Muertos came and left this year with my grief overshadowing the excitement of the season. For reasons I feel but can’t truly comprehend, hope seems to be a buried concept. I go through the day robotically. Yes, things are getting done. How well, I argue the degree. I open my day planner, and I feel this heavy brick on my shoulders. I close it with a sigh. Energy has moved out. Each medical appointment has told me the same to which I refuse to listen. This month, exactly a year after diagnosis, I have totally succumbed to it. I am burnt out.

What a cliché, this mental and physical turn of events. Burnout does not just happen. It takes a while. Our body sends signals to warn us. When we ignore those, the burnout goes deeper. It starts with tiredness. It moves to mood swings. It brings in headaches, insomnia and stomach aches. When those signs are ignored, it adds mental confusion, self-doubt, anxiety. At the end of the day, continued to be ignored, it turns into incapacity.

This is where my grief has taken me. It is in my DNA to be the caregiver, to push myself with an endless list of tasks. I enjoy this role. I am aware it needs balance I have never given it. And at my age, total transformation is impossible, but adaptation can happen. Or so I am told. In therapy, I have uncovered, this is why I have the recurring urge to run away. It isn’t that I don’t love those I am with. It is that I don’t know how to care for me when anyone else is around. Alone, there are no distractions, no excuses. The issue is I am never alone for any length of time.

I remember one summer, years ago, when grief had settled in and I was learning how to live with it. I had taken a walk in the park and asked my spirit guides, what is it I need to reside with this grief. When I left the area, stopped at a red light, I glanced over to the side of the road. There, laying in the grass on the meridian was a stone. It was painted blue and the word solitude was written across it. I remember smiling and thinking to myself, how simple would that be.  If only.

Perhaps that sign was the birth of the desire to want to leave. Or maybe it was the confirmation. But I have dreamed of a little place where it is filled with the possessions of my ancestor’s, and the sun fills the room with light and the only thing heard is silence. My family caters to this idea in their own way, without understanding. And how could they? I have just begun to understand why.

When I experience solitude, my health simmers down. My sleep regulates. My energy wakes up and I find myself taking walks, reading more, writing more.  And my connection to the other realm strengthens. No wonder I wish for more of it. Soulitude is found in the quiet moments. They need to be regular moments, daily moments. My burnout is my soul pleading I take notice and put into practice the things it needs.

It is not because my family has failed me. It is not because I don’t appreciate all that I have here. It is not because I want to run away as I had thought. It is because of my internal struggle to find a way to make it well with my soul. Burnout is the body’s way of protecting the soul.

This awareness sheds light on what is happening to me. Solitude brings comfort to my soul that is grieving for so much and that needs attention to heal, not be distracted by so many demands I have put on myself to ignore its cries.  We begin to explore how I can be there for those I love, including myself.  We begin to search for ways to bring solitude to my daily being.