An Unexpected Beginning
My journey from high-functioning burnout to holistic wellness wasn’t planned — it was born from necessity and transformed by grace.
The Fast Lane
I can still remember spending the early part of my career in what I recall as the “fast-lane”; my day-to-day consisted of donning heels, perfecting my blowout, armed with copious amounts of caffeine and a “never let them see you flinch” attitude. While my life may have looked perfect and shiny on the outside, inside I was a high-functioning jumble of stress.
The Warning Signs
The symptoms of that lifestyle began to creep up on me slowly. At first, I assumed they were benign — totally normal for a working woman, in fact. I’d go to bed completely drained and wake up just as tired (so tired that I’d have to lie down on the couch at work while no one was looking). My anxiety spiked through the roof regularly, as did my irritability. Dizzy spells had progressed into actual fainting. I struggled with recurring viral infections that plagued me for weeks at a time and suffered from both debilitating digestive issues and resulting autoimmune disorders.
The First Step
While there definitely is a time and a place for prescription medications, I figured I’d give yoga a try first. After all, I’d heard that it’s what people were doing to relieve stress. That first step of branching out into the world of wellness led me to slowly examine my diet and lifestyle, and within a surprisingly short period of time, I discovered that my food could act as my medicine.
The Transformation
Through a process I didn’t quite understand at the time, my burnout symptoms started to evaporate. Over the span of a few months I was feeling better than I had ever felt in my life. The days of feeling shaky and irritable between meals were a thing of the past. When the anxiety and sadness began to slowly float away, a light contentment took their place and I found myself thinking “is this what happy feels like?”
The Awakening
Once I was out of my own fog, I could see that people all around me were trapped in burnout cycles of their own; punishing their health to get through their grueling daily regimens, the next project, deadline, or family event — then collapsing when their bodies forced them to rest. The cycle would repeat endlessly, opening the door to serious health issues not limited to thyroid conditions, prediabetes, and various autoimmune diseases.
The Mission
What broke my heart is that this pattern kept so many people from accomplishing things they wanted to do and led them to lose sight of who they wanted to be — powerful in their own right, getting promoted, taking that bike trip across the city, maybe even running the local marathon. They were stuck and all they wanted to do was find ways to feel a little bit better in the moment without addressing why they felt this way. My wake-up call inspired me to take action…