Adorning myself with gold
As we all reckon with this widespread crisis of burnout, I wanted to share a story I wrote for our Sunday Storytellers community at Microsoft on my own experience with burnout, mental health leave, and finding my way back to balance.
Edition #170, submitted May 2, 2021.
Hundreds of years spread out between us on the couch. An ancestral opulence that had been culled over time through necessity and hardship. A hand-painted manuscript, auspicious coins, rings of rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds, and delicate chains of Persian gold.
Okay, Ranie Joon. I want you to type this up for me please. Make one column for you and one for your sister. In your sister’s column, first write “Grandma Pouran Joon – Sapphire Wedding Ring – Husband 1.”
(In style and in romantic choices, my Grandmother was much like the late great Elizabeth Taylor.)
I had been home for about two weeks at this point. With no other distractions or commitments, I finally had time to tend to these familial duties with care. Time to sit with my mother for hours, each donned in our tattered pajamas surrounded by this show of abundance, listening to the stories and history behind each piece. Time to hold both the joy of recalling the richness of our culture–of performing this ritual together–and the sadness of knowing why this documentation would one day be necessary. Acknowledging our mortality and the power of family heirlooms to circumvent it.
It was longing for the exact presence of this moment that I had decided to take a 6-week mental health leave.
In December 2020, I hit a breaking point. After many months of mounting anxiety and depression brought on by the pandemic and its resulting isolation and turmoil, I was struggling to come back to myself. It felt like I couldn’t integrate my two realities:
my physical reality: a mundanely safe and endless groundhog’s day, moving from one room to another as if on a pre-determined track in “It’s a Small World After All,”
and my mental reality: an anxious spiral of fear and judgement, further exaggerated by a collective fear and judgement portrayed through pixels on a screen.
It got to the point where I would walk past my reflection in the mirror and wonder: Who is that pale, lifeless thing staring back at me, tears falling silently from her eyes? That’s not me, is it? She has no joy…it can’t be.
Luckily for me, I had a total meltdown in my mid-year review. I say luckily because my manager Bonnie McCracken, the gracious beautiful unicorn that she is, didn’t hesitate for even a split second to grant me this time away. She assured me that my health and my wellbeing were the most important things and that the team could handle it. We got this. Take whatever time you need.
And so, I did. After consulting with my therapist and my family, I decided to take six weeks off. Six weeks where I would rest, rebuild, and be present at home with the people I love most in this world. Six weeks where I promised myself I would return to embodied living–where I would stay grounded in the people, places, and physical experiences immediately surrounding me. Where I would step away from the digital realm to keep the intimacy of certain memories sacred.
Well, dear reader, it was the best decision I have ever made in my entire. freaking. life.
It would take many more Sunday Storyteller installments to articulate the full impact of this time away, but to give you a sense of what happened, here are some highlights:
I broke out of the produce produce produce / consume consume consume paradigm we constantly find ourselves in. For the first time since childhood, I could just simply exist.
I finally articulated my definition of spirituality, something that could have only happened when I stopped filling my head with other people’s thoughts and let my own step to the front of the line.
I also realized that my personal definition of spirituality was deeply aligned with Ayurveda–an ancient science and wisdom of life/health I had come to be familiar with through similar Persian traditions–and signed up for a yearlong program to study it more deeply.
I was home when my oldest and closest childhood friend needed me the most. I could literally be there for her, to help walk her back from the edge, in ways I couldn’t with other loved ones and had always deeply regretted.
I honored my body through what I called my daily Boca Mom Routine: a few miles around the neighborhood on my roving elliptical, poolside yoga, tennis, and many plates of fresh cut fruit.
I laughed a lot with my 69-year-old parents. Together, we tended to parts of our relationship that needed healing. Their love and care saved me. I can’t type anything more or else I’ll start crying.
All of this rediscovery, release, and relief happened in just six weeks. Just 11% of my year. 1% of the time I’ve spent as a working adult. 42 days, y’all. That’s it. I recognize this is an immense privilege, and I feel strongly it’s one that should be available to all.
Coming back, now five weeks later, I can still feel the surge of energy, clarity, and calm this time away granted me. While protecting and preserving my mental health remains an active practice, I no longer feel the numbing sadness or frantic anxiety that once weighed me down. In its place is now lightness. In its place is the promise of joy.
Last weekend, I caught myself in the mirror and thought: There she is! There’s the vibrant girl I used to know. Good to see you again, friend. And so, I end this installment with what I wrote in my journal following that moment of reacquaintance.
When did I stop dressing like a Persian woman? Red mouth, heirlooms draping her neck, unapologetic about the thick hair that both binds and liberates her. When did I stop adorning myself with gold?