see exactly what your client needs and exactly why you can't provide it.  Consider advising a client on whether to show up for a scheduled ICE check-in. Tell them to report, and they may be detained on the spot, possibly separated from their kids that same day. Tell them not to show, and you've counseled them to violate the terms of their case — and violated your own oath in the process. There is no version of that conversation where you walk away feeling like you did right by them. You did the least-wrong thing available, which is a very different feeling.

Moral injury goes a step further: it's the lasting harm that comes from having to act — or stand by — in ways that violate what you believe is right, over and over, until the residue of it doesn't wash off between cases. It's watching people in power actively dismantle due process, one policy memo at a time, while you do everything in your power to zealously advocate anyway, knowing the rules of the system keep getting rewritten.

Neither of these responds to a vacation. In my sessions, they respond to being named, processed, and witnessed by someone who understands the terrain — which is a very different kind of support than most burnout advice offers.

The Fear Isn't Only About Your Clients

For many people doing this work, the fear isn't only professional, and it isn't only about the people you represent.

A number of the immigration attorneys, paralegals, and advocates I work with come from mixed-status families themselves. You may be building a legal case for a client during the day and worrying about your own spouse, parent, or sibling's status the moment you close your laptop. The system you're fighting inside of isn't an abstraction you go home from — it's the same system that could reach into your own household.

And increasingly, the fear isn't only about your clients or your family. Immigration attorneys have themselves become targets — watched, questioned, in some cases investigated, simply for doing their jobs. Representing someone zealously used to be an unambiguous professional duty. For a growing number of the people I work with, it now carries a personal risk that didn't used to be part of the calculation.

This is what it looks like to do high-stakes work while afraid for yourself and the people you love — on top of everything else the job already asks of you.

This Isn't Therapy, and It Isn't a Coping-Skills Webinar

This isn't individual therapy — though for some people, that's also valuable and worth pursuing separately. It isn't a webinar full of generic stress-management tips that assume your job is comparable to any other demanding job. It's a small, confidential group of peers who are living inside the same system, facilitated by me — someone who has spent years working specifically with people in high-stakes, values-driven work, not learning the terrain alongside you.

What "Sustaining the Work" Actually Offers

I built this group, over six bi-weekly sessions, to make space for what the daily grind of the immigration legal system doesn’t allow:

Share the weight with people who don't need it explained. There's a particular relief in saying something out loud to a room that already understands why it's heavy, without having to translate it first.

Rebuild what used to work. Many of the coping strategies that carried you through earlier years of this work may have stopped being enough. Together, we find what actually holds up under the specific pressure you're facing now, not generic advice built for a calmer year.

Make room for the full emotional complexity of the work — the uncertainty, the advocacy fatigue, the moral distress — instead of compartmentalizing it until it demands attention on its own terms.

Reduce the isolation of carrying this alone. Community doesn't fix a broken system, but it changes what it feels like to work inside one.

Reconnect with why you started. Purpose doesn't disappear under pressure — it gets buried. Part of this work is finding it again.

Who This Group Is For

Based on the attorneys, paralegals, and advocates I've worked with, you're likely a strong fit if you:

• Work full-time or pro bono in immigration law — as an attorney, paralegal, case worker, or advocate

• Feel exhausted or burned out, more days than not

• Can't fully shut work off, even when you're with the people you love

• Notice the strategies that used to help you cope aren't working as well anymore

• Carry the weight of impossible choices you've had to help clients make

• Want to be with others who understand this specific work without a lengthy explanation

About Me

I'm Donnica Wingett, a bilingual Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker with deep ties to both the humanitarian field and immigration work specifically. For the past six years, I've conducted mental health assessments for individuals navigating immigration proceedings, and I currently serve as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School, helping law students develop a trauma-informed practice. I've also spent several years volunteering with Rainbow Railroad, supporting newly arrived LGBTQ+ refugees here in the DMV region.

I'm not approaching this work from the outside. I've spent years inside the same system you're navigating, working alongside people who do exactly what you do.

The Details

"Sustaining the Work" runs for six bi-weekly sessions — September 18, October 2, October 16, October 30, November 13, and December 4 — from 1:00–2:15 PM EST, held online with a limited, closed group size to protect the confidentiality of the space.

Pricing is tiered to reflect the realities of this field: $250 for nonprofit organization staff, $425 for those in for-profit firms, both discounted from standard rates. If cost is a barrier, reach out to discuss options — access to this kind of support shouldn't depend on your paycheck.

If you've been doing everything right and still feel like you're barely holding on, I want you to know you're not imagining it, and you don't have to carry it alone. Register here to join the next cohort.

Why We Serve the Helpers: The Hidden Cost of Leading and Serving Others

At KonTerra Counseling & Psychological Services, our clients are often the people others rely on — the steady presence in crisis, the ones advocating, caregiving, leading. They’re high-achieving, mission-driven professionals committed to making a difference in the world.

But behind the outward success and sense of purpose, there’s often another story.

The Toll of Purpose-Driven Work
When your identity is tied to service, it's easy to ignore your own limits. You may delay rest because others need you. You may suppress your feelings to lead with strength. You may feel guilt for struggling when your work is “about” helping others.

This selflessness is admirable — and also unsustainable.

Over time, the internal cost adds up:

• Emotional exhaustion and burnout

• Disconnection from loved ones and from yourself

• Difficulty being present or experiencing joy

• A sense of isolation, even when surrounded by people

• Shame for feeling like you're not coping "well enough"

Why This Is Our Focus
We choose to specialize in working with people like you because we understand the unique pressures you face — and the courage it takes to seek support. Every clinician on our team has experience with international aid, advocacy, and high-responsibility roles. Many have lived it themselves.

We don’t just understand trauma and burnout; we understand the values that make you keep going — and how to help you find balance without letting go of what drives you.

Therapy That Meets You Where You Are
Whether you’re navigating burnout, relationship strain, or simply trying to rediscover who you are outside of your work, our team is here to walk with you. Our services are online, flexible, and tailored to people used to carrying a lot — emotionally, intellectually, and logistically.

You don't have to choose between caring for others and caring for yourself.

You belong here. And you don't have to do it alone.

📍Serving clients in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and many locations outside of the US
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We Are Launched!

We are thrilled to launch KonTerra Counseling & Psychological Services!

We are a private practice dedicated to providing compassionate counseling services to individuals, couples, and groups in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and many locations outside of the US.

We are passionate about supporting those who are dedicated to the service of others - whether that service occurs in the professional or personal arena. We know that leading and serving others can come at a cost. We're here to help you reclaim ease, purpose, and joy through our evidence-based and client-centered approach.

Our dedicated team - Donnica Wingett, Raven Ellis, Megan Laughlin Williams, LCPC, Camilla Tibbetts, LICSW, and Marylin Marquez Beckley, LPC, NCC, CCTP, CATP - brings deep experience working alongside those in high-stakes professions, complex environments, and life transitions.

A magical thing happened as our team came together. We learned that we each have an unshakeable commitment to immigration justice, built on a foundation of over 50 years of collective experience directly supporting refugees and immigrants. We are, therefore, proud to offer specialized immigration mental health evaluations as part of our services.

For our partners and friends familiar with The KonTerra Group's workplace-based programming, please know that we are still here and deeply committed to continuing our work with organizations working in high-stress, high-stakes environments. KonTerra Counseling & Psychological Services is a sister company, allowing us to extend our support directly to individuals, couples, and groups in addition to organizations.