Next week: Moral Injury and Moral Courage with Dimple Dhabalia

The term moral injury has officially entered the humanitarian lexicon. I heard this term several years ago, when I was studying my PhD on burnout in the aid sector. But there are some people who have recently brought this term to life, shining a light on the complex feelings arising as we face system collapse. One of these people is Dimple Dhabalia.

You will have seen me mention Dimple and her incredible work before. You may also know, we are collaborating on this survey, to see how we can respond to the mental health needs of aid workers affected by the current crisis.

Last year, Dimple published her first book Tell Me My Story: Challenging the Narrative of Service before Self. Since then, she has been on a vital mission to encourage others engaged in social change work to tell their stories, since so often these real life tales of grief, trauma and burnout are overlooked, dismissed or belittled. More recently, she has been applying the terms moral injury and institutional betrayal to describe the fallout from Trump’s Stop Work Order and USAID freeze. And these terms have resonance throughout the sector, no matter how affected you are from these particular measures. Because, sadly, many of us have been feeling disillusioned by, and at odds with, the decisions taken by our employers, managers, organisations and governments for some time.

What do these terms mean for us? How do we navigate them in practice? That is what Dimple will be discussing with us on Wednesday 11th June, 1-2.30pm BST.

Here is the description, in her own words:

At the threshold: Staying rooted in moral courage in the face of moral injury and institutional betrayal

Across the humanitarian sector, the dismantling of USAID has sent shockwaves through a global network of care - disrupting lives, partnerships, and long-held assumptions about what it means to be ‘of service’ within extractive systems. But for many frontline workers, the rupture doesn’t start there.

For years, humanitarians, helpers, and frontline staff have been asked to make impossible choices inside what are essentially bureaucracies: to stay silent, to comply, or to carry out policies misaligned with the very values that called them to serve. Sometimes, it’s more subtle - a slow erosion of integrity. Other times, it’s a direct betrayal of an organisation’s stated mission.

At the threshold of this dissonance is where we often find moral injury, disillusionment, and deep grief. In this session, Dimple Dhabalia will offer a grounding reflection on how to stay rooted in moral courage while moving through the spaces between betrayal and integrity, extraction and care, and disillusionment and repair.

Through storytelling and her Rupture-Root-Rise framework, participants will explore how to begin the slow, necessary work or repairing what was fractured when systems failed to live up to their stated values.

Dimple Dhabalia is a writer, podcaster, facilitator and coach with over twenty years of front-line and management experience working on asylum and refugee issues in the US government. In 2021 Dimple founded Roots in the Clouds, a boutique consulting firm using the power of storytelling to inspire moral courage, systemic change, and sustainable service across mission-driven cultures. Dimple is the best-selling author of Tell Me My Story - Challenging the Narrative of Service Before SelfMy Story - Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self, which was excerpted by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and named a 2024 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite, and a 2025 Independent Press Award Distinguished Favorite. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, CEO World Magazine, and the Federal News Network. Find her @dimplestory on social media and on Substack.

Register for next week's Circle of Practice here.

If you haven’t seen the survey three of us - Dimple Dhabalia, Rebecca Dempster and I - have compiled to support the mental health of aid workers affected by the current crisis, here it is again. We would love for you to take part, to ensure that this emerging initiative is rooted in your experiences and needs. Deadline for completion of this 3-5 minute survey is Friday 13th June. We will be publicly sharing the findings soon after.