I'm ambitious for my work to support my life, not the other way around

My story

I grew up seeing women exhausted

I grew up in vibrant working-class West London. Wall’s Vienetta was for special occasions and our pyjamas were heated up in front of the gas fire (what was health and safety??). I spent the first half of my childhood in social housing, with the world-famous Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road on my doorstep and the second half in leafy suburbs where houses had bay windows and driveways. I saw how hard immigrant families worked to survive and thrive despite the barriers they faced. I saw how mothers with middle-class aspirations made social mobility possible for their families.

I saw how immigrant communities banded together to support each other. This, coupled with being a child from a multi-faith family, taught me that difference makes things more interesting. Like puzzle pieces, the bends and curves enable us to connect.

I was an observant child. I watched how families and communities inform the people we become. I noticed that the women around me were audacious and powerful out in the world, then a smaller version of themselves at home.

Then there was my aunty, an 'international businesswoman' who possessed a vitality and joy I didn't see in other women. I remember being about six years old and thinking, if that's what an international businesswoman looks like, that's what I want to be. She was an example of ambition fuelling life rather than depleting it.

I've always been an advocate

One day I bumped into my brother and one of his friends. His friend, a tall, strapping twenty-something man at the time, thanked me for retrieving his bike from a local bully who had stolen it when we were kids. On another occasion, someone reminded me of when I stopped them being picked on at school. I wasn't an angel. I had my mean girl moments. I've also always had a strong sense of justice.

I studied media and communications and worked in entertainment at the beginning of my career. At the same time, my mum was a foster carer and I was an ad hoc volunteer youth worker. I was frustrated by young people's experience of the care system and thought I could advocate for them if I became a social worker. A few days later I saw an advert for trainee social workers in the local paper. I thought it was fate, and the rest is history.

I was a children and family social worker for just under 16 years. For the last two, I ran my own practice as an independent social worker and family court advisor. It was a high-stress, high-stakes career. I was literally making recommendations about how and where children and their families lived their lives. I was passionate and I was good at it. I was also so utterly exhausted. I had no idea that this didn't have to be my normal, or that it would compromise my health. I believed that I 'just' had to be more 'resilient'.

Later I realised that my resilience was contributing to my exhaustion.

My body said no more

I thought working for myself would fix it. It didn't. At the height of my burnout I was up at 5.15am swinging kettlebells around at a boot camp four times a week. I thought the answer to overwhelm was getting stronger so I could do more.

I refused to believe that the answer to going too fast was to slow down. Perish the thought!

Slowing down was for the weak and I was strong, resilient and had to work twice as hard… until my body said no and pumped the brakes with a panic attack that nearly floored me on the way to work.

My GP said I was anxious and depressed, their answer was a prescription. I knew that the remedy to my situation could not be found in a blister pack. A nutritional therapist was the first person to say the word burnout. Until then, I'd assumed I was lazy!

I realised I was over-functioning. Once I saw it in myself, I saw it everywhere. Everyone around me was overextending themselves and we accepted it as normal. I didn't want to normalise exhaustion for my daughter. I didn't want her to internalise the message that being worthy and respected meant being a martyr. Like my aunt had done all those years ago, I wanted to model ambition fuelling life rather than depleting it.

There was more to life than what I was experiencing

Positive psychology helped me to recover from burnout and understand what I needed to flourish. It complemented my social work training and felt like a homecoming. I've been an ardent student of the discipline for the last decade. I trained as a somatic coach because working with our bodies and the body-mind connection felt like the missing ingredient. I decided to combine my social work background with the science of human flourishing and somatic coaching to help high performers, especially women, advocate for themselves and exercise agency.

My experience of burnout made flourishing a non-negotiable. My work led to my book, Women Who Work Too Much, and now I research, write and speak about what it takes for people to flourish. I still catch myself over-functioning, I'm a human being. The difference is that I know how to choose again.