It didn’t happen all at once. Burnout rarely does.

It creeps in quietly—when you’ve been holding your breath for years, maybe decades. When you’ve been pushing, pleasing, producing, and performing, even when your heart is breaking inside. When survival becomes second nature, and silence feels safer than truth.

I didn’t burn out because I was weak. I burned out because I stayed silent for too long.

I stayed silent about the trauma I carried from childhood—about the fear, the confusion, the ache of growing up believing I was unworthy of love or safety. I stayed silent through an unhealthy marriage, convincing myself I had to hold it together for the sake of my children, my image, and my career. I stayed silent in boardrooms, even as I excelled in leadership roles, because I had learned that being vulnerable—being human—was not acceptable in the high-stakes world I had climbed through.

And silence has a cost.

For me, the cost was my confidence, my health, and a piece of my soul. I was successful by every external measure, but internally, I was exhausted. Not just physically, but emotionally. Spiritually. I was disappearing into the roles I had mastered.

Retirement should have felt like freedom. But instead, when my husband and I relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, for his new job, I realized I didn’t know who I was without the pressure. Without the title. Without the constant drive to prove myself.

So, I started walking.

The Ice Age Trail became my quiet companion. Day after day, I moved through the trees, letting nature hold space for everything I had been too afraid to feel. There were no expectations on the trail—just breath, and footsteps, and time. I started journaling in my backyard. At first, it was scribbled fragments. But over time, those fragments became sentences. The sentences became stories. And the stories became the truth I had carried for far too long.

I wasn’t just burned out. I was buried under years of silence.

And slowly, word by word, I began to unearth myself.

Writing my book, Iron Will, wasn’t about becoming an author. It was about becoming myself. For the first time, I allowed my story to matter—not just the polished parts, but the pain, the struggle, the survival.

That shift changed everything.

I now speak, coach, and write to help others find the freedom that only comes when we stop hiding. But even more than that, I live differently. I walk the Ice Age Trail now with energy and purpose, remembering the woman who first set foot there—exhausted, unsure, quietly breaking—and honoring the woman I’ve become.

We don’t burn out because we’re weak. We burn out because we keep pretending we’re not hurting. Because we keep shrinking. Because we keep swallowing our truth in environments that reward silence.

But healing begins when we choose to speak.

And sometimes, healing begins with a single step in a quiet Wisconsin forest, when the only sound you hear is your own breath—and you realize, finally, you are safe enough to exhale.

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