The one where Betts gets really personal about the messy, emotional part of burnout. If you are triggered easily by topics of death, abuse, and incarceration you may want to skip this one."

One of the things I knew was going to be part of my time off was processing my personal baggage. I didn't know what that would look like, how long it would take, or what shape it would take. I just knew it needed to happen and that I would need to let it. 

I am the mom who often quotes paraphrases Churchill with a "When you find yourself walking through hell, keep walking." So here I am, walking through hell like I own the place.

I am not enjoying this.

I don't mind going into specifics with people who are genuinely curious or especially those who have similar stories. My stories are the kinds folks don't often share because they are messy and traumatic and really difficult to understand if you haven't lived through them. But I will give a very brief summary here as I think it helps give context to where I am:

• Married at 19 to a controlling person who turned out to have BPD

• Joined his church (LDS/Mormon)

• Had a child too early who was extreme high-needs (severe food allergies, health issues, difficult to diagnose mental health challenges). Then 3 more kids.

• Left the Mormon church and divorced the bad dude

• Found out on the same day that both my parents were dying. Mom had 6 months (cancer), dad had a few years (ALS)

• Found out the oldest kid was abusing his siblings and managed to trick 2 psychosexual forensic evaluators. They were horrified. He went to jail and I've not heard from him since.

• Parents died

• I bought a house and started working a W2 for the first time since college.

• Remarried and things were pretty good for several years

• Second kid was shot by a couple of kids (11 hits) and he somehow lived

• A judge decided he needed to serve his sentence for 2 felonies and he's serving 5+ years in Oregon state prison system, which has a horrendous health care record

• I declared burnout and left my job

• Also I have chronic migraines and so my pain threshold is bonkers high. This makes it possible to simply ignore things

Ok, that is scary to write out for the world to read. But there ya go. The reason I'm so cool under pressure. The reason I understand systems deeply. The reason I know what happens to lead people to do bad things and good things. The reason I say with a straight face that I have walked through hell and whatever is happening in this meeting means jack.

But living a life that contains all of that, while also having to stay housed and fed means that none of it gets dealt with. Sure, I spent years in therapy and I think I do remarkably well given all I've been through. But humans are remarkable in the way our brains grow and develop.

See, when you hit a new developmental milestone (which we don't really catalog well past about 25) your brain takes a look at stuff it runs into and asks, "Do we still like where this is filed?" And then it has to decide what to do with it. Not unlike the last time you cleaned out the cabinet in your bathroom and discovered the stuff you bought to do that one style you never really adopted. Only it's not hot rollers, it's trauma.

Yesterday I went to visit my son just like I do every week. Last time he had passed me a note asking me to wait on a call and then cashapp money to someone for his protection. I know better than to expose anything slightly identifying to the people he associates with. Especially people who have the power to protect someone inside a prison. For cash. 

So I did the next best thing and I wired money directly to him. That way he'd have money to use if he really needed it, and I protected the rest of the family from objectively horrible people.

But it wasn't enough. This week we found him with a stab wound in his abdomen, unable to move his arms much. A swollen face. He looked awful. It didn't help that there had just been a separate fatal stabbing right in front of him just 30 minutes prior to our visit. We actually had to wait to access the gate house while the ambulance left (quietly, with no discernible urgency).

I made it through the visit fine. We colored easter coloring sheets and played go fish and chatted. I did my usual parting hug, kiss, and "remember who loves you."

When I got home I broke. I've been crying the last 22 hours on and off. It was the first time I have really had to sit with the decision I made at the beginning of burnout recovery to not run from the emotional hard stuff. Sure I've worked through the work stuff. The minor stuff. But I couldn't access the really, really hard stuff until just now for some reason. And I just want to run away. It's ugly and hard and complicated. None of it can be wrapped up in a tidy story with a thesis, paragraphs, and a conclusion. I can barely force myself to think about most of it, or even really discern how much I need to think about.

But I'm here. I'm in my body. I'm doing the brutally hard work of not dissociating, which is my default coping strategy. And holy moley it hurts. It's hard. It's hell.

But it's not urgent. There is literally nothing I can do about my kid. I can write to him and I can see him next Monday if he's available for visitation. That is it. I have nowhere to be. I have no deck to write and no process to evaluate. I don't have to put on a socially acceptable face for anyone. For the first time in my life I have space, time, and agency to put one foot in front of the other, repeatedly, while I walk through hell.

What I discovered I'm left with is my own layers and layers and layers of plaster over all the difficulty and the hard stuff and the pain and the disordered coping. It's hot rollers and hair gel and weird nail polish and makeup pallets that have 2 empty pans and mostly untouched colors, and there is something sticky gluing them all together. I don't know if I should throw it all away without a second glance. But that doesn't feel quite right. So I'm taking it layer by layer and letting it sit in front of me so I can decide what to do with it. I know it will be worth it. I know it has to be done. There is no shortcut or tourist bus. There is only me, my own two feet, and the pile of crap in my cabinet that only I can sort through.

I’m really glad I made time for me.