We Don’t All Get to Experience Peace

Author: Felice Upton | Connect on LinkedIn
Published October 14, 2025

The Privilege of Peace: What Justice Systems Can Learn from Feeling With, Not For

I sat this weekend in deep thought, gazing at the beauty of nature, and I thought about days not so long ago, and yet a lifetime ago, when this luxury of peace and presence wouldn't have been afforded to me. It was cold and crisp, and I wrote and wrote and wrote some more.

We don't all get to experience peace. And I've come to understand that if you're leading systems that serve justice-involved families without understanding this reality at a visceral level, it's incredibly difficult to design interventions that truly meet families where they are.

If peace and stability were the only life you'd ever known, it makes sense that you might struggle to feel with the families caught in our justice systems, rather than for them.

And that distinction matters more than we often realize.

A personal reflection that I realized shaped how I see families...

There was a summer where the windows of our house (never a home) were broken out three times. I was beaten in my bedroom that summer, a space that should have been a sanctuary. I was never able to even get to my feet and suffered an injury that haunted me for years.

During that time, I spent hours with the child of my much older roommate. I was still a teenager who had long lost the experience of ease, quiet, or stability. And at his very young age, this child didn't get to experience the joy of innocence, predictability, or reliability. His mother was in the throes of addiction. She loved him so sincerely, but the grasp of addiction and trauma was too strong.

I write this with no judgment. I saw it play out. It was complicated and excruciating. She loved her child and couldn't provide the life she desperately wanted to provide him.

I have thought of them often as I've built my practice around justice-involved families.

Where did they end up? Did they have moments of peace? Were they understood? Seen?

Who did that child become, and do those around him understand what he overcame? That at three years old, he crawled among people struggling with their own battles in a house (not a home) that was rat-infested, noisy, and continually overstimulating even for me. How did it impact him?

These memories have become the lens through which I understand the families we serve.

Every parent on probation who tests positive. Every family that struggles to meet court-ordered requirements. Every child who watches their parent be taken away again and the polarization of the system... which helps nobody. Answers about humans are not deep at the ends of a pendulum.

The Challenge of Leading Trauma-Informed Systems

We talk often about being "trauma informed." Many of us attend trainings, update policy language, and genuinely want to serve families better.

And yet, we find ourselves in impossible situations. A mother misses a probation appointment, and we're bound by policy to document it. We know she may not have had childcare or transportation, but the system requires accountability. We want to help, but we're also responsible for compliance, safety, and often, our own professional liability.

Here's what I've learned through my own journey: It's incredibly difficult to lead trauma-informed systems if you've only ever felt for people and never with them. And if you have felt with them your likelihood of experiencing burnout is high- and we can get ahead of that with the right tools.

This isn't about blame. Most of us entered this work because we care deeply. But there's a difference between caring for someone from a distance and understanding what it feels like to navigate impossible choices.

When we feel for someone, we can inadvertently maintain our distance. We create policies from a place of what seems reasonable, not understanding that what's reasonable for someone with stability may be impossible for someone in crisis.

When we feel with someone, we start to see differently:

Compliance and capacity aren't the same thing. Our systems don't always account for the actual logistics of poverty, and it's not always clear how to balance accountability with understanding.

Behavior often communicates what words can't. That parent who seems angry or defensive may be operating from a nervous system shaped by previous system involvement, broken promises, and feeling surveilled. Their response isn't personal; it's protective. And our response, even when constrained by policy, still matters.

Stability requires resources many families have never had. The organizational skills we need from families (keeping documents, remembering court dates, attending multiple appointments, maintaining employment while meeting conditions) require a baseline of safety and mental space that not everyone has experienced. This doesn't excuse harmful behavior, but it does help us understand what support might actually work.

The Gap Between Intention and Impact

I know most leaders and frontline staff serving justice-involved families didn't design the systems they work within. You inherited structures, policies, and funding constraints that often work against what you know families need.

You see the challenges:

Intervention requirements that don't account for real barriers. Classes during work hours. Multiple agencies requiring in-person appointments. Limited or no childcare. Transportation gaps. You may advocate for changes and still be bound by contractual obligations or court mandates.

Staff who are overwhelmed and under-resourced. Many are carrying impossible caseloads, experiencing secondary trauma, and trying to balance enforcement responsibilities with their desire to help. They need support too, both to feel safe in their roles and to have the capacity to respond with flexibility rather than rigid enforcement.

