20/10/2026
WOMEN, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT BURNOUT.
This year has humbled me in ways I wasn't expecting.
I've spent the last few years saying yes to almost everything. Every opportunity, every invitation, every wild idea that stirred something in me. Building businesses, creating events, tending to others, tending to my own healing, and somehow believing I could keep expanding without ever needing to stop.
Until my body had other ideas.
The entire left side of my body seemed to stage a rather spectacular protest. My neck, back, knee, foot, eye and inner ear. One thing after another, each asking for care, patience and recovery. And then came the vertigo, weeks of dizziness, feeling as though the ground beneath me was moving, my balance and sense of orientation suddenly unreliable. There is something profoundly humbling about being unable to trust your own footing.
Although the earlier physical issues have since healed, the experience has left me with something I hadn't quite anticipated. A deep recognition of just how exhausted I had become.
I've been speaking with so many women lately who are experiencing something similar. Beautiful, capable, wildly creative women who have spent years holding families, relationships, businesses and entire worlds together, quietly confessing that they are tired beyond words.
And I wonder how many of us have become so accustomed to carrying everything that we've forgotten what it feels like to put it all down.
There is something about spaciousness that I believe is essential to a woman's vitality. The unclaimed hours, the wandering thoughts, the pleasure of having nowhere to be and nothing expected of us. Yet we have become extraordinarily skilled at filling every available opening with something useful.
Another project. Another responsibility. Another person who needs us. Another layer of ourselves to heal.
For those of us who have lived through prolonged periods of survival, stillness can feel strangely unfamiliar. We learn to measure our worth by what we can endure, accomplish, produce and hold together. Eventually, even our healing becomes another mountain to climb.
And I have been particularly guilty of this.
For years, I've lived in what I can only describe as a trauma vortex, moving from one wound to the next, unpacking, processing, understanding, transforming. That work has been enormously valuable, but somewhere along the way I became so occupied with healing myself that I forgot to enjoy being myself.
There is a time for digging into the earth and tending to what has been buried. And surely there must also be a time to sit beneath the tree we've spent so long nurturing and simply enjoy its shade.
I've been learning to say no. To wonderful opportunities, unnecessary travel, ambitious plans and things that might once have excited me but would now cost more energy than I wish to give.
There is a particular humility in this kind of surrender, especially for a woman who has spent much of her life being fiercely independent and capable. To acknowledge that I have limits, that I cannot carry everything, and that some things will have to happen without me.
Even having my Instagram accounts disabled, which initially felt like a terrible blow, has brought an unexpected gift. The endless cycle of creating content, promoting, engaging and remaining visible suddenly fell quiet.
And rather amusingly, my events are selling more tickets than ever.
It's made me wonder how much of my constant doing was genuinely necessary, and how much came from an old fear that everything might collapse if I stopped holding it together.
Spaciousness is a luxury. Self-love is a necessity.
And I have been giving myself the spaciousness to recover, replenish and enjoy my life at a very different pace.
After spending so many years emptying myself of everything I needed to heal, I've been asking a rather curious question.
What do I actually want to fill myself with now?
And I've decided.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I've been going to bed ridiculously early, lingering in slow mornings, making beautiful meals, taking long baths, reading books, watching films and tending to all those small pleasures that have waited patiently for my attention.
And something interesting is happening. The quieter my life becomes, the more I realise how profoundly tired I actually am.
There is a great deal of rest to catch up on.
I'm discovering that surrender is not always graceful. Sometimes it is uncomfortable and humbling to recognise that the woman who could once push through almost anything no longer wishes to live that way.
And perhaps this is part of growing older and wiser. Learning that our strength is precious, that our energy is finite, and that we are allowed to become more discerning about where we pour it.
I don't need to make my rest productive. I don't need to turn my pleasure into a project. And I certainly don't need another bloody breakthrough.
I want to enjoy the life I've worked so hard to create. To have room for beauty, idleness, friendship, sensuality, laughter and the simple pleasure of being alive.
And if that currently involves an unreasonable amount of fantasy s**t, morally grey fictional men and increasingly ridiculous faerie storylines, then so be it.
After all these years of profound inner work, perhaps a little delicious nonsense is exactly what the medicine woman ordered.
So I'm curious, how many other women are feeling this exhaustion? And when was the last time you allowed yourself the exquisite luxury of doing absolutely nothing?
