From Burnout to Breakthrough: The Story I Didn’t Realise I Was Writing

From Burnout to Breakthrough: The Story I Didn’t Realise I Was Writing

When you look back on your life, can you identify any Pivot Points?

(Strap in and brace yourselves, I'm getting philosophical with this blog)

Those decisions that change your whole direction and outlook on life.

It could be life, health, family, work, there are so many moments where we need to make a choice - whether desired or otherwise.

You don’t always recognise it at the time. That moment that quietly, insistently asks you to change direction.

Looking back over the last few years, I can see two clear pivot moments that nudged me - gently at first, then with increasing force, toward creating Hen’s Tooth and building a life that I've been visualising for years.

Sometimes it looks like burnout. Sometimes it looks like grief. Sometimes it looks like a vision board you made on instinct and then promptly forgot about.

Burnout, Twice Over

Burnout is a slippery MOFO. It creeps up on you, gaslights you. Only in the aftermath do we even recognise it.

It disguises itself as “just being tired” or “just needing a holiday.”

For me, it showed up as emotional exhaustion, brain fog, irritability, Imposter Syndrome, and that hollow feeling of being permanently switched on but never truly present.

Perimenopause amplified it. Without that extra hormonal push, I probably would have ridden the storm - as most of us do throughout our lives.

My first moment of burnout came during COVID.

I was working on a government contract supporting small businesses. Businesses that were being absolutely decimated by lockdown restrictions.

Every half hour I was on the phone with someone whose livelihood was collapsing, and all I could offer was a workshop link or a piece of generic advice. 

Several times I had to report calls up the chain of command to management on safe guarding grounds. Something I have never trained or prepared for.  I'm not a counsellor, I'm not a trauma specialist, and despite years of working in the Welfare To Work sector, firstly helping people to find work and later helping them create work - this was something else. Oooph.

It was lucrative work, but it was soul‑sapping. I carried other people’s despair in my chest for months.

With nowhere to spend money during lockdown, I accidentally built up a financial buffer. But by the end, I was wrung out. As soon as restrictions lifted, I ran, literally, to the nearest patch of green that would have me.

I started volunteering at Hartcliffe City Farm. I needed air. I needed mud. I needed something real.

I’d already been on the allotment waiting list for years, and in 2023, I finally got my plot. I stopped volunteering so I could pour my energy into my own little piece of land. It became therapy in the truest sense.

My allotment is still my happy place, and the reason I named my shop Hen's Tooth.

I felt my second burnout creeping up in me at the end of last year.

I recognised the symptoms, the shift in me; Anxiety dreams. Not wanting to go out. Not wanting to be sociable. The angry outbursts. The random tears that seemed to swell from nowhere.

I knew I had reached the end of a 15‑year career in community business support. I’d been an employee, a consultant, self‑employed, everything in between. But I could no longer find a place where I fitted in that world.

Even though financially it's not yet adding up, spiritually and emotionally, I have no regrets about quitting an on-paper-perfectly-good-job.

The Vision Board I Didn’t Mean to Make

Something unexpected happened to me a few weeks back when I was sorting out the junk I had cleared away to make way for my new office space.

I found an old Vision Board tucked away in the bottom of a drawer.

In 2024, during a community business support contract at BIPC, I hosted a workshop where we made vision boards. I didn’t overthink mine. I just cut and stuck whatever images felt right in the moment. I had no grand plan for it.

Then I tucked it away and forgot about it.

Fast‑forward 18 months.

I’d quit my job.

I’d started Hen’s Tooth.

I was sleeping better, breathing deeper, and for the first time in years living in alignment with myself.

I laid that Vision Board out on the table and traced it like a map. I had such a lightbulb moment 💡

Everything clicked.

 

Here's what I saw on that Vision Board

A hot air balloon

Something I want to do for my 50th

Travel imagery

We're planning to travel more, even leaving space in luggage to bring back lovely things to sell in the shop. Next stop Lithuania.

Yoga and allotment life

Both part of my weekly rhythms. I'm finding Yoga stretches essential for my old lady bones now that I'm working at the allotment so much more. 

Colour, connection, creativity

These are at the heart of Hen's Tooth. Plenty of joyful colour in the collections 

Entrepreneurship and brand‑building

 I've started something and I only want it it go in one direction - growth 🌱

Tech that supports freedom, not burnout

I'm chuffed with myself for learning how to build my own website on Shopify. As someone who's not particularly tech savvy this is a big achievement for me.

I'm mindfully using AI to support me to systemise, automate, and create consistency. That way I get spend less time in front of a screen and more getting muddy.

Community and collaboration

Establishing my monthly Collab & Connect coworking meet up. I'm networking regularly. I've started trading at markets, aiming to have a market once a month.

 

Slowly Living the Slow Life

It was all there.

I had made a vision board for a life I didn’t yet believe I could have. But then, slowly, quietly, step by step, I started living it.

The Slow Burn of Becoming

Vision Boards don't manifest overnight. It's not a magic wand, it's a way to set an intention then slowly, imperceptibly, nudging you toward the things you’ve already admitted you want, even if only in pictures and instinct.

Most of the change happens slowly, step by step, in tiny, almost forgettable increments: one small decision, one brave conversation, one boundary, one new habit, one moment of clarity.

You don’t wake up one morning living your vision board; you look back months later and realise you’ve been walking toward it all along. It’s the slow burn of becoming.

My life today is unrecognisable compared to this time last year. Not because of one big leap, but because of dozens of tiny, intentional shifts:

  • choosing slow living over hustle

  • choosing creativity over productivity

  • choosing the allotment over the inbox

  • choosing a brand that reflects my values

  • choosing to build something that feels like it's mine

And in six months, life will shift again. With my accidental business partner,  Graham, our dream of combining travel with work will start to take shape.

It’s a long road, but for the first time, it feels like I’m finally on it.

A Final Thought

If you’ve ever made a vision board and forgotten about it, dig it out.

If you’ve never made one, maybe try. They are a diverting, creative expression that helps you listen to the quiet parts of yourself. Those back of your brain voices that know what you want long before you’re ready to say them out loud.