Brazil Breaks Free From Victimhood Narrative Cycle

Years ago, the author met an old friend for coffee. The friend was a trusted mentor. The author had just finished his first year as a director. He had moved from being a counselor to managing budgets and writing evaluations. He felt lost and like a burden. He told his friend he was unsure how much longer he could continue.

The friend listened. Then he offered an observation. He said the author was seeing himself as a victim, as if life was happening to him and he was just waiting for it to stop. The author drove home with that word stuck in his head. He tried to reject it, but it stayed with him. That night, he could not sleep. He kept turning the word over in his mind.

He began to see the truth in it. He had been holding onto grievances without expressing them. He had been accumulating a sense of being wronged without trying to change anything. He saw a picture in his mind of himself wearing a wooden sign around his neck with the word “Victim” on it. He knew he was not being punished by someone else. Part of him was choosing to wear that sign.

He started asking himself what word he wanted to carry instead. He considered words like hero, victor, and survivor. None of them felt right. Then a different word came to him. The word was “Steward.” He looked it up. It meant the keeper of the house, someone trusted to look after what belongs to a larger story than their own. He learned that a steward takes care of what has been given to them. A victim is defined by what has been done to them. A steward is defined by what they choose to do with it.

Years later, the challenges of leadership remain. The author still struggles with criticism. But his perspective has changed. A few weeks ago, a staff member asked for a formal meeting. She told him that giving flexibility to others was making her job harder. She said it did not feel fair. The author wanted to defend himself. He wanted to explain his reasons. But he recognized that was the victim talking. A steward does not protect himself from hard feedback. A steward tends to what he has been given. In that moment, he had been given the truth. He thanked her and said her feedback would help him do better.

The author says the movement from victim to steward is an ongoing process. He has not perfected it. He still stumbles and feels the sign settling back around his neck. He used to see the difficulty of leadership as something happening to him, as evidence that he did not belong. What shifted was the recognition that this season of his life was asking something of him. It was not punishing him. He was being called into service, whether he felt ready or not. He now thinks about what it means to stop merely surviving his life and start tending to it. He is trying to be the person who tends to what they have been given, who asks what life is expecting of them, listens, and answers the call.