The flow, called resilience

Disclaimer: None of what I am going to tell you about I had come up with all on my own. The ideas in this and the essays that follow, have been shared, researched, and experienced by incredible womxn that I’ve been fortunate to hear, read, meet, and learn from. It is my service to share those insights with you today, through the lens of my own eyes, feelings and experiences.

It was late January, a Thursday to be exact at 10:28am. I was sitting at what was becoming a favorite coffee shop in Geneva and I was what most would call “busy”. The coffee shop overlooked a busy street for the city that in the peak of the commuting hours, could steal up to 45minutes of one's time. Only in crossing the famous Mont Blanc bridge, one of the direct crossings between the two sides of the city that are divided by the lake.

It was January 25th at 10:28am and I had had at least two coffees by this time. I was working at a distance with my team. We were under pressure to deliver the highlights and announcements of what was considered one of the biggest annual gatherings of the elite, decision makers, economists, and anyone who could afford to stay a night or two in the mountain village for 500+ swiss francs a night.

It was only January and it was only the beginning of a fresh new year. A glistening potential of New Year’s resolutions was still so very present in the air. But something different happened that morning. At that moment in the coffee shop, my work laptop went dark. It had been attached to my hip since I began the job five years earlier having never acted up as such. The screen turned off while the computer continued to run. The loud noise it was making and the increasing heat of its modem giving away its hunger for air. I tried to my best abilities to provide the laptop with first aid actions to help it breathe - I plugged it into the outlet, pressed firmly on the start button, tried setting it down. Finally left with no other choice except to take it to the emergency room - I headed to the office and straight to the IT department. There was no denying that the weight of the grappling machine was weighing down on my shoulders. My own body reflecting the heat that was penetrating from the machine itself.

It was the January freshness and the heat of the machine that accompanied the heaviness of my body to the office and walking straight to the IT help desk. I did my best to avoid any eye contact. With my laptop being out of order, messages and phone calls multiplied drastically. Burning for answers to the tasks that were not delivered, emails unanswered and virtual meetings unattended. I picked up one phone call, from a colleague I worked closely with based in São Paulo, Brazil. We’d been looking forward to my upcoming trip to Brazil where I would spend 3 to 4 weeks with her on the ground. While I could not get myself to say more to her than the fact that my laptop was not working (it did get fixed upon minutes of being with the IT specialist), I additionally repeated “No, it is not ok. No, I am not ok.” While she answered my statements as a matter of passé — “It will be ok”.

It is December and a couple of years down the line. And it is ok, I am ok. But at that moment and many moments that followed through my physical and mental healing of my burnout — it was not ok, I was not ok. The feeling I remember to this day is a constant wave hitting my body. I did not know when it would come and at what strength. For days that turned to weeks, I felt myself grappled by the weight of the water. Sometimes unable to breathe for long periods of time, my body tired and more tired. Like a direct bright light in my eyes, I also felt emotionally exposed and could do nothing as the tears poured out of my eyes - day, night, 5am or 3 in the afternoon. I slept, I wept, I faced the ocean.

I experienced the boiling point of my burnout at a very physical and emotional level. It was not something that came out of nothing. It was a long discontent with myself and with the basic needs. The need of rest for my body and mind, the need of being heard by my loved ones, my colleagues and myself.

And part of the process for me was to accept that at that point in time it was not ok, I was not ok. To allow for those around me to accept that I was not ok. That I was not ok at that point and time but continued to believe that I would be. In fact, the healing was not on anyone’s timing. The healing was part of me facing the waves and eventually becoming the waves. The healing was accepting the parts of me that were deep within, my vulnerabilities, my unpolished edges and eventually allowing them to live them.

story to be continued ...

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April 2021 has been marked as the Stress Awareness Month. And I share this story because it has been the beginning of my journey in rebuilding the root flow of my resilience. It also is an increasingly common experience amongst western society, as shown by a 2018 study that from 7,5000 employees, 2 out of 3 individuals had experienced some degree of burnout.

Additionally, 2020 has gifted us with many opportunities for going deeper on understanding why we do the things that we do. However, it has also increasingly blurred healthy boundaries between work and life, making it harder for some of us to rest, dream and connect to ourselves while in the spiral of urgency and divided attention to media, numbers and breaking news.