A little over two weeks ago, I woke up with a deep feeling of exhaustion, and not the type of exhaustion that would disappear with a few good nights of sleep. In fact, I had actually experienced a good night of sleep when I woke up. While I felt perky, as I went through the day I realized that what I was feeling was akin to burnout. If you want a textbook definition of “burnout,” Psychology Today describes it as a state of emotional, mental and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.
As soon as I realized what I was feeling, I also knew what was behind the feeling. My job. Primarily my day job as executive director of a small and now-struggling grassroots organization and secondarily, my writing, which in reality is a needed second job, because like many Americans, one income doesn’t cut it anymore. Writing, though, is different in some ways because it started off as a hobby that started earning a little cash—in recent years, though, it has become a necessity to supplement my salary that hasn’t kept pace with the cost of living. And I will point out, as I often have before, that the way today’s writer earns a living has shifted and requires constantly creating pieces or “content” lest people don’t feel they are getting value for their money. This is especially true for writers of color. To some degree, writing still provides a respite from my day job, though. It’s solitary and I control what I write. It is fully autonomous, unlike running an organization.
In the first seven years in my position as executive director of Community Change Inc., I had a sufficient number of staff members, including an administrative assistant as well as a large board where half the members were able to actually give time to support our work, often with fundraising. This support allowed me to do my job and do it well. In my first six years in my position, I more than doubled our revenue and was able to successfully expand our work beyond the greater Boston area to include Maine. It was a glorious time and the future was bright.
However, in the last few years, the pendulum has swung. It started in 2022, to be exact, at the same time as the racial justice world started to see a shift—a tiny shift at first that was only noticeable to those of us in the work. After the great racial awakening of 2020, people started to tire of things like awareness and accountability and equity and protest and just wanted back to “normal” no matter how racially dysfunctional it was. While the return of Trump to the white house in 2025 was the final nail in the coffin as far as funding DEI and racial justice work, the truth is that the shift was well underway.
As a result, a few years ago, I made staffing cuts to keep our work going so that programming could continue. One of the changes I made was to not fill the administrative assistant or communications positions when they had openings. Instead, I decided that I could do them myself and hoping that if we kept programming stable, that programming would attract new donors to our work, as long-term donors retired and moved on.
In hindsight, that was a terrible decision.
For the better part of three years, I have been working with no support staff other than a very part-time person in Boston who checks our mail, does bank deposits, and coordinates with our bookkeeper.
Prior to my arrival over 12 years ago, my predecessor had worked without much in the way of staff and managed to survive. Of course, he was also running our then-robust internship program which provided him with a changing cast of interns eager to learn the ropes of our work. It was, of course, a different climate and a different time. I thought I could do the same thing as long as I kept my program staff; instead, I have been running myself ragged, as my position isn’t just running the organization—I do everything not related to programming and even some of that now too.
I have been doing this for several years with no real break. I have eight weeks of paid time off a year but I haven’t taken all of my time off since 2020 when my dad was dying and I left for Chicago and didn’t return home until he died. Some years, I take a few days here and there but never enough to feel truly refreshed. Typically, it is just enough time to release a little pressure so that I don’t explode.
Turns out that you can’t do the work that I do for years—especially over the last year-and-a-half of this regime’s madness—with no significant break. There isn’t enough yoga, meditation, or prayer to stop the burnout feeling from coming in. To really hit it home, the recent ICE killing in Biddeford, Maine—a community I consider home and where I have long-established relationships with local organizers—has truly brought that home for me.
A few days before the tragic killing of Johan Sebatian Guerrero, I sent an email to my board and staff informing them that I would be taking the month of August off. It isn’t an optimal time given our fundraising situation, but it is also the month that most donors and prospective donors are checked out because summers in New England are short. So, if I was going to tend to my mental and emotional garden, it was the best time for me to do so.
Thankfully, I received no pushback though when one person emailed to ask me to do a specific task before I go on leave, my too-irritated response and my way more intense inner rage toward what was actually a reasonable request was the final sign to me that I need time off.
I am sharing this personal story because for many of us, we are struggling to navigate this upside-down world we have been living in for more than 18 months now. Especially those of us in movement and organizing spaces, there is so much to do and the work is never-ending. The demands and requests are constant, especially when your community is in crisis and when saying “no” feels wrong. I experienced that recently in the immediate aftermath of the ICE killing here in Maine when my phone was constantly going off with requests to speak, attend a meeting, or to give advice. It was an intense feeling of overwhelm, especially as those newer to local organizing seemed to almost take offense at my saying that I couldn’t do XYZ.
Here’s the thing: We can’t create something better, more collaborative, and beneficial to all if we are using the rules of the system that dehumanizes us regularly. The rules and ways of capitalism will not save us; they will just burn us out or kill us before we complete the tasks.
Even in a crisis, we can’t lose our humanity, and it actually starts with how we treat ourselves. We can’t truly be good to others if we don’t understand why it is necessary to be good to ourselves.
Charlene A. Carruthers writes in Unapologetic that movement work is spiritual. I would take it a step further as I recently said in a speech for the “Good Trouble Weekend of Action” event in Maine: Movement work is life, and we can’t compartmentalize it, so we have to take care of ourselves.
Taking care of ourselves means stepping back and taking a beat, even when it doesn’t feel right. Movement work is group work. We build together and there are no brownie points given out if we choose to never stop. Years ago, before the pandemic, I would take four to five weeks off every summer and return to work refreshed and filled with ideas that I was ready to try out. I lost my way thinking that two or three extra days off here and there could do the same thing. In some ways, I let a little of my ego get in the way and now I am working to distance myself from that ego-trip that has had me thinking I could do everything. I can’t.
I won’t lie, taking this time off right now is terrifying. But I can’t let fear rule my life. I have spent the last seven months burning the candle at both ends between my coverage of the Maine U.S. senate race, my regular writing, and my actual job. It’s a small miracle that I have managed to keep my blood pressure under control and stay calm most days but the signs are mounting that enjoying the rest of the summer and running on my own time without the immediate responsibility of running an organization is what I need.
The work will be there when I return after Labor Day.
Friends, it is okay to take a break, tend to your mental garden, and return to work when you can. We still have a lot of work ahead of us and there are others to carry the ball in our absence.
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Image by Max van den Oetelaar and obtained via Unsplash
