How To Burn Out In The Best City In The World…
I was a really shy kid. I didn’t want to chat with others much and I remember the world seeming pretty scary to me at all times. My sister was older, a natural performer, funny, and adorable. I learned to copy what she was doing and who she was to help me form my own identity. My quiet and mature demeanor made me a favorite with teachers in school. I mentored other children and helped tutor them. I won writing awards. I would be asked to run errands and send messages to other teachers during class because I was bright enough that missing lessons wasn’t of great concern to anyone. I was so proud of this early identity- achieving, winning awards, and standing out in that way gave me authority and made me feel better about myself. I even regularly helped provide emotional support to my older sister when she would be upset or scared of something and when she would call me out of my classes to console her. My role as the leader of a pack, a mentor, an achiever, and an emotional soother was cemented early on.
The problem with playing a role is that it wasn’t really me, or at least not all of me. But it was an identity- it was safe and I was valued and that is what was important to me at the time.
In high school, I was determined to leave my hometown as soon as I could and go live in the most fabulous place I could think of- New York City. I would take the train alone to New York on Saturdays while still in high school and attend classes at The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Taking classes about fashion, art, sales and merchandising felt glamorous to me and made me feel special. To attend college there would mean focusing on those things versus the ‘regular’ college experience that I figured would be filled with sororities, history classes, and wearing outfits that included sweatpants. I wanted to be surrounded by other high achievers and creatives - students that were featured on style blogs online.
I took the leap and moved to NYC to attend FIT the next year as a freshman. I was already someone that felt safer having an identity of achievement, leader, and hard worker and New York certainly helped cement that even further. But it’s not a forgiving city- especially for an 18-year-old who doesn’t have a job or make their own money and doesn’t really know who she is yet. I quickly got lost in the club scene where I was always let in underage and surrounded by models and famous people. That all probably sounds glamorous but for an awkward 18 year old that didn’t really have an authentic identity or confidence yet, it put me in a state of constant comparison and gave me massive feelings of inadequacy.
At FIT, I was caught up in the style scene where we all collectively tried to be the best dressed or wear the most outrageous thing even when attending a non-fashion class like gym or math. And then there was New York City in general. I was lost in the bustle of the big city, how overstimulating it could be, and how unspecial I was in it.
Survival mode kicked in even harder when I graduated from college. It was 2008 and the height of the recession. Jobs were scarce and panic set in for me and my fellow graduate friends. All of my achievements and good grades couldn’t influence the state of the economy and I was ultimately forced to work as a retail sales associate and then a customer service phone manager. This season of my life was scary, destabilizing, and demoralizing. I quickly realized that without the structure of school or a corporate world to tell me how to achieve and rise up the ranks, I was more lost than ever.
As the economy slowly stabilized, I was able to get a full time job in textiles due to FIT being my alma mater (the hiring manager went there as well). While the company was fairly small and family owned, we worked all day with the corporate giants of the world like Walmart and Target and were constantly communicating with (and often scolding) our large factories in China, India and Pakistan- pushing them to do more, send it quicker, make it cheaper.
When I felt it was time to leave that company and look elsewhere for bigger and better things (there’s that little achiever coming in again), I ended up working in the same building but at a larger manufacturer. I thought I could reach higher and always be successful in whatever I did but this time, that didn’t go as expected. I took the job because it looked more impressive on paper and it paid more but it never really felt like a stable or safe place to work. I ignored my intuition (which gave me many signs) and kept striving…but I quickly realized that I was in over my head. I struggled to keep up with the extremely demanding workload while watching colleagues get applauded for staying online until midnight to work out issues with our international offices. My manager was younger than me and didn’t understand why I wanted any work-life balance.
This wasn’t the first time I started to feel physically ill when things weren’t aligned in my life, but it was the first time I noticed because it was more intense than it had ever presented before. I didn’t know it at the time but my body had already started to scream at me to say ‘Slow Down!’ and ‘Align with your core values!’ but I wasn’t listening. I had really intense menstrual cycles around that time where I would be completely debilitated and need to rest for days. A few months into the job, I pulled my neck out so badly that I couldn’t move for the better part of a week. I developed a lot of stomach sensitivities to foods that never bothered me before. I continued to ignore all of this and kept trying to make the job work- but the universe ultimately stepped in. The company started letting many of us go shortly after, one after another- including me.
I remember that day so vividly. The humiliation of packing up my things into a small box (that ended up breaking open on the side of 32nd street spilling out my plant pots, soil, and all my nice stationery all over the sidewalk while I was crying hysterically over the mess) and walking out of a building I had worked in to build my career for the last five years. I had no idea what I would do next and no idea who I was without my job.
I felt frozen. I was unemployed and humiliated. I forced myself to apply for jobs in the textile industry again but ultimately each one would not work out, leaving me even more confused as to what the next phase of life should look like for me. No one is ever prepared to lose their job and change their everyday routine and it never feels good to be fired... but looking back, I can’t believe how shaken to my core I was when this happened because of how little I knew myself and how misaligned I was with my career and life in New York. I remember not even allowing myself to go to a museum or do something fun while I was unemployed because of how ashamed of myself I was. Looking back, I know that if I had taken more time to reflect on things, what I really wanted, and do some self care, I may have done things differently in this next phase instead of jumping head first into what would become my ten year advertising career.
