8urnout To 8usiness

We had just gotten back from traveling Latin America. I'd made my decision final, I just hadn't voiced it yet. He said to me "and then we could move into ...", something like that. This was the moment. I felt it.

"It's not happening. We're over. You and I are over." He looked at me and his face sank. I was ready. I knew he would try to convince me, put up a fight, he would not want to be by himself, he would blame me for how he felt. He had sworn to himself he would never get a divorce, and there I was, burning our marriage to the ground.

I was ready, I was bracing myself, I was holding down my own fort of emotionality so he had the space to fall apart. I patiently took it all, I acted as suspense because what I wanted to feel was the unbearably sweet, seductive scent of a regained freedom, regained autonomy over my actions and my time, and of living my own truth out loud. I did it for myself and I finally stood by my choice - and engaged with it through the subsequent year and a half of him acting like him and me acting like me.

To have some sort of balance, I threw myself at my job. I put myself into it fully, managing a team of 6 through an SAP Implementation.

In January, the project was over. So was the divorce. We were all in home office. It was suddenly quiet.

I didn't like quiet. I wanted busy, or my "I don't have time" and "I need a break" suddenly wouldn't be true anymore. So I learned to gro my own food. I learned about the constellations, the sun and the moon, how the forest worked, ...

Until one day I couldn't move. I'd been crying every day for months because of how much I'd shamed myself for not throwing myself at my work again when I couldn't. I'd finally done it, I'd forced myself to my knees, all by my own self in my own head with my own thoughts. Of course it wasn't on purpose. Nobody walks wide-eyed into a state of complete overwhelm. I just didn't realize I had an option.

I finally got help in July, by hiring two coaches. I decided to leave my job, I couldn't give it the attention it was due (for sure the sexiest, most intricate interesting job I'd ever had), and let me tell you that was the hardest decision I've ever had to make. I grieved it for months. But a burnt out employee leaves their job even when they love it. Trust me.

I wanted to shed even more, so I decided to renovate my apartment, hired a moving company to tear out all the furniture that was there. "I'm creating the environment I want to live in" became my new mantra, and that included my body and my brain. I signed up for a coaching certification and began the journey of understanding how my mind worked so I could shape it, intentionally. I did so much personal development work in that time that I actually got better by myself (with coaches doing God's work wherever I got stuck).

By 2022, I'd left my marriage, my job, tore down my apartment, and my old identity. All in one year. It was time for something new.