When Justice Meets Healing: Restoring Humanity in a Capitalist World

“The hardest thing to market is what can’t be owned—love, dignity, and repair. But that’s the only economy worth building.” - Mary Coughlin

There’s a rhythm to healing that no balance sheet can capture. It isn’t measured in profit or growth but in courage—the courage to stay human in a world that rewards the opposite.

Years ago, my father-in-law looked at me across the kitchen table and said,

“It must be so hard trying to sell something no one wants.”

He meant it kindly. But his words lingered. Because transformation through trauma-informed, equity-focused, healing-centered care isn’t an easy sell. It asks for more than a transaction; it asks for transformation. At the time, I felt the ache of his statement. Now, I see the wisdom in it. He named the tension so many of us live inside: how to carry a mission of healing in a marketplace that doesn’t yet know how to value what heals it.

Learning from Restorative Justice

Through my business coach, who happens to be the daughter of Beverly Title, one of the pioneers of restorative justice, I came to know the framework that would give language to my life’s work.

Beverly’s Five R’s: Relationship, Respect, Responsibility, Repair, and Reintegration, describe a process for restoring wholeness after harm. The moment I encountered them, I realized: this isn’t just about justice. It’s about care. It’s about the NICU. It’s about us.

These principles bridge the worlds of justice and healthcare, asking us to see care itself as a form of repair.

Redefining “Business”

I used to think I wasn’t good at business. Now I realize I simply refused to build a business that forgot its soul. The traditional marketplace celebrates efficiency, competition, and growth. But healing doesn’t scale that way. Healing multiplies through relationship. It thrives in trust, not transaction.

Every time I tried to package compassion or turn belonging into a “brand,” something in me resisted.
Because care is not a commodity. It’s a covenant. And that’s not bad business; it’s different business. It’s an economy of care, one where sustainability and compassion are not opposites but partners.

Restorative Economics: The Quiet Rebellion

Maybe what I’ve been building all along is a quiet form of restorative economics, a way of working that honors humanity as our greatest currency.

Restorative justice asks: Who has been harmed? What do they need? Who will take responsibility?

What if our economic systems asked the same?

• Who has been harmed by an economy that prizes productivity over presence?

• What would repair look like if compassion were the measure of success?

• How might reintegration look in a world that welcomes everyone back into belonging?

The Hard Truth and the Holy Invitation

My father-in-law’s words still echo sometimes. But they don’t hurt anymore. Because he was right, it is hard to sell something the world doesn’t yet know it needs. That’s the work of transformation.
It always begins in the unknown, with people who refuse to stop believing that healing has value.

So I don’t try to sell it anymore. I invite it. And when people experience it—when they feel what justice wrapped in love can do—they want it for the rest of their lives.

Maybe this isn’t about selling something no one wants.
Maybe it’s about helping the world remember what it’s been longing for all along.

With grace and gratitude,
Mary

Postscript:

Every day, I meet people trying to reconcile meaning with money, purpose with practicality. This reflection is for all of us still weaving a way forward where care is not a side note to the economy, but its beating heart.