#24 - The March Newsletter: Belonging, Breaks and Burnout
I'm revising the March newsletter as I come back home to myself, sharing thoughts on belonging, burnout, and giving myself breaks during a challenging period.
Typically, I don’t edit or change up my posts much, other than grammatical shifts. But this newsletter was one I didn’t enjoy writing and I remember rushing through it.
I was also reminded of the authenticity that comes with creativity in this post from , leading me to rewrite this piece.
I grew up in a family that thrives on moving with speed. My Dad starts his day by multi-tasking with his phone(s) and cup of tea, sitting in a small armchair by a window, with the faded morning light shifting through our lace white curtains. Bless his efficient soul - I don’t know how he does it - but he thrives on the thousand things running through his mind.
Sometimes, it feels like he’s barely pausing for a moment to think.
For my Dad to rest, he has to be either incredibly sick or depleted of energy. It’s in his nature and such a strong part of his identity to be busy, I can’t imagine him being anything other than this.
So you can imagine how I didn’t grow up understanding the concept of rest: in fact, it was a concept in and of itself considered for the weak and considered a sign of laziness. If you were tired, you had to tough it out; simple as that.
It’s taken a long time and more than several conversations with my therapist to realise how essential wholehearted rest is.
I’m still learning what wholehearted rest looks like.
I used to thrive on rushing from one space to the next.
I remember the adrenaline feeling of this rush and thinking to myself, “Wow, I’m doing so much right now and it feels amazing”. It was a feeling that also played a very strong role with my self-worth; the busier I was, the more worthy I must be - of love, of acceptance, and of allowing myself to rest.
Gratefully so, I can’t rush liked I used to anymore.
Even then, I’ve had to intentionally slow down and let my heart know it’s okay to take my time.
Tell my heart that I’m allowed to take my time to sip on my coffee, enjoy the food I’m eating, and just spend time in nature watching the trees branches sway in the wind, or the golden light filter playfully through the leaves.
2024 has been far more intense than I imagined it to be.
Looking from the outside, any individual would assume that I’m ‘living the glamorous life’; I’m expanding on my photography and I’m travelling quite a bit. It wasn’t until recently in a conversation with a friend of mine that it came to my attention that I’ve been on the move non-stop since April last year.
In this space, there’s been such a lack of consistency and stability with the feeling of home and belonging.
This is what belonging looks like for me now…
I left Dubai at the end of January, and I was struck by the strangest of feelings of not knowing where I ‘belonged’.
It was this sense of I don’t have a home any longer.
I’ve given up my apartment in Dubai and at present there’s no one physical place I can call ‘my own’. Even my ‘home’ in Malawi doesn’t feel like home; I’m no longer the same person I used to be growing up in our family home; a fact that the surrounding community around me is also taking some time getting used to.
I’ve realised that in the space of new beginnings away from home - such as moving away for university or your career - your family and tribe may not see the changes that happen to you whilst you’re gone.
Give them time to see you for who you are now, and allow yourself to take up the space of your new role.
In this space of not knowing what the future holds for me and having left a place I’d been at for the last 10 years, I felt so lost.
Disconnected even.
It was so jarring for me to feel as disassociated as I was, and I was aching for a sense of home.
This was one of my thoughts from the last several weeks:
I listen to a bird cheerfully chirping in the background. There's a lawnmower running next door, which I'm waiting for the neighbour to be done with.
Just so that I can truly sit and listen to nature's music.
How is the wind rustling through trees so beautiful?
The multitude of birds - it gives me such gratitude within the heart. There is joy uplifting within the heart too.
I feel myself connected from within.
And every time I feel this way - this sense of connection, gratitude and tiny space of joy - it feels like my roots, my own sense of home and belonging within my body and mind, it all grows deeper.
I am content here.
...
The last month, I've been seeking for spaces of home externally. Frustrated, aching, and seeking for a space where I feel like I can belong. I knew that my sense of home is within, in a very rational sense...
But coming home to Malawi and not finding it home like it used to be was a jarring effect. It felt like something was missing, and I got pulled into seeking corners of ‘home’ in an external environment.
And I knew, I know, that…
Home is within the tenderness of my arms around my heart. It’s not about the place. It’s all within.
I do really need a break.
From healing, from life, from work; from what feels like everything.
I’m exhuasted.
A lot of these last few months has been about giving myself short breaks in the midst of what feels like burnout. I also realised some of the feelings of ‘lost’, ‘disconnected’, and ‘detached’ had more to do with not spending time with myself.
