The walk that reframed a decade

Some conversations stay with you long after the walk ends.

This is one of them.

There’s a woman who comes to the walks regularly. Let’s call her Sarah. Late fifties, always shows up, always brings good energy to the group.

This past Saturday, we ended up walking together for most of the route, along with another guy I’ll call Marcus. He was talking about something he’d been realizing recently: that a lot of the situations in his life that he’d blamed on external circumstances were actually his own doing, even though for years he couldn’t see it.

In the first few years of his business, he’d been a broke founder, and during that time he’d taken pride in the hustle culture that came with it, almost like a starving artist wearing struggle as a badge of honor.

He said he’d recently realized that identity was actually benefiting him in some twisted way, keeping him stuck because that’s who he thought he had to be.

The three of us walked in silence for a bit, processing that.

Then Sarah spoke up.

“If that’s the case, what about that charity situation I’ve mentioned to you both before? Does that play into this at all?”

Sarah told us about a charity she’d worked closely with in Asia focused on preserving the culture of indigenous tribes while providing them resources and shelter in ways that honored their heritage instead of erasing it.

She’d been involved for almost a decade: flew there multiple times, spent weekends on fundraising calls, introduced the founder to other wealthy donors in her circle.

She described one of her first visits there, how she’d stood at the edge of the compound and watched children practice traditional dances their grandparents had taught them, how the evening light turned everything golden and she’d felt, for the first time in years, like her wealth was being used for something that actually mattered.

After trips like this, she would give more money. A lot of it.

“How much?” I asked.

She looked at me. “Enough that the average person would never have to work again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“And it wasn’t just me. There were others. People I brought into this, people who trusted me because I trusted him.”

“Him?”

“The founder. He came to America to pitch the work, to build partnerships, and I believed him, believed every word.”

She paused.

“He used the money to build himself a mansion, funded his entire life while the actual work got maybe a fraction of what was promised. It was all just a show when I was there. And the worst part? He wasn’t just robbing me. He was robbing those people of a chance at a better life, the people the money was actually meant to help.”

We walked in silence for a bit. I could hear other conversations from our group scattered along the trail: someone laughing, someone talking about their move to Austin.

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“About five years ago. Someone who’d visited the site sent me photos, showed me what was actually happening versus what we were being told.”

“What did you do when you found out?”

“I went to war.”

She said it matter-of-factly, like it was the only logical response.

“I hired lawyers, flew back multiple times, spent years trying to fight it in their court system, spent even more money trying to get back what was lost.”

“Did it work?”

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “No. The legal system there, the corruption, the bureaucracy. It was a mess. I finally gave up about a year ago.”

“How do you feel about it now?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Some days I’m furious, some days I feel stupid, some days I just feel exhausted.”

“Can I ask you some questions?” I said. “Questions that might help you see this differently?”

She looked curious. “Like what?”

“Like questions no one has probably ever asked you before about what happened.”

She nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“Why did you keep fighting?” I asked gently. “After you knew it was gone, why spend years and more money trying to get it back?”

“Because I couldn’t just let him get away with it.”

“But in the end, he did get away with it, right? The court system didn’t work, the money didn’t come back. So I’m curious, what was the fight actually giving you?”

She was quiet for a long time.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think it might have been?”

She shook her head. “No, I really don’t know. That’s the problem. I look back at those years and I can’t figure out why I kept going when it was obvious it wasn’t going to work, when everyone told me to let it go, but I couldn’t.”

“What would have happened if you let it go?” I asked.

“I would’ve had to admit I was wrong, that I’d wasted all that time and money on something that didn’t work, that I’d brought other people into something that hurt them.”

She paused, her pace slowing.

“And honestly, there was a lot going on in my personal life at the time. I’d recently given up alcohol. My husband had passed away. Family members and other relationships felt like they were under a lot of stress and turmoil. And I think instead of facing any of that, I looked for something external to fight. This became the thing I could pour all my energy into.”

