Burnt out creative mother who uses art to rewrite her story

The hot water hits my chest. Right at the middle. I hold it there long enough for my skin to shift to red. And then I hold some more.

It eases the knot somewhat even if I know it’s just a temporary fix. The angry voices in my head are louder. Angrier.

I got 38 days of sick-leave and the numbers feel as though they’re jumping out of the page, making fun of me.

“Ha, you think you’ll get rest? We’re just another ticking bomb. An illusion of the ease you desire, but really we’re just here to push the problem forward”.

I’ve rested more in the past year than I have my entire life. So to suddenly be at a point of asking for help, only to receive the advice and instructions that I’ve already been doing doesn’t even feel like a step back. It’s more like I fell down the stairs completely.

Start over b*tch.

Keep explaining yourself. Keep staring out the window and rest your body and mind as if the world won’t keep running ahead around you.

The difference being an independent business owner is that nobody takes the reign for you. You can’t just quit. You can’t just pause. I didn’t have a break since I was 13 and started working to be able to leave in the first place.

What’s happening to me is logical from the outside, but when you’re inside a system that lack the structural support you need, more rest is just another short term fix.

38 days of potential financial support will save me one month of campaigns. That’s it. It won’t lift the eternal financial pressure that keeps growing the more money you make.

Because the more money you make, the more taxes, the more costs, the more you feel like you’re being robbed in front of your eyes.

The economic climate, housing market, lack of built in support networks that parents face today are something else.

We’re not just tired.

We’re structurally handicapped but aren’t allowed to scream it from the roof because then we’re entitled. Too privileged. Another in between the crack of two chairs situation.

Not bad enough, but too good for real change to come.

The painful truth is clear: nobody is coming to save you. No external factor can rewire your system at the root. It can ease. It can soothe. It can support temporarily. But ultimately I’m the one who needs to take action to get out of suffocation.

So when the doctor tells me to reduce and to rest, within I’ve got raging wolves howling to go in stronger.

I only went to ask for help, because I committed to go all in on rebuilding myself. Standing up for myself. Voting for my work again. To put myself out there. Share my art. Do more art. Claim more space. But how do I explain that to the doctor?

That I’m in the process of graduating from the black hole of emptiness into full agency. A rebrand under my own name. Ownership. Legacy building. No more efforts going into the empty cracks of other’s expectations.

Going to bed now feels like shrinking back. Hiding under the blanket when I need to get up on stage.

Emily Nagoski got it right when she addressed passive rest as making you suspended in air without a mattress to catch you when you return on the ground. Recovery from burnout needs to focus on rebuilding the mattress so that the landing gets softer.

Thats why I write.

I’m writing myself free.

I’m writing myself back into my own story.

Reclaiming agency and autonomy, which by the way I vaguely remember Richard Ryan and Edward Deci talked about in self determination theory: doing things because I choose to, not merely from survival.

Maybe that’s the reframe right there. 38 days isn’t a joke. It’s a one month leeway to sew my mattress in the colours of my choice as opposed to pumping out another last minute campaign to get the bills paid on time.

It’s easy to say “rest”.

But rest only works if the structure changes while you rest, which it won’t unless you change it yourself.

Water is running cold and I can hear the red boiler roaring loudly downstairs.