From Burnout to Grace – Part 1

In 2016 my life fell apart.

I was in bed, ill, exhausted and scared about the future.I had been a high school teacher who worked crazy hours, neglected my own needs and burned out. I had lost the career I loved and it broke my heart.

When I recovered, I trained as a coach because I saw so many women ignoring the signs of stress and becoming increasingly depleted but unable to admit to themselves and others how they were really feeling. We hide how we feel until we can no longer hide, but by then it is too late. 

It is my passion and calling to coach women to find another way. My own journey has taken some surprising turns and as it continues to evolve, so has my coaching style. These days I am less life coach and more spiritual midwife. 

This is the first in a series of posts about what really caused my burnout and how it turned out to be the greatest gift I have ever received.

It was in the autumn of 2016 that the first inkling dawned that my burnout might be to do with more than working long hours. As often happens with me, a realisation came while reading poetry.

“Love after love by Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

I cried when I read this poem. I had lost myself. I was yearning for “the stranger who was myself. I wondered how I had got here. I had been on a spiritual path (on and off!) for more than 20 years, I had read thousands of books on spirituality, been baptized as an adult believer, learned from Tibetan Buddhist masters, studied yoga and meditation, gone on retreats, spent my life searching, searching, searching.

I had accumulated knowledge from external sources. But as I faced an ongoing crisis in my health, as I watched accomplishments disappear, the realization hit me, I do not KNOW anything. I had ignored the voice of my body, of my soul, of my heart, preferring the wisdom of others to the voice of my own soul. My life energy was draining from me; I had quite literally given my power away. My life had been reduced to the four walls of my house and I knew that the restoration of my physical health was inextricably linked to being willing to finally be still, to listen to and follow the guidance of my own soul. My mind was stuffed with the good advice of a hundred self-help gurus, but still, there I was, in bed, exhausted, unwell, unable to pray, meditate or stretch my way out of the mess I found myself in.

Somewhere along the way, along the shining path to spiritual fulfilment I got lost. Somewhere in the process of trying to be good, the essential goodness inherent in all of us had been forgotten. The still small voice of internal wisdom had been silenced, drowned out by other people’s voices, other people’s plans, other people’s wisdom.

There was a dawning realization that the answers could never be found outside myself, in any external source, teacher or book. Of course, these can be useful pointers, but my tendency had always been to look for gurus and to slavishly follow their advice. Tell me what to do and I will be a perfect student!  That was a painful realization becauseI literally did not know another way to be. 

But I knew the answers lay somewhere within me and that only I could excavate what was truly right for me. This realisation came only when I reached the end of my ability to strive, when I admitted that I burned out from too much seeking, too much trying, when my body quite literally collapsed with exhaustion and my mind burned out from its incessant search for peace, when my spirit felt dry and parched, when there was no-one to ask, when none of my usual strategies were working.

But as Walcott says “The time will come.” The time will come when the soul steps out of the shadows and asks to be heard. Something deep within me asked me to see what is really here, what was seeking to be born in me. It  invited me to take a deep dive into what remained among the debris of the life I had built, to let go into what was calling me, what was asking to be seen.

It was time to let go of all my striving. To turn inward, to listen to my own soul and to bring what she has been trying to tell me, first in a whisper, now in a shout. To finally embody her wisdom.

It was the clarion call to return to Love. This was none other than Love calling for my own attention, returning my focus to attending to my own needs as they arise in this moment.

And yet, the impulse persists; it felt as if I was hardwired to look outside myself for some other to save me, soothe me, love me. But what I began to intuit is that my feelings of loneliness, of not-enoughness, my need for recognition, validation, acceptance and love is Love’s call to return to myself.

Rumi said

“Love said to me

There is nothing that is not me

Be silent.”

I wanted to see if indeed there is nothing else but Love. I wanted to look deeply into my life and into the world and ask “What is it I need to learn here, how is THIS pointing me back to Love, what is this for?”

The one thing I knew for sure is that I could no longer follow anyone else’s plan/guru/spiritual path. I wanted to listen to the voices of those that had travelled this path before me, but I wanted to test it all in the crucible of my own life. I did not want second-hand theories, I wanted to open my heart to Love. I wanted to live from my soul, whatever that was! I wanted to “love again the stranger who was yourself”. I wanted to give back “your heart to itself”. I wanted to “feast on your life”.

I had no idea how to do this.

I suspected it would be learned through grace, or not at all.

It WAS learned by grace — read more