😭 The sparkle left my eyes completely for 2.5 years after my dad died.

😭 The sparkle left my eyes completely for 2.5 years after my dad died.

It didn’t look like typical grief (I imagine a mourning dress and veil). It looked like business as usual.

But behind the scenes….

I couldn’t finish emails without crying.
I re-recorded Reels 7 times just to look “energetic.”
I stared at the screen for 2 hours and still didn’t remember what I was supposed to post.

Burnout isn’t always a collapse.

Sometimes it’s a slow, quiet dissociation triggered by something else.

Here’s what finally helped me get through it (aside from therapy and TIME):

* The “Burnout Debrief” ritual – asking deeper questions (What triggered it? What did I override? What needs mending?)
* The Rule of 2:1 x for every external output (client call, post, podcast), I required 2 QUICK internal inputs (walk, silence, breathwork, journaling).
* Grief-supportive workflows – batching content during good weeks, automating delivery, reducing meetings to 2 per week.

When you build your business without accounting for life (growth, struggles, setbacks, grief), you build a prison.
When you include space for those things, you build a sanctuary you love.

And that changed everything.

#businessowners #mentalhealth #burnoutrecovery #entrepreneurmindset #healingjourney #griefsupport