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I'm seeing a few folks I really admire worrying about burnout and the long-term impacts of trauma on their work and advocacy, so I wanted share my experience of the last few years, in case it's helpful.
The first thing to remember is that none of us came into this with our full reserves, going back to at least the 2016 election. Maybe you were just treading water but didn't realize it until the waves of 2020 sent you under. Burnout is a totally normal and natural response.
In May 2018, my mom died unexpectedly. In September 2018, I nearly died and spent two weeks in a Siberian hospital, one of which was in a the ICU. It took two more weeks to be flown home. I nearly died a second time in the ICU.
We did a final push to have a baby biologically, which ended in a hysterectomy in May 2019 -- almost a year to the day of my own mother's death. This ended a multi-year hell of infertility and debilitating adenomyosis that caused anemia so bad I needed weekly iron infusions.
When you spell it out, it sounds like a lot. It WAS a lot. But the compound nature of trauma is complicated. It's hard to process anything when the hits keep coming. I was really good at surviving...until I wasn't. I just couldn't find the energy. I felt like I lost my voice.
I beat myself up over this so much. You have no idea -- I felt like I was letting the climate movement down, on top of all the collaborators and everyone else who needed me to keep functioning. I felt like such a failure, empty pages staring at me while my inbox spilled over.
My near-death experience definitely brought life and work into perspective, in ways that are still with me today. And I'll talk about those lessons one day, too. But I still felt like I was quiet about the things that I wanted to be loud about, because I couldn't find the words.
In retrospect, it's easy to say, don't be silly, of course you should take breaks and recharge, it's a marathon not a sprint -- better still, it's a relay, or a tag team match, and you can pass the baton/tag out and rest, etc. But in the moment? I felt like I had lost my joy.
I thought I'd never, ever find that spark again -- the ideas, the words, and the energy to express them in a voice that didn't stumble over itself and crack from misuse.
It's taken time. But it's coming back.
It's taken time. But it's coming back.
What's helped? Giving myself space to grieve, to name out loud what I went through. Finally breaking down in the ways I couldn't in that awful year. Therapy. Learning the difference between self-care and avoidance. Listening, reading, moving my body, and sitting with my thoughts.
All of this takes time. You have to get out of survival mode to a safe place where the processing can happen. Be prepared for the grief and pain to hit you months or even years after the trauma. That's your body protecting you until you're ready to do the work.
I've come to think of grief and healing as work -- and it's exhausting. You can't accelerate this process anymore than you can speed up healing a broken bone, though you CAN slow it down. Time may feel like a luxury, but there are no short-cuts here. The only way out is through.
Something someone said when my mother died that has stuck with me most: may you have a good and successful grieving. It so perfectly fits this strange process of healing.
We're here beside you as you engage on this terrible, necessary work. The work will wait. We need you whole.
We're here beside you as you engage on this terrible, necessary work. The work will wait. We need you whole.
(*The other work will wait. The stuff you're upset at not being able to do right now because you're doing the other important work of healing.)
