What if the path to a regenerative future begins with regenerating ourselves?

“What does ‘regenerative’ mean?” It’s a question I was constantly asked whilst working on regenerative food systems. In recent months, the word ‘regenerative’ has been taking on a whole new meaning for me. Rather than regarding nature, the focus of my inquisition has been on myself. What does regeneration mean for me as a human being? What do I need to regenerate myself??And, what would the world look like if we all dedicated more time and importance to self regeneration?

As I write this, I am sitting on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala — a country, one year ago, wasn’t even on my radar to visit. My current journey of self-regeneration has brought me here. More on that in a moment.?First, let’s rewind a bit.?

September 22nd, 2021 – it’s the day after a big launch event promoting a new piece of thought leadership with my team. We had spent the previous 10 months deep in research and analysis, developing an innovative new direction for food brands and retailers to redesign their portfolios to regenerate nature. It should have been a day of celebration, but celebrating was the last thing I wanted to do — the last thing I could do. Instead, I lay in my bed in a flat in London I’d recently moved to, every part of me not wanting to rise up. I was physically exhausted, my voice seemed to have disappeared overnight, my head hurt. My body knew it was time to shut me down. It was time to restart the computer, or as my therapist would later say to me, ‘It’s time to replace this train’s engine, not just a maintenance job.’ She was right, but I didn’t realise this at the time. I got myself up and pushed on. After all, the world needed saving, there was no time to waste.?

I survived a lineup of speaking engagements, and during my last one, I knew something wasn’t right. My thoughts were in disarray, I struggled to piece together what I wanted to say coherently. My brain just wasn’t working, my memory had seemed to dissolve. I shut my laptop and started crying. Tears had become familiar. Too familiar, it seemed. I sat next to the canal in East London that afternoon, finding myself filling out an NHS mental health survey so I could receive a call back from a doctor. Something wasn’t right. I knew there was no more hiding, it was time to seek help.

One week later, after a conversation with my boss and then with a doctor, I was booking a flight to Toronto to stay with my parents and be taken care of. The doctor had written me off of work for 4 weeks due to ‘stress’ (‘burnout’ wasn’t a formal option at the time), though I naively thought I would only need 3 weeks. I was very wrong. Yes, I had encountered burnout before, several times in farm, but never quite like this. 4 weeks off work would turn into 8, followed by a gradual return to work, starting with 10 hours a week. This burnout was a decade in the making. The capital ‘B’ kind of Burnout that no quick fixes could heal. I had never experienced anything quite like it. Piercing headaches. A sense of cynicism and hopelessness. Rippling. Dissolved memory. Trouble looking at a phone screen. Waves of fatigue hit at unpredictable moments in the afternoon telling me it was time to lay down.

I didn’t know if and when my brain would work ‘properly’ again, and at times, I hoped that one day I might just have enough energy to work, period. I couldn’t stray far from a bed in case I needed to lay down. I had never been one to nap or lay down. Deep rest was a foreign practice. I was resistant, though eventually I accepted that my future may not include the career crusading Emma I had once rendered in my imagination. Instead, I was just focusing on my health and being alive.

The Burnout was a moment of reckoning. The beautiful ivory tower of achievement and society’s approval for creating positive impact in the world seemed to be falling all around me. I watched it crumble. My sense of identity was a pile of confusion. Without work, who was I? I spent a lot of time meditating. Sitting in silence, I finally faced many truths, including the fact that while working towards regenerative systems, I was degenerating myself. I simultaneously laughed and cried at the irony of this.?I knew I couldn’t live like this anymore. My life needed a fundamental redesign.

Sitting in silence, I finally faced many truths, including the fact that while working towards regenerative systems, I was degenerating myself. I simultaneously laughed and cried at the irony of this.?

