No. 10: What My Exhaustion Was Really Trying to Tell Me

Listening to the Messages Beneath the Burnout

For a long time, I treated exhaustion like an inconvenience.

Something to be managed.

Pushed through.

Covered with caffeine or swallowed with guilt.

I thought being tired meant I wasn’t strong enough, organized enough, disciplined enough.

That if I just got better at managing my time or emotions, the heaviness would lift.

But eventually, the fatigue became too loud to ignore.

It settled into my skin.

Not just physical tiredness—but emotional depletion.

A kind of soul-weariness that no nap could fix.

And when I finally stopped trying to power through it—

when I sat with the exhaustion instead of overriding it—

I realized:

My body wasn’t failing me.

It was speaking to me.

Not Just Tired—Telling the Truth

My exhaustion wasn’t laziness.

It was a boundary I had long refused to honor.

A whisper that had turned into a scream.

It was saying:

– You’ve been carrying more than your share, again.

– You’ve been absorbing emotions that aren’t yours to hold.

– You’ve been shape-shifting into what’s expected instead of who you are.

– You are living out of alignment with what your spirit needs.

– You’ve forgotten how to feel safe in stillness.

– You need softness, not productivity.

– You need truth, not performance.

And perhaps most importantly:

You are overdue for your own care.

The Body Keeps Score—and Sends Signals

No spreadsheet or to-do list could capture what my nervous system already knew.

That I had been pushing past myself for too long.

That emotional over functioning is just as exhausting—sometimes more—than physical labor.

That living in survival mode had become a default I no longer recognized.

Our bodies don’t betray us.

They inform us.

But they speak in sensations, not sentences.

And if we’ve been taught to override, dismiss, or numb those signals, it can take time to relearn how to listen.

What I’m Practicing Now

I no longer see exhaustion as something to be ashamed of.

I see it as a call inward. A message. A mirror.

Now, when I feel that deep fatigue creeping in, I ask:

• Where am I abandoning myself right now?

• What am I trying to carry that isn’t mine?

• What part of me is asking to be heard—not fixed?

• What would it look like to stop proving, and just rest?

And when I can’t find a clean answer, I still slow down.

I breathe deeper.

I take something off the list, even if it feels “selfish.”

I remind myself: I am not here to be endlessly efficient. I am here to be whole.

A Quiet Reminder for You

If you’re tired in a way that rest hasn’t touched—please know this isn’t a flaw in you.

You may not be broken.

You may be breaking free from a version of your life that asks too much and offers too little.

You are not weak for needing more care.

You are wise for finally listening.

Your exhaustion might be trying to show you what your mind has been afraid to admit:

That something needs to change.

That you deserve to change.

That your body knows the truth—even when your mind resists it.

You don’t have to power through.

You get to pause.

You get to listen.

You get to begin again.

This month, I’m learning to let my body speak. To trust the fatigue. To find wisdom in the weariness. And to honor the map within me that always knew the way back home.

—Steph