Jenn Bruer Quotes

Slowly you may have transformed from a helper to one in need of help. It's important to talk about this, to identify the wounds you carry.

While burnout obviously has something to do with stress, overdoing things, not being centred, and not listening to yourself or your body, one of the deepest contributors to burnout, I believe, is the deep disappointment of not living up to your true calling, which is to help.

Have you ever stopped to contemplate how you might respond biologically, physically, emotionally and spiritually to the various experiences in your life? Is it possible that your thoughts become your biology? I believe wholeheartedly that they can.

I now know that surrendering, allowing, and "BE-ing" is far more productive than grasping for control. I don't know why one child is born with autism and another isn't, or why some children have to fight cancer and some don't. I have lived long enough to know that life is not fair, never will be fair, and we shouldn't expect it to be.

As helpers, we often feel the need to see our impact in tangible, measurable ways. We allow negative language into our head about the "broken system;" we look through a lens of "it doesn't matter, I can't make a difference". These ideas are surely contributing to our burnout.

Helpers carry a heavy load, they listen, love, cry, and often go into the depths of others' pain. They sometimes enter darkness that no person should have to step into: the darkness of the abuse of a child, of mental health, of our cultural propensity to sit back and do nothing about it. They bear this each day.