Healing from burnout: A journey home to myself and a call to action

“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Just over two years ago, I hit a wall I couldn't climb. And there was no door. No path around it. The only thing I could do is rest my head on that wall for a moment and move my forehead back and forth across the cool bricks. And in that moment of pause, I heard a voice say “No” from deep inside me. “No more”, it told me. I had no choice but to accept the verdict from the essence of me. My soul. My spirit. So, I turned around and slid down that metaphorical wall to the ground.

When I got to the bottom, I stretched my legs out in front of me and let my shoulders relax. I felt like I could take a deep breath for the first time in a very long time.  I had been pushing myself so hard for so long. Nothing was ever good enough. The voices in my head driving me to do, “More, more,  more”. But my body and mind were done with more. Done with grinding for praise from an invisible source. They were ready for enough. They were ready to embody worthiness.

I took a few weeks off to rest. I journalled, meditated and went on a lot of long walks in the woods. But eventually I had to go back to work. And that was tricky. Because I was still really struggling. Three weeks wasn’t nearly enough to heal. But I had bills to pay and a lot of people counting on me to pay their own bills. The future of two initiatives making big change in the world rested on my shoulders.

Those early days back were hard. I was back in the same container I’d left. The same culture.The same expectations. I made a lot of mistakes. A lot of mistakes. I struggled with worthiness. But I also heard from a lot of people who were looking to me as a model of what is possible (something that I still find shocking as I certainly didn’t feel like a model of anything). I was speaking about things that many didn’t and still don’t. I was lifting the hood of this space we work in and seeing all the things broken that we pretend don’t exist. Knowing that others were looking to me, I started to prioritise rest. I (very slowly) learned to set boundaries.

It might sound easy but I can feel the sensations in my body as I write this. I can feel the discomfort. I can summon the feeling of conflict. Of how hard it was to choose myself. I can still hear those voices telling me I didn't deserve rest. That I needed to grind and hustle more to be worthy. That if I wanted to make change in the world I needed to make personal sacrifices.

Now we’re talking more about wellbeing and perhaps I played a small part in that. But we still don’t talk about what underpins the grind and the hustle. We rarely engage with the fact that those who sought to build empires needed to control large populations of people in order to do so. The best way to do that was to first, create “others” based on arbitrary characteristics and to second, prevent people from listening to the wisdom of their bodies. Because that’s where our true power lies.

Luckily, thought leaders like Tricia Hersey have helped us understand why rest is resistance against a system that wants us to grind with her seminal book Rest Is Resistance and the follow up, We Will Rest! The Art of Escape. I truly believe that it is our inherent nature to be in alignment with our bodies. To be attuned to what they need. We were conditioned away from that. Taught to see them as something to control and sometimes even to loathe. But the truth of who we are is: simply perfection.

I’m still on the journey to wellbeing. I see it as a journey back to myself and I give myself grace along the way. It took me a solid year and a half to recover but it’s definitely still a work in progress. Sometimes I work late to get things done as I know they will plague me if I don’t. It took two months to sit down to write this blog. And eventually I had to be vigilant with the nos in order to find the yes that allowed me to create space to write. But then once I did, I wondered why I hadn’t done it sooner. It just took two hours once I sat down. It was a nourishing experience to reflect on my journey thus far. But I let a hundred little choices get in the way until today.

But I also make time for meditation most days. I usually start my day with a walk. I often go to the gym before I start my work day. Sometimes I take a break during the day to go for a walk, go to Pilates or yoga or to the gym if I haven’t been that morning.

Each day looks different. What they have in common is that they are made up of a hundred tiny choices I make every day. Some cultivate my wellbeing while others don’t. But increasingly, I’m finding it easier to make choices that do support my wellbeing and, as I do so, I find that I’m better at my job too.  But, I also recognise that I am enormously privileged.  

In the blog I wrote right after I burned out, which ultimately launched our work on wellbeing, I recognised that privilege. I acknowledged that I could take time off without notice to honour my body and its immediate needs. Most people don’t have that privilege. Many of the people I work with are regularly pushing themselves beyond their physical limits. Denying their bodies rest because there is work to do to make change in the world. Meetings to attend. Papers to write. Workshops to hold.

Negotiators from developing countries are amongst those who don’t get to rest. Unfortunately the conditions that existed two years ago, that make their lives more challenging, persist today and have gotten even worse with the current funding crisis. These passionate folks who have dedicated their lives to advocating for those on the frontlines of the climate crisis are still cobbling together small pots of funding, often volunteering their time and forgoing income to be available to represent their countries in global policy fora.

Several times a year, negotiators from developing countries get in touch with us to ask if we know of any funding possibilities to help them get to a meeting. We do what we can: reaching out to funders, raising the needs with our membership and posting across our socials. We’ve also started fundraising drives on a few occasions.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the amazing folks who have contributed to these campaigns. And I would certainly be remiss not to give a shout out to Liane Schalatek from the Heinrich Boell Foundation Washington DC, who regularly goes above and beyond to help get negotiators from developing countries to important meetings.

But largely our calls go unanswered. This, despite the fact that we say we work on climate justice, the crux of which is that those least responsible for the climate crisis are most affected by it. Yet, as soon as those negotiators are on the ground, they are inundated with requests to speak at side events and attend dialogues and workshops.

I want to make this very clear folks. This is not okay. Let me say this again for those in the back:

This.

Is.

Not.

Okay.

It’s not okay. It’s extractive. Highly extractive. The message it sends is: We’re not going to help you get to a meeting but we want you at our side event. Your worth is in relation to the things we want you to do. Does that sound familiar? Perhaps unsurprisingly many of those organisations employing this extractive approach are from the Global North. Continuing the extraction of the Global South, or the Global Majority, a more appropriate term as it’s home to three quarters of the global population.  

We say we don’t have funding to enable negotiators from developing countries to get to meetings and yet we are constantly duplicating efforts while leaving huge gaps. We’ve got to stop this folks. This too, is part of the grind and the hustle. It’s about keeping our organisations going, not solving a global challenge. It’s about having our voices heard. Seeing our names on a paper. Seeing our brands on a report Seeing our names in lights.

The real work is often quiet. The real work is frequently invisible. The more you get in touch with your body, the more you tap into the wisdom living inside you, the more you love yourself, the less you'll need external validation. You won’t need to see your name on papers. You won’t need to see your brand on a report. You won’t need to see your name in lights. Those things might still bring you a little zing of happiness, but they are fleeting. What’s always there is your true essence and the knowing of your perfection. And if we all tap into that, imagine what kind of a world we could create!

I hope you all get there. Not just for your sake. But for all of us. Because the only way we will create the world we want: one in which all humans, all other species and all ecosystems are thriving on a healthy planet, is by loving both ourselves and each other more.

So, that’s the journey to wellbeing, folks. A hundred tiny little choices made day after day. Setting boundaries. Making mistakes. Giving yourself grace.Then getting up and doing it all again the next day. Knowing that the grind and the hustle are lies that you’ve been told to keep you from who you truly are. Lies that have kept you from knowing that your true worth is infinite. And it’s always there. No matter what.