Ballad of Burnout: a helper lost and found by Kerry Makin-Byrd (me) © 2023

Part 1 of 4 here and Part 2 of 4 here.

8 Anger inspires action

I want to escape, irrational and impolite

I want to slam the door behind me and run away

Also I want to stay forever and be wildly successful

I stare at the dream I painted

The trap I wove

With a small side door ajar like the open question it is

I begin looking for permission

I confess to my loved ones

That I feel crazy

Out of bounds

Can no longer see straight

I am alternately numb, stockholm-like, needy, and deranged

My best friend says, “Protecting the feelings of a structure that would not extend the same to you is not your responsibility.”

Protecting the feelings of a structure that would not extend the same to you is not your responsibility.

A colleague shares good news of her upcoming book deal

I crumple in tears, the emotions so unexpected I can’t hide them

It is selfish, self centered and unprofessional

I am heartbroken by the mess of my own work life, so far from what I hoped, desired, imagined

I no longer sleep through the night

I don’t know it yet but I am mining for courage

I repeat over and over Maya Angelou’s advice

“When you know better, you do better.”

I repeat it like a heartbeat

Like the last life preserver

As waves of shame crash over my head,

I clutch it and soothe myself

“When you know better, you do better.”

My work desk is piled with white scraps of quotes

A blizzard of love and urging

What kind of courage is needed here? Do I have it?

I have to be harder on myself

than anyone who loves me has the heart to be

I asked myself again and again who am I serving?

My teacher asks

“What if being authentic is saying No?”

A startling, small revolution

Is that true?

How could that be true?

What would that mean?

If saying no were allowed, what would be possible for me? Permissible? Permitted?

In a jagged lightning bolt moment, I say to a burnt out friend

“But where is the room for you? Can you author a life where

You are allowed to have needs, wants, emotions?

Can we create a sanctuary for your own heart?”

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Disembodied, I float above myself and laugh

I decide to shut the fuck up and save myself

Spring unfurls and the harbor water is just warm enough to not be dangerous

I start swimming

I swim like fuck1

I stumble through the day’s work, then fling myself into the water

Washing off the day

Smacking my body back into a reminder that I am alive

I find a shell the size of a pea,

Symbol of the humble, beautiful, miniature life I yearn for

The one I refuse to create

The veil is ripping away

On a perfect bluebird sunny day, I sit in nine hours of meetings. I appear to listen, blank-faced, but inside I twist again on the hook of self blame, yearning to relax into the undertow, to be dragged away. There is a strange comfort in the thought of going back to what I know: yes it is my fault, my weakness, only my responsibility to improve.

Throughout the day, a gull repeatedly crashes against my office window, blinded by the reflection of the sun. I smirk at the universe, rolling my eyes at her heavy handed metaphor. She growls back, “Have you saved yourself with less?”

I spin cycle between shame, heart break, and denial

Each time I get stuck, my teacher says

The past is forgiveness work; now is the time for action2

In the midst of this mayhem, I’m invited to give a talk on burnout and helpers

The irony is dripping

I review the symptoms of stress and tick them off in my head

I review the values and strengths of helpers that create vulnerabilities for burnout

• I value selflessness and am good at placing others above myself, thus I am vulnerable to ignoring or neglecting my personal wellbeing.
• I value stoicism and equanimity, have a strength in enduring in the face of significant hardship, thus am vulnerable to downplay or ignore my own needs and struggles.

And on and on

As I speak, I listen to myself with bemusement, judgment, a bit of wonder

See how compassionate I am for my crispy colleagues?

I do not blame them...I do not judge their journey

We are exactly where we are, where we must be - our only decision now is the next step

See how clean it can be when it’s not personal?

After the talk ends, I sit in silence

What if I was my own therapist,

Cheering, cajoling, easing the knots of emotion apart

What would feel simple? clear? filtered out of the cataclysm of my hysteria?

In the silence I see the golden ribbon of my life,

Mothering and a marriage I am still proud of, touched by sweetness and presence

And a deadening weight that arrives each Sunday evening as I look to the work week ahead

What if this was simple?

May I love and be loved

May I know peace

May I be free from anger and pain

May I know peace

I gather a circle of loved ones around me

Women who hold me as I spin out and bend toward the comfortable old lie

Women who sing me back to myself, like a single tone played again and again

A clear tone so I can find my true pitch

Fighting the undertow means looking directly at a darker truth,

I am one small screw in a machine

I mean nothing and I am not special

I am a tool

I do not drown in the undertow

I speak clearly with a wavering voice

I know just enough to not backslide

I make a plan to leave

My fortune cookie says I am ready to embark on a lonely quest3

9 Depression

I submit my resignation. Finally, clearly.

Even here, in the brief violent afterbirth of urgent meetings

there are glinting moments of peace

A perspective wider than my narrow ego

I am drifting out of an old orbit

Admiring the small catastrophes

Spinning slowly out into untethered space

My calendar is suddenly vast, silent

I hear nothing from the grandfatherly manager who sent my daughter birthday presents,

Lunch club colleagues who consoled me when my marriage was rocky

Persona non grata4

I am no longer a member of the mission

I try to soothe myself

I did this

I made this choice

I fought hard to break out

But I haven’t learned new tricks yet

I eat breakfast each morning, then stare at the absence

empty calendar, empty inboxes

After years of pinging notifications

I can only hear what isn’t there

My days are wide, yawning, open, aching

Wondering

wandering

Strangers think I am on beach holiday, clucking admiringly at my vacant schedule

I can’t explain that I feel imprisoned, lost in my own unimportance

I love work. I want to work.

I sit in stunned silence,

marveling at how quickly I was cut away from what I clung to for so long

I wonder, if a person stands alone in the forest, does she exist?

I look backwards

When I reveled in the heady buzz of unbroken strings of appointments and messages and urgency

bursting with false evidence I was needed, wanted, helping

After the roaring

the silence is deafening

In Thailand there is a pure gold statue of the Buddha

For hundreds of years it was encased in clay and bits of colored glass to hide its value

During a move, the large hulking relic was dropped, smashing to the ground

After the fall, the dull armor fractured, falling away in chunks

Underneath layers of clay movers found the golden statue

Yes, maybe clay is my degrees, my “noble” profession

I feel the cracking facade but have no faith about what is underneath

I am no more (or less) a gold statue than any of us

In the open days I feel

Worthless

Meaningless

Unimportant

I am in the custom built dilemma of the helper:

To feel unseen, unappreciated

To reckon with my own illusions of importance

I mourn the dream that I will earn belonging

That I will demonstrate my value through my service

That I will be anointed as worthy by the outside judge and jury

I mourn the harder truth

I am both meaningless and full of meaning

a LinkedIn version of success

simultaneously emotionally bankrupt, empty souled, and lost

I am both deeply replaceable to a medical system

And irreplaceable to a child, a husband….to myself

there is a cycle of art and life running through my veins

I bow to the hardest truth

This reckoning was always an inside job

Part 4 of 4 coming soon…

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