Meet Stacey Burge

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stacey Burge. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stacey below.

Stacey, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I haven’t. I think that is the important thing to remember about these big struggles–they are not one and done battles. I get up every day and set my intentions for work, relationships, for everything. I try to achieve alignment with those intentions and with all the people, challenges, surprises that spring up around me. I try to address those things the best that I can and do better some days than others. And that is okay. I think acknowledging imposter syndrome as something that happens, most especially to women, and something that you have to continually work through–almost be in conversation with–takes a lot of the drama and overwhelming feelings out of it. It makes it less a mountain to climb and more something I carry in my back-pack on my hike. It is heavy some days, but it is also just a thing to manage and move around, that gets lighter as I go.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am CEO of a non-profit that assists families struggling with housing insecurity—we offer housing, emergency shelter, and supportive services. Our ultimate goal is that through services and advocacy, we help to build a community where everyone has access to affordable housing that meets their needs.
In this work, I often deal with the idea of scarcity. Not enough money to pay the rent, not enough subsidies for people that need help with paying for housing, not enough money to make the agency budget, or serve everyone that needs help. It can be paralyzing for everyone. It is so for the family experiencing housing loss, but also for staff, for funders, for systems, for me. Resources are a challenge and that is a constant. Within that reality, how do we make space for people to be who they are, make choices specific to their own families, dream a bit?
When we are constantly worried about losing something, not being able to get something that we need, we go into survival mode, we live in fear, and then we cannot be in touch with that inner, creative, magical part of ourselves, the essence of us-ness. Again, that is true for families struggling with basic needs, but it becomes true for me too when I start to live in fear of what the organization can and cannot pay for, whether staff will get deserved raises, or if I can get donors to invest what is needed.
I do not have a clear-cut solution to this challenge, but I noticed something over a decade ago, that also seemed true for families, staff, donors, that seemed to be true even when people were experiencing the hardest of realities: when you break out pictures of cats and dogs, it brings a smile. Even non-pet lovers seem not to be able to help grinning at a doe-eyed, fluffy kitten or puppy. For people that have a dog or cat as a member of the family, when one person pulls up a picture on their phone, everyone else starts doing the same. No matter what is happening, they start smiling, they start describing their furry little love. People who have nothing in common whatsoever suddenly have something fundamental in common: they have welcomed this other cute species into their homes, families, and hearts. I have heard people dismiss this as silly, but I think it is powerful. Being in relationship with a pet activates that inner, magical, bigger-than-the-moment, self.
I noticed this magic about the same time that families that had lost housing started asking me some tough questions. A single Dad asked, ‘how can you make me give up my dog of 13 years because I lost my job and housing?’ A Mom asked me how she was supposed to tell her child that just lost their home, their belongings, their connection to their peers at school because they were dislocated in a shelter after eviction, that she also had to give up her best friend, her cat. This boiled down to–do some families get to keep the magic of pets in their lives, while other must lose it to access needed shelter, housing, and services? For me the answer was clear. Denying the ability to maintain connections to pets during crisis undermines the ability to move beyond it, cuts people off from a source of hope, of feeling good, and of knowing there is more than the problem with which they are wrestling. It also punishes the pet that is a part of their family.
In 2014, we decided, in our tradition of serving the whole family, however they define themselves, that definition would include pets, and we opened an imbedded pet shelter and services in our larger family shelter and housing program. We have grown that service every year and are marking our 10th anniversary.
The affordable housing crisis still looms and there is so much work to do, but every time a family shows up with dog in tow, I grin wide. Invariably they pull up a picture on their phone, share their favorite pet story, and in the process get direct access to that inner magic, to what is so very special about themselves and their family.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

-Be practical, but also let yourself play with possibilities
-Make room for fear, but do not let it make any decisions
-Pay attention to that thing which makes people smile, brings them together

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

The number one challenge remains the same one we started with. I have had fellow non-profit CEOs working in the housing space tell me that it is somehow wrong to pay a single cent in housing a family’s cat, while there are still other families in the street. We exist to serve the people, they say. That is a hard thing to hear and sit with, because yes, resources are limited, and yes, our mission is to make affordable housing available to families.

I think the answer here is indeed to keep the people involved as the focus. Is it okay to cause people in pain more pain, because there is still more pain in the world? Is it okay to tell families they do not deserve a life with a little furry family member that gives them unconditional love in a world full of conditions? Is it okay to force a dog or cat into a traditional shelter, alone and away from their people, because those people are experiencing a challenge?

I just keep asking those questions, reminding it IS the people we are focusing on, and pulling up pictures of my dog on my phone. It also does not hurt to remind we have been able to get new partners and resources to the table from the animal world. We do not use money intended for people for their pets, but we have brought more resources to people so they can keep their beloved pets through crisis.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.foundhouse.org/pets/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FHIHNpetsupport/

Image Credits

Stacey Burge
Diane Bomar-The New Studio
Garrett Parsons