Burnout Begins Long Before it Happens : When Women Don’t Have a Village
Recently, I’ve been immersed in a lot of films, books and content that speak to the early days of motherhood. I’ve been viscerally reminded of the immense rush of love and care we often experience at this life-changing threshold. But also of the less spoken about raw exhaustion, tender hormonal rollercoaster and emotional fragility that so many of us experience concurrently.
It got me reflecting on my experience of profound burnout over ten years ago …
We often think of burnout as a switch that is flicked quite suddenly.
And in truth, it often presents this way.
Many of the women I have supported over the years feel like they were coping, functioning, managing one day, before seemingly ‘crashing’ through sheer exhaustion the next.
But in reality, burnout begins long before it happens.
In the many seasons of carrying too much without being properly held.
When Women Don’t Have a Village to Lean On
One of these seasons is often postpartum - when a woman gives birth and there is no real ‘village’ around her.
No culture of being nourished, supported, and cared for as she recovers, and embraces the immense labour of early motherhood.
It begins when the needs are constant but the support is thin, and when women’s depletion becomes ordinary, almost expected - as if it were a natural by product of womanhood.
In a culture that lacks nurture, many of us are slowly burning through our inner resources long before we realise it’s happening.
What we call burnout is often the visible expression of years of invisible overgiving.
Emily and Amelia Nagoski write,
“The cure for burnout isn’t self-care, it’s all of us caring for each other.”
That feels so deeply true to me.
Because while self-care can be supportive, it cannot compensate for the absence of collective care.
Living in Cultures that Lack Women-Centred Care
We need a more honest conversation about what happens when:
motherhood unfolds without sustained postpartum care
domestic labour continues to be invisible and unevenly distributed
women become the default emotional and practical infrastructure within their families, communities and workplaces
care is expected, but the carers are not themselves cared for.
It’s remarkable to me that burnout rates amongst women are not even higher.
Of course, not every woman who moves through early motherhood, life transitions and challenges without enough support will burn out. But for many women, I do believe that this is where the erosion begins: in the ongoing, everchanging seasons of giving more than we receive.
Whether we move through the early years of motherhood or not, the tending takes different shapes through different life stages. The ongoing demands of work, home, emotional labour, and keeping everything and everyone together. The tender and disorienting terrain of perimenopause, often coinciding with supporting children in new ways and beginning to care for aging parents.
Burnout is never truly sudden.
It’s a long and slow erosion that often begins years - if not decades - before it happens.
And so much of it is rooted in cultures that lack women-centred nurture.
The Way Forward - Healing Burnout Before it Happens
Beyond much-needed systemic change, I believe that the way through lies in restoring the nurturing conditions that have been missing for so many women for so long.
In my work with clients, as a somatic practitioner, here are some of the ways in which we explore restoring these conditions together:
A return to right rhythm
A reattunement to the natural rhythms our bodies and nervous systems are meant to live within. So many of us are living at a pace and level of output that is unsustainable. Restoring right rhythm means remembering that our bodies aren’t designed for constant effort, but for living in tidal waves of action and rest, doing and being, expanding and recovering energy.
And for women, who are cyclical by nature, restoring rhythms also means learning to live in greater harmony with our ever-fluctuating hormonal cycles and lifestages, to help us feel more steady, cared for and resourced as we navigate these waves.
Deep nourishment for the nervous system
So that the body can begin to remember what life feels like beyond survival, and starts feeling safe to pause, rest, and replenish - instead of habitually pushing through or running on empty.
This kind of nourishment is foundational to help us come back into relationship with ourselves, with our needs, with our limits, and with the subtle cues our bodies are constantly sending us, which so often get drowned out in our busy, demanding lives.
A restoration of reciprocity within our personal ecosystems
No living system can thrive when one part is always giving and rarely restored. Reciprocity means looking honestly at the patterns, roles and arrangements that have become normal, but are deeply depleting. And beginning to create a life in which support flows both ways. A life in which we are not permanently holding everything together, but where we also feel deeply held ourselves.
Finding our village
Because nobody can do this alone. We were never meant to.
All of us, but especially women in seasons of deep tending, were always meant to be held within webs of care. While we may not be able to recreate the village in its truest form, we can begin to seek out and build more supportive circles around us: in reciprocal friendships, nourishing communities or women circles (I’m a huge fan), and spaces where we can come as we are, be seen and held, ask for what we need, and be the one who is compassionately tended to.
This is at the heart of the work I do.
I support women to nourish their bodies and nervous systems, restore more life-giving rhythms, and come back into a more reciprocal relationship with themselves and within their lives. Moving out of chronic overgiving and depletion, towards ways of being and living that leave us feeling more rested, rooted and radiant.
If you are recognising yourself in this, and you are longing to be held in this kind of support, you can explore more about my work here, or book a free, no-obligation call with me. Together, we can gently explore where you are and what truly nourishing support might look like from here.
And if you feel called to support women through seasons of womanhood, life transitions, or leadership journeys in ways that centre their unique lived experience, you can find out more about The Wisdom Within™ Somatic Practitioner Training here.
You might also be interested in:
Overcoming Feminine Burnout: How to end the perpetual quest towards being enough
The Edge of Burnout: Listening to the Body Before It Shuts Down
Why Women Deserve Somatic Approaches That Honour Their Body, Cycles and Lived Experience
Understanding the Mind–Body Connection and How to Shift Old Patterns by Working Somatically
Beyond Learned Helplessness: A Somatic Path For Women to Reclaim Their Energy, Voice, and Agency
