On Surviving Burnout: Lessons in Independence, Care, and Softness

2025 hollowed me out in ways I didn’t expect. As I move toward 2026, I carry both the break and the beginning.

Early in the year, my body began refusing what my mind still insisted was possible.

I could manage two days of work; by the third, even sitting up felt insurmountable. Tears slipped from one eye as I lay still, trying to will myself upright. My head ached with a dull, unrelenting weight. Days blurred into weeks, swallowed by a dense mental fog, just when clarity and discipline were meant to be non-negotiable. I was pursuing a doctorate, had a full-time job, and was maintaining multiple responsibilities. The gap between what was expected and what I could offer widened until it became its own quiet grief.

The symptoms didn’t pass. Headaches crept into migraines. Fatigue deepened into depletion. I moved through my days with a slowness that was unfamiliar and unwelcome. Simple routines became unmanageable. At times, even caring for myself felt beyond reach.

Eventually, pushing through was no longer an option. I asked for help. I took time away from work. I began therapy with intention: structured, consistent, and difficult. One cycle lasted eight weeks. Another six. And as 2026 begins, I am in the middle of a further six-week block.

This wasn’t reflective work or a seasonal reset. It was survival, repetitive, uncomfortable, and often unglamorous. The few days off work offered little relief. Healing carried its own emotional weight. What sustained me was showing up, again and again. Burnout doesn’t release you suddenly; it loosens its grip slowly, over time, with structure and sustained support.

Not long after the burnout began, my entire team was made redundant. The timing was brutal. I was already empty. At first, it felt like insult on top of injury. But with distance, I see it differently. Not all endings are failures. Sometimes, they are necessary pauses. Sometimes, they are a form of rescue.

Even in that fragile season, life didn’t stop completely. I made a significant investment decision, secured permanent residency, and continued my doctoral research. A clean break from responsibility didn’t feel possible, nor did I want one. Continuing with the work, even through fog and fatigue, gave me direction when everything else felt uncertain. That thread of continuity mattered. It still does.

I also moved to a new city; gentler, quieter, slower. A place where people smile at strangers, and light lands softly on water. The shift wasn’t dramatic, but it was decisive. Here, I’m learning to accept moments of ease without suspicion, and to recognise that not everything good must be earned through hardship.

And in the background of it all, writing returned, not as performance, but as presence. Fragments at first. Voice notes, scribbled lines, thoughts spoken aloud before they were shaped on paper. Writing became a place where nothing needed to be resolved, only named. It became a safe space for me, a practice that didn't require any form of demand.

This past year clarified something I had sensed for a long time: how often independence is misunderstood. Friends and acquaintances, often well-meaning, made comments that revealed a quiet assumption: that because I appeared functional, I must have been fine. After all, I kept my social media active. That performance, however curated, told a very different story. But that’s the reality of life. From the outside, functionality can be deceiving. People mistake resilience for ease, and silence for strength. Independence is often read as self-containment, as proof that support isn’t needed. But survival is not the same as sufficiency. The ability to carry on does not mean the load is bearable. True independence is not about refusing help; it is often sustained by it.

One Sunday, Yan called to say she was coming over. I said no. She said she’d bring help. I hesitated again, afraid of being a burden. But she arrived with her husband. He put away boxes while I sat nearby; their kindness wasn’t performative; it was quietly extended.

Nikky, my childhood friend, reached out not long after. She was flying in and asked if we could spend Christmas together. What might have been a quiet holiday became the most communal Christmas I’ve had in over a decade.

Tee and I missed each other over the holidays, but one afternoon she called, unprompted. “You’ve been on my mind,” she said. “I’m worried.” She asked if we could wait and pray together the next day.

Yan also drew me back to church, away from the ease of online services and into a room where people sang and prayed side by side. Into fellowship. Into presence.

These moments, quiet, faithful, and freely given, began to rearrange me. I saw how often love arrived without spectacle, and how unready I was to receive the same love and care I so easily offer. I began to see that care doesn’t necessarily come ceremoniously. It’s sustained gentleness that slowly transforms us.

Over time, a pattern emerged: take, break, share. A rhythm familiar from scripture, but newly intimate, one to me. The breaking is no longer theoretical, nor is the waiting that follows. As this new year begins, my prayer is to enter the season of sharing not from depletion, but from overflow, not because all has been resolved, but because restoration has started steadily, and this time beyond my own effort.

And this restoration is grace. Grace carried through people who stayed. Who offered what they did not owe. Who lifted what they did not cause. I still live on the receiving end of it.

Recent conversations have also reshaped how I think about support. We are responsible not only to be cared for, but to care well in return, to give without extraction, to help without manipulation, to be part of each other’s wholeness. To participate with intention.

Because why not us?

This year, I am about the Lord’s business in ways not yet visible, faithfully, not through performative spectacle or showmanship, but by adding transformational value to those in our circle, one day at a time.

My help is from God.

So I will not set goals that require constant resilience.

I’m choosing rest that doesn’t have to be earned, and restoration that unfolds without urgency. I’m making space for relationships rooted in love, prayer, presence, and patience. I want to grow in ways that honour my limits as much as my potential. I’ll continue to pour into others, but gently, and without self-erasure, while being more open to receiving than I have ever been.

Most importantly, I’m holding onto softness, the kind that allows life without armour.

2025 was hard. It broke me in quiet, unrelenting ways.

But I enter this year with gratitude, clarity, and a deep commitment to live gently and deliberately, to honour the version of me that endured, the one who survived, and the one still becoming.

Happy New Year. Cheers to rest, restoration, and wholesomeness. - Mofoluke ❤️