Marcus walked on the other side of Sarah, listening attentively. Almost felt like he was there for moral support.

“So the fight kept you from having to face everything else,” I said.

She looked down at the trail. “Yeah. I think that’s right.”

I let that sit for a moment.

“Can I ask you something else?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why were you drawn to this project in the first place? Not the surface reason. The real one.”

She didn’t answer right away, and we walked another fifty feet in silence.

“I saw a group of people who weren’t being helped, and I felt like I wanted to help them.”

“And what did helping them give you?”

She stopped walking for a second and looked at me. “What do you mean, what did it give me? It’s not about me. It was about them.”

“I know the work mattered to you,” I said. “But there’s always a feeling we’re searching for underneath why we’re drawn to something. What feeling were you chasing by doing this work?”

Her pace slowed. She was quiet for a long time. I could hear Marcus’s footsteps on the other side of her, steady and patient.

“I think I felt guilty,” she finally said, her voice quieter now.

She looked down at the trail instead of at me.

“About what?”

“About having money, about being comfortable, about living this life while people on the other side of the world are suffering.”

There it was.

“I thought if I could just give enough, do enough good, maybe I’d feel like I deserved what I had.”

“So you were giving from guilt.”

“I guess so. I mean, the work mattered to me, I really cared about it, but underneath that...”

“Underneath that, you were trying to fix something inside yourself by fixing something out there.”

She nodded slowly, still looking at the ground.

We were near the end of the trail now, the sun fully out, warming everything.

“What purpose has this served in your life?” I asked.

She went quiet for a moment. “What purpose? It didn’t serve a purpose. It was a complete failure.”

“Was it?”

“I lost money I’ll never get back, lost years fighting something I couldn’t win, hurt people I care about by bringing them into this. How is that not a failure?”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t painful, but pain and failure aren’t the same thing. So I don’t know if I’d call it a gift yet, but what did this experience give you, even if it wasn’t what you wanted?”

She was quiet.

“It did force me to look at myself. To ask why I was doing what I was doing.”

“Like what?”

“Like why I pick battles I can’t win, why I hold onto things way longer than I should, why I feel like I have to prove something all the time.”

She paused.

“I’ve spent the last year unpacking a lot of stuff: childhood patterns, things I’ve been running from my whole life. And I don’t think I would’ve done any of that if this hadn’t happened.”

“So it sounds like this experience helped you see a pattern that had been invisible to you for a long time, but had been running your life the whole time,” I said. “What’s come up from all of that?”

She was quiet for a moment, choosing her words carefully.

“It’s been painful and gradual, honestly harder than I expected, but as I’ve been able to process what happened, I’ve found myself letting go of things I’d been carrying for years, forgiving people I never thought I could, my parents, my siblings, people I’d held resentment toward for longer than I’d like to admit.”

She paused.

“Now that I’ve been able to process more of my past, I would say that I’m happier now than I’ve been in decades.”

I smiled. “That sounds like a pretty great gift, even if it was indirectly given.”

She chuckled softly. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

As we circled back toward the starting point of the walk, Sarah said something else.

“I’ve been thinking recently: what if everything I went through can serve as a stepping stone for other people? So they can learn from my lessons around philanthropy, not make the same mistakes I made, and actually serve more people better than I could have.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And what if not only others have learned from you, but you have learned from yourself, meaning you can become much better at what you’re doing because of all of this, and end up impacting even more people?”

She nodded slowly.

“So what if what you set out to do, serving people through this work, is exactly what happened? It just happened in a way you weren’t expecting.”

She went quiet for a moment, then smiled.

“I’m glad this came up,” she said. “Thank you for asking those questions. I needed to hear myself say all of that out loud.”

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Note: This reflection was written by Cameron Hogan after hosting the walk in Austin. It was originally shared on his newsletter, The Cam Diaries, on February 13 2026.