Advocacy Begins With You: Healing First, Then Leading Well

If you're a healthcare professional, chances are you’ve felt the pull to make things better.

You’ve seen the broken systems, the gaps in care, the policies that don’t make sense. Maybe you’ve sat in meetings where no one said the obvious thing. Maybe you were the one who said it—and nothing changed. Maybe you stayed up late rewriting an email ten times, trying to find a tone that wouldn’t get you labeled “difficult.”

The instinct to advocate is real. It's fierce. It's also exhausting.

That’s why in the Phoenix Blueprint, advocacy isn’t the first step—it’s the last.

Why Advocacy Comes Last

The Phoenix Blueprint is a healing arc for people who’ve been burned by the system but aren’t ready to give up. It starts with:

1. Rest/Recover – Getting back to baseline, physically and emotionally.
2. Self-Study – Understanding your patterns, your strengths, your stories.
3. Set Boundaries – Learning to protect your time, energy, and truth.
4. Learn Better Ways of Communicating – So you can speak clearly without collapsing.
5. Become a Lighthouse – Leading quietly by how you live, not just what you say.
6. Advocacy – Taking strategic action toward meaningful change.
   
   

When you’ve done the work to realign with yourself, your advocacy becomes cleaner. Sharper. More sustainable. You stop trying to save everyone and start contributing in a way that fits who you are now.

The Advocacy Journal: Contributing Without Overextending

In The Phoenix Blueprint, I tell the story of Dr. B, a brilliant pediatrician and mother of three who had ideas—so many ideas—but no bandwidth to act on them. She knew that if she raised her hand too early, she’d get pulled back into a pace and pressure that nearly broke her the first time.

So she made an Advocacy Journal.

She wrote down every frustrating observation, every pattern she noticed, every idea for improvement. Then, once a quarter, she’d bring a few of those ideas to her local AAP chapter’s advocacy group. They had the capacity to carry them forward.

That was enough.

She stayed in the game without sacrificing herself to it. That is advocacy.

The Stockdale Paradox and the Long Game

The first time I encountered the Stockdale Paradox was in Jim Collins’ leadership classic Good to Great. I wasn’t expecting a POW story in a business book, but it landed in my chest like a quiet truth I didn’t know I needed.

Admiral James Stockdale spent over seven years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He endured horrific conditions, and yet he survived—largely due to a mindset Collins later distilled into two principles:

1. I have unwavering faith that I will prevail.
2. I must confront the brutal facts of my current reality.

For clinicians who dream of transforming a system that often feels immovable, this paradox is essential. You need both: hope and realism. Passion and patience.

One of the other enduring ideas from Good to Great is the flywheel effect—the truth that real transformation isn’t the result of one big push, but the cumulative impact of consistent, aligned action over time. When you stop expecting instant change, you start building lasting change.

That’s how good becomes great.
And that’s how burnout becomes purpose.

The Lightmaker’s Manifesto: Joy as a Justice Practice

Another touchstone for me has been The Lightmaker’s Manifesto by Karen Walrond. If you've ever felt like you're carrying the weight of the world and burning out in the process, this book is both a balm and a beacon.

Walrond offers a revolutionary idea:

You don’t have to suffer to make change.

She argues that joy isn’t a distraction from justice—it’s essential to it. And if we want to advocate without burning out, we must learn to tether our efforts to the things that bring us alive.

One key lesson that’s stayed with me is this:

“Your joy matters as much as your mission.”

This doesn’t mean opting out of hard conversations. It means refusing to lose yourself in the process. Rest, creativity, community, humor—these are not luxuries. They’re your fuel. And they’re part of the reason you’re so good at this work to begin with.

When we root our advocacy in joy, we become magnetic. People want to follow us—not because we yell the loudest, but because our light is steady.

Advocacy Without Attachment

We often think of advocacy as loud and public. But some of the most powerful advocates are quiet and strategic. They’re not chasing headlines—they’re playing the long game. They’ve detached from outcomes they can’t control and invested instead in what they can influence.

That’s the power of someone at the sixth step of the Phoenix Blueprint:
The Visionary Spark.
They act from alignment.
They know their limits.
They understand that planting seeds can be just as powerful as shouting from rooftops.

Journal Prompt: What Kind of Advocate Are You Becoming?

Take a few minutes to reflect:

• What parts of the system make your heart ache or your blood boil?
• When you imagine being part of the solution, what form does that take?
• What’s one way you could honor your desire to help without burning out again
• Could you start your own advocacy journal?
• Could you identify one action this month that’s rooted in joy?
  
  

You don’t have to do it all.
You just have to do your part—and that part can evolve over time.

🌱 Coming Next Week: We’ll explore the seed metaphor for advocacy—why going underground isn’t quitting, and how your current season of rest may be the most strategic move you could make.