Uneven outcomes that may not be intentional. Who receives grace and who faces consequences can reflect unconscious bias, but it can also reflect limited options within inflexible policies. Justice-involved families (disproportionately poor, disproportionately Black and Brown) often experience these limitations most acutely.

Metrics that measure compliance over progress. You track violations, missed appointments, and positive drug tests because that's what systems require. But these measures often miss the real progress: a parent keeping their children fed, staying housed, avoiding the ER, slowly building stability in chaotic conditions. The underlying supports and not the presenting "problem."

What I've Seen Work: Moving Toward Feeling With

The systems and leaders I've worked with who are making meaningful shifts don't start with blame or overhaul everything overnight. They start by asking different questions and making incremental changes where they have influence.

And they understand that real culture change takes time. Not weeks or months, but years. Shifting how an organization thinks, responds, and operates requires sustained commitment, not a single training or policy update. It also means people are committed to learning and supporting. It means staying the course when results feel slow, when staff resist change, when funding priorities shift. The families we serve have experienced systems that promised change and delivered nothing. They need us to be different, which means we need to stay committed even when it's hard.

They look for ways to reduce barriers within existing constraints. Can we offer one evening appointment time? Can we help connect families to transportation resources? Can we build in grace periods before violations for first-time misses? Small shifts that acknowledge reality without abandoning accountability.

They build relationships alongside requirements. Trust isn't automatic for families who've been hurt by systems before. When staff lead with curiosity instead of assumptions ("Help me understand what happened" rather than "You didn't comply") families often respond differently.

They create space for staff to process their own responses. Teams need psychological and physical safety to do this work well. That includes processing when they feel triggered, scared, or overwhelmed. Not to excuse poor decisions, but to help them respond from a grounded place rather than react from fear or frustration.

They design with the family in crisis in mind, not the ideal family. Because the family in crisis is who shows up. When we design interventions for people who already have stability, we set up families, and ourselves, for failure.

They ground their work in procedural justice. This matters more than many of us realize. Procedural justice means people experience the process as fair, even when outcomes are hard. It means they have a voice, they're treated with dignity, decisions are explained, and there's consistency in how rules are applied. Research shows that when people feel the process is fair, they're more likely to comply, more likely to trust the system, and more likely to believe change is possible. For justice-involved families who've experienced arbitrary enforcement, bias, and systems that felt rigged against them, procedural justice isn't a nice-to-have. It's essential. And for staff, working within a procedurally just framework provides clarity, reduces moral injury, and creates the structure needed to respond with both accountability and compassion. When everyone understands the "why" behind decisions and feels the process is fair, it changes the dynamic entirely.

The Question That Opens Possibility

People are complicated. Systems are complicated. And none of us get this right all the time.

But I've found that when we can feel with people, truly sit with what their reality might require, different questions emerge.

Instead of "Why won't they comply?" we might ask: "What would I need if this were my reality? What would make it possible for me to show up, to heal, to parent well while navigating conditions I can barely manage?"

That question doesn't solve everything. But it opens space for designing differently, within whatever constraints we face.

Peace is a privilege. Presence is a gift. And understanding where someone has been (not just intellectually, but in a felt way) can shift how we show up as leaders, even when the system around us feels immovable.

An Invitation to Explore Together

If you're a leader or team member grappling with these tensions (wanting to serve families better while navigating real constraints, trying to balance accountability with understanding, or wondering how to shift culture when resources are limited) you're not alone.

Real change is hard. It takes years, not months. It requires us to examine assumptions, try new approaches, and sometimes feel uncomfortable. It asks us to bring both our professional expertise and our humanity. And it demands commitment that outlasts funding cycles, leadership transitions, and the inevitable resistance that comes with doing things differently.

The families we serve need us to keep trying. Not to be perfect, but to be willing to feel with them and design accordingly, one small shift at a time. To commit to the long work of culture change. To build systems grounded in procedural justice so that everyone, families and staff alike, experiences fairness even in difficult moments.

I work alongside justice system leaders and agencies navigating these questions: how to move from trauma-informed language toward practices that acknowledge reality, how to support staff in doing this difficult work, and how to measure what actually indicates progress for justice-involved families.

If your team is exploring these shifts, I'd welcome a conversation. And if you've found approaches that are working in your context, I'd love to learn from you in the comments.