A twist of fate brought me to an advertising agency where I was offered a job - my boyfriend at the time was working there and told me “you’d be really good at this”. I latched onto that sentiment and applied. To get hired, the catch would be that I had to be willing to start at the bottom of the ladder as an entry level associate. I was desperate to get out of my current situation so I jumped at the opportunity. A whole new lifestyle came with this job and to survive, you would need to drink the Kool-Aid and get on board with all that came along with it.
The job was intense on its best days and there were lots of late hours. A work hard/play hard mentality was prevalent with constant socializing amongst our internal teams, with vendors and with clients. My sleep was diminished, my blood alcohol levels higher than ever, and I got sick often and intensely- but the job also ticked all the boxes of who I felt comfortable being. It felt nice to hide myself in a career that I was always being told I was good at and where I was applauded for always doing more, giving more, being more.
The constant stress of the job weighed heavily on my nervous system- it continued on that way through 2020 and then was followed by the pandemic, losing my dad and grandmother, coping with a very ill mother, and planning a wedding in another country. This ultimately made my system cry for help more than ever before. My body started rebelling- stomach issues, headaches, emergency appointments to the acupuncturist for back pain, heart palpitations, anxiety, looping thoughts, and not being able to decompress at the end of the day. The next phase was chronic Epstein Barr virus and Long Covid (which causes CFS, auto-immune and more). These are things I am still dealing with today in some form- however with a very different perspective and approach thanks to lots of self care and learned healing modalities.
Rethinking my identity outside of my job and how it was affecting my illness started with a leave of absence of four months in 2023. It took me almost half of that time to even begin to relax and properly rest without feeling like I needed to make myself a to-do list and to not feel shame for caring for my body. I slowly started to find out who I was or at least what I enjoyed doing without my job filling most of my time.
It didn’t happen overnight but what started to come through slowly was the ability to do self care, to heal more deeply than I had been able to before, and to start to really feel gratitude and presence again while embracing the unknown. Many days were very frustrating, sometimes scary, and heavy with fatigue and other inflammatory symptoms. But it was a start.
During my leave of absence, I had a random idea that it might be helpful for me to attend some sort of healing retreat. I had never done anything like that before, had no idea what type of retreat would be most helpful, and had a pretty limited budget to make it happen. Not long after this thought, the universe came through for me and I got the opportunity to attend a retreat in Mexico for a week during my leave of absence. The timing, the cost, the location -everything worked out serendipitously. I found an article about the best retreats around the world and The Buena Vida was listed. I loved that it was female owned and led, I loved the beautiful jungle location, I loved that it was a small group, and that it offered ceremonial and sacred containers to heal. I took a chance and traveled to the Mexican jungle alone.
The retreat in Mexico ended up being everything I wanted it to be and more. It was the start of my deeper healing journey and a complete shift in perspective on many things. It was a time to renew and recenter myself with plant medicine and connect with other humans in ways I didn’t even know were possible before attending. I still speak to many of my fellow retreat-goers today. We only spent a week together but we check in on each other like family. It was a deeply moving experience that is still hard to describe to anyone that wasn’t there.
I carried the glow and magic of the retreat with me once I was back for as long as I could. I continued working through life with a new perspective but ultimately my body still said no. I was still working my same job and burning myself out, I was still spending all my battery as soon as it was full, and I still had a lot of unprocessed emotions and grief to work out. My body continued to give me signs and symptoms that were begging me to pay attention.
So in April of 2025, I decided enough was enough. That I would finally decide to choose myself above anything else and that somehow it would all work out if I did. So I put a date on the calendar to quit so that I couldn’t back out. It was on my ten year anniversary of working there which seemed oddly appropriate. Quitting on that date sealed up ten years of effort- of good times and not-so-good times, of a huge chunk of my identity and how I valued myself as part of the world.
I had already moved to CT by now due to Covid and to care for my family members, but quitting would also be firmly saying goodbye to New York City. I had been deeply connected to it since 2004 and now I wouldn’t have to go into my office ever again- I wouldn’t have to ride that elevator all the way up the World Trade Center, commute on the subway in the morning, or take in all the wonder of the city but also all the smells and chaos and confusion.
New York really is an incredible city- and it’s so special because you can make it whatever you want to. But when you don’t know what you really want or who you want to be, it’s hard to step out of its constant celebration of achievement, overwhelm, and ultimately burnout.
This is why I’m now doing the work I do- for myself, for you, for anyone that needs someone to tell them it’s okay to take a pause even if just for a moment. Quitting my job was one of the most rewarding moments of my life. Choosing yourself and what you need for your highest good is never a mistake. All of the lessons and modalities I learned out of necessity to survive, I am now so happily sharing with you all so that we can ensure you don’t get to the point that I did. I am so proud to provide spaces to be in community, to heal, to grow, to share- and for you to choose YOU.
I invite you to explore LB Healing offerings to discover ways to nourish yourself and rediscover who you are outside of all of the identities we all cling to for survival and make space for more discovery and softness. I am so glad I did and continue to do so, and I can’t wait to see who you become when you do the same.