Survivor's Guilt

I’ve been sitting with this feeling for a while now. A kind of quiet, persistent guilt that creeps in during moments that are supposed to feel victorious. I knew I couldn’t be alone.

When I walked across the stage to accept my graduate degrees, an MBA and a Master of Architecture, I wasn’t thinking about the job I’d land next or the salary bump. I was thinking about the empty seats. The folks who started with me but didn’t finish. The ones who got pushed out. The ones who gave up. The ones who never got a chance.

I was the only Black person in my class.

The only one from my family to ever leave Cleveland.

The only one to get married.

To get paid to be creative. To make it eight years deep into the design industry when most studios don’t last past three.

And then came the cancer.

I survived. I recovered. I kept running.

But here’s the thing no one tells you: survival isn’t the end of the story. It’s the start of a strange, new one. Where you’re alive, thriving even, but constantly aware of the people who didn’t make it.

That’s what survivor guilt feels like.

And lately, I’ve been feeling it more than ever, especially when I’m leading a community full of emerging creatives.

Welcome class of “WTF Happens Now?”

Let’s be real: the creative industry is not well.

I have the honor of working with four incredible Gen Z designers at a small studio. They’re smart, driven, and capable of doing work that moves culture. But they all know probably 10 classmates/peers, who are still jobless, underpaid, or working at a coffee shop with a BFA in their back pocket.

It’s not just anecdotal. The numbers back it up:

• Only 57% of design grads find full-time roles in their field within a year.
• Entry-level roles in design? Oversaturated.
• Job growth for graphic designers? Projected to be just 2% through 2033. That’s not a typo.
• Not to mention the burnout.

And if you’re Black, Brown, or queer? The barriers multiply. Fast.

I walk into classrooms, Zoom panels, portfolio reviews, and I feel it. The energy. The hunger. The anxiety. The students ask about resumes and rejection emails, but what they’re really asking is, Is there still a place for me here?

And sometimes, I don’t know what to tell them.

I thought I had it bad when I got out of school in 2010, the landscape today humbles me quickly.

Design Is Becoming a Commodity

This might piss some people off, but I’ve been saying it for years: design is becoming a commodity.

We’ve trained a generation of leaders to reward speed, sameness, and optimization. Canva, all the AI, Upwork, Fiverr, dribbble…fast and cheap. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the tools are bad. It’s that they’ve changed the rules of the game mid-play and if you are not in a leadership role you may have missed the boat.

So what do we tell the kid who just spent four years learning systems design, not just slides? What do we tell the creative who still believes in meaning? Still believes that there are people out there who value design deeply.

Because I still believe in them. But damn, it’s hard.

Carrying the Weight

When you’re the one who made it, you start to second guess the joy.

Every client win, every full-circle moment, every check that clears… you start wondering: Why me?

Why did I get a seat at the table when the person who inspired me to design is delivering Amazon packages?

Why did I beat cancer when people younger than me are dying?

Why am I so blessed with an incredible team of young passionate creative leaders when most struggle to find talent?

The truth is, I don’t have clean answers. But I’ve learned how to carry the weight without letting it crush me.

And maybe that’s the point.

How I Continue to Live Through It

1. I tell the truth.

To my team. To my clients. To students. This industry is hard, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. I don’t hide my struggles because the fact is that we all struggle. Radical transparency allows us to operate with grace and support each other as we survive.

2. I lift as I climb.

I don’t just mentor, I invest. I don’t just speak, I share experience. If I know I struggled with something I do my best to make it easier for the next person. I only survived because people did that for me. You know how heavy the door is, hold the damn door for the next person!

3. I redefine success.

Success for me used to mean prestige. Now it means peace. Stability. Time with my family. Creative integrity. A studio where no one feels like a commodity. It’s simple really. Think about what you have survived already. You are successful, you just won’t let yourself believe it.

4. I turn guilt into fuel.

I started a small studio to inspire because I was uninspired. I started Get Off My Butt to raise awareness, because I was oblivious. My guilt often turns into anger, and Julia Cameron tells us anger can serve as a guide. Guilt helps me realize where I should focus my time and energy.

5. I stay human.

I let the hard moments hurt. I don’t numb out. I listen to the struggle and remember that empathy is a form of leadership, too. No matter how much they tell me it’s bad business. My humanity is how I make sure I never become a commodity.

You Didn’t Make It Just to Make It

If you’ve ever felt survivor guilt, whether you made it out of a bad agency, a war zone, a toxic home, an illness, or just a rough year, I want you to know you’re not alone.

So don’t let the guilt silence you.

Let it shape you. Let it deepen your commitment. Let it remind you who’s not in the room, and what you’re going to do about it.

We didn’t survive just to survive.

We survived so we could build something better.

Let’s make room. They need you now more than ever.