And I realised I needed to come back to my grounding practices to allow myself to reconnect.
My journal, my meditation practice, and slowing down in spaces of nature: these are my 3 grounding practices.
Ideally, I need a much longer break in order to relieve this feeling of burnout. My grounding practices have done wonders for my mental health: I’m more patient and doing my best to listen selflessly for example.
The calmness and peace I also feel from time to time has been so soothing.
But earlier in the week it struck me harder: burnout doesn’t get solved by grounding practices.
I don’t even think I realised that I was burnt out. I’ve mentioned it in passing a couple of times, and I can feel it within my body from time to time, in the form of a shorter temper, general exhaustion and feelings of irritability and impatience.
But I truly didn’t acknowledge the exhaustion both within the body and mind.
It’s a pattern I am falling into quite a bit as well - not acknowleding my deep desire for rest and a reset.
May this also be a reminder that…
To feel exhausted every day is a sign that something may need to change.
Honestly? Easing myself out of burnout is a process I’m still figuring out.
Can you feel it within your body?
If you pause and slow down long enough, can you hear your heart asking you to just let go of the weight and burden you’ve been carrying for so long?
You know… You can burn out from healing too. Evolving in the space of self-love, rediscovering yourself and pushing yourself to embrace a new version of you every day can be exhausting.
Your mind deserves a break.
So does your soul.
As I move forward in the next couple of months with my ongoing commitments and projects, I’m not - unfortunately - in a space where I can completely rest. But what I can do - and hope to do - is to take better care of myself within this space.
Until I can give myself wholehearted rest, this is what I’m going to try do for myself:
Stay off social media - I’ve actually already done this; being off of Instagram has been very good for me.
Stay off my phone whilst eating - I want and deserve to be able to enjoy my food.
Meditate and journal, on a daily basis. Even if it’s for a short period of time, I am allowed to have the space to connect with myself.
Continue to have fun - it’s probably going to be dance. Just writing it out makes me smile.
Take myself out on social excursions - even if it’s just to listen to a friend or simply catch up over a meal, I know my friends and my tribe can help me relieve this stressful period.
This isn’t going to completely solve my current state of fatigue; I truly am well aware of that.
No matter how well you know a scenario may not change though, does not mean you neglect your responsbility to take care of yourself.
And then come May 15th, I’m done. I’ve already decided I’m going to give myself a month off - if not longer - and just wholeheartedly spend time with myself and rest.
After all, it is one of my intentions this year. Which you can read more about here.
Some Journal Prompts:
If you are in a busy period, how can you allow yourself to pause and take care of yourself?
What is 1 thing you enjoy doing that you haven’t done enough of recently?
Reads I enjoyed this week:
(To the authors here, I apologise for the repeated tag. I do like this piece I’ve written far more though, and I wanted to maintain the same reads I had enjoyed from the time I wrote this newsletter).
got me thinking about expanding my meditation practice with intention in his post. And it’s not about jumping forward and pushing myself, but easing myself into self-reflection bit by bit.A snippet I enjoyed from his piece:
“The thing I feel the most today is simply gratitude that inner change is possible and that freedom is a matter of taking one small step after another.”
I’m not going to share a snippet just given I don’t want to share any spoilers. So feel free to take a read and I hope something from her piece resonates for you!
As someone who’s looking to slow down and listen to her body more mindfully, this was a piece that utterly spoke to me, from
- a writer who I recently subscribed to!Here’s a snippet I re-read for myself, and just asked me to breathe within the words.
“Maybe you are here too, needing to nurture and confront your humaness while the rest of you is recharging. We can plant ourselves in quieter spaces together.”
This is a beautiful resource for coming to terms with belonging and self-noticing. Thank you so much for including my post too. We're so aligned in our grounding practices: "My journal, my meditation practice, and slowing down in spaces of nature". I absolutely feel like this brings me back to myself, away from the urges to hurry and ignore what my body is telling me. I'm so looking forward to reading more of your musings as they arrive.
Just a beautiful post ❤️ I really felt that part about being in transition and the place you connected so much with being home, no longer feeling like that. Sometimes I feel the same, and I been coming to create that internal home within. For me, I imagine a calm lake when I meditate, a place no one or no thing can reach except my calm mind. And I sit there and watch the gentle waves break across the surface. I feel at home then ❤️