Since 18 years old and reading Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature, I had dedicated myself to doing everything I could to create a future where we take care of nature. I used meditation, movement, and sleep diligently as tools to sustain myself just enough to keep going. And I did for quite some time. My needs were cast to the edges to continuously pursue my mission. I relentlessly kept going for years. I took everything I had learned as a high performing tennis player growing up and applied it to an environmental mission. Nothing could stop me, or so I thought. Then, the conditions of Covid, work projects, and a move to London put things in place perfectly for this Burnout to hit. While on the surface, some saw it as sad or shocking (I had several people ask me bluntly, ‘How did this happen to you?!’), I soon began to see this moment as a gift brought from the universe.

While it was deeply painful at a physical, emotional, spiritual level, even when I was in it, I knew deep inside that if I surrendered, this time would bear fruits. The Burnout taught me so much. It told I was at was done with where I was at, I needed to move on. It taught me that regeneration is ultimately a death practice. Just like a forest burning down, we have to let things die; to bring nutrients back to the soils, to make space for new growth, for new life to emerge. I needed to let things die. I needed to let the dreams of my 18-year-old self die. I had fulfilled them. I needed to let old identities of being the one who ‘saves the world’ and the ‘one who has it all together’ die. I had to let the attachment to clear career trajectory die. I had to let addictions to work (which seemed acceptable when working on a ‘good for the world’ cause) die. Stripping things back meant I had suddenly to be ok with being in the blank space. When the forest has burned down, there’s a period of nothingness, bare ground with no foresight of what the future holds.

Tempted to figure out a new job and rush into what’s next, I had to listen to the voice of knowing that rests in my belly that told me I needed to take a break. A real break. So, I left my environmental charity job in March, packed up a backpack, and set off to Canada without a plan. I had a clear personal mandate: regenerate myself. I gave myself six months to purely dedicate myself to this new mission. When people asked me what I planned to do next, they didn’t tend to understand this concept of?self-regeneration. Tagging my break as a ‘sabbatical’ seemed to be more digestible for most. In truth, this isn’t a sabbatical. I’m not going back to my old ‘normal’, just as we are not going back to an old ‘normal’ as a global society. My old ways of doing and being were simply unsustainable. Going back is no longer an option. I need to create something new, and I am now in the midst of discovering exactly what that looks like.

Burnout is on the rise, with a recent APA study finding 79% of U.S. employees had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey.

As I share my story with others in the social/environmental impact sphere, I am struck by how many people are on the brink of, or falling deep into, burnout. They are living the same irony I was: degenerating themselves while working on regenerative futures. It breaks my heart time and time again. With the state of the world recently, it’s no surprise that burnout is on the rise. A recent APA study found 79% of U.S. employees had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey. 36% reported cognitive weariness, 32% reported emotional exhaustion, and 44% reported physical fatigue—a 38% increase since 2019. Burnout seems to be increasingly common in the third sector, where it’s so easy to lose yourself in pursuit of mission that no single individual can meet.

As I am learning first hand, burnout is not a straight forward issue. There’s no simple formula and it’s definitely not just a matter of working too many hours. It’s largely about the intangible and unquantifiable — how we nourish our spirit and our life force; how we listen to our heart. When life force no longer flows, the body shuts down. The issues held in our tissues, that may have laid dormant for decades, flood to the surface and ask to be released. I believe we are experiencing this detox as a collective during these current times, and inevitably we are experiencing this as individuals. When it comes to recovery, there’s no set prescription; healing doesn’t have a timeline. Healing happens when the underlying roots are identified and dug up. It’s hard work, yet it’s the only way.

I write this piece in the hope that it can spark a new line of thinking. I hope we can ditch unsustainable approaches for creating a so-called better world, expand our consciousness, and make space for rest as a fundamental component for creating regenerative futures. Rather than consuming ourselves with fixing global systems, we ought to spend at least equal time on ourselves. Perhaps the pathway to transforming the outer world ultimately hinges on how we take care of our own inner worlds.

So, I invite you to ask yourself this question: ‘What can I do to regenerate myself today? This week? This month?’

In the coming weeks, I look forward to sharing a series of stories of regeneration from my time in Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and (soon) Mexico.

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