Rebuilding, Researching, Rising: Doing a PhD While Starting a Nonprofit From the Ashes*
A PhD student, nonprofit founder, and survivor rebuilding her life while transforming lived pain into evidence and action.
I'm pursuing my PhD while starting a nonprofit for women and rebuilding my life all at the same time.
Most people say pick one. I can't. My life doesn't work in silos. The research is the healing. The nonprofit is the reason. The rebuilding is the proof.
The PhD Keeps Me Honest
I'm in class at 51 years old. Gen X. Latchkey kid turned grad student. I turn in assignments on Canva when I still remember Microsoft Publisher and typewriters. I'm getting As, but the grade isn't the point. The point is I'm finally in a room where my lived experience is data. Where mental health, being unhoused, and criminalization aren't "topics"—they're chapters I lived through, and now I'm learning how to study them, cite them, and change them.
Every article I read for Week 4 reminds me of Week 1 of my life. Every theory connects to a shelter I slept in, a jail I visited, or a case manager who told me, "People like you don't finish degrees." I'm finishing one anyway. Because the PhD isn't just for me. It's so that when I walk into a room to fight for funding, policy, or a woman's second chance, I have the credentials they can't dismiss.
The Nonprofit Is the Promise
I'm starting it while I'm still starting over. My dream is an organization for women rising from the ashes—women coming out of prison, off the streets, and out of the system. Women who've been told they're too broken, too late, or too much. I want to speak in prisons because I know what it's like to be counted out before you even get to count yourself in.
Some days I'm writing bylaws with one hand and APA citations with the other. I'm learning nonprofit law on Tuesday and statistical methods on Thursday. It's messy. It's overwhelming. It's also the first time my chaos has a blueprint. The research informs the programs. The programs fuel the research. The PhD says, "Here's the evidence." The nonprofit says, "Here's the woman."
The Rebuilding Is the Bridge
You don't get to do this clean. I'm not starting from stability. I'm starting from Rent Well certificates, case managers, and apartments I had to fight for. I'm starting from years when the church, the system, and family doctrine told me who I was. I left. I got diagnosed. I got help. I got my name back.
Now I'm building on that rubble. The PhD is part of the rebuild. So is the nonprofit. They're not separate from my healing—they are the healing. Because the opposite of being erased is documentation. The opposite of being silenced is publication. The opposite of being thrown away is building something that catches other women.
People Ask How I Do All Three
I don't sleep much. I cry in my car between Zoom classes. I submit assignments at 11:58 PM. I second-guess the nonprofit name every other day. But I do it because I already lived the alternative. I already did the version where I stayed quiet, stayed small, and stayed stuck. That was harder.
This is hard too, but it's my hard. Chosen hard. Building hard.
I'm not waiting until I'm "healed" to help. I'm not waiting until I'm "Dr." to start. I'm not waiting until I have it all figured out to reach back.
I'm doing the PhD while starting the nonprofit while rebuilding my life because they're the same project.
The project is this: women like me don't stay in the ashes.
We rise. We research why. We reach back.
And we write it all down so the next woman has a map.
That's the assignment.
I turned it in this week.
And I'm already working on the next one.
Cathrynmharris.com
