Rising Rooted

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The snow is mostly gone now, but the world hasn’t turned green yet.

It’s mud season.

Heavy, wet ground. Puddles that don’t quite drain. The kind of landscape where everything is softening, shifting, loosening—but not yet blooming.

And I actually love this part. There’s something honest about it.

If you look closely, there are signs of life pushing through. Tiny green shoots. Early buds that don’t seem to mind the cold still lingering in the air. The sun is warmer now, and when it hits your face, it’s almost disorienting—like your body remembers something it hasn’t felt in months.

Spring is here. But it hasn’t fully arrived. And it certainly isn’t rushing anything.

The body remembers the seasons

There’s a kind of intelligence in this season. Spring doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It’s shaped by what came before it.

The depth of winter matters. The rest, the dormancy, the slowing down—these aren’t interruptions to life. They’re what make spring possible.

You can feel that in your own body, too. That subtle pull toward movement. Toward connection. Toward waking up again.

But here’s where things start to break down for a lot of people:

If you didn’t actually get a winter— if you didn’t rest, slow down, recover— then spring can feel like a demand your body can’t meet.

There’s a part of you that wants to say yes. To the light. To the energy. To life picking up again.

And another part that feels heavy. Resistant. Already tired.

So instead of feeling renewed, you feel behind. Instead of energized, you feel like you’re failing to keep up with something that’s supposed to feel natural.

This post is for that experience.

When self-care misses the point

When this mismatch shows up, the message we tend to hear is familiar:

You need better self-care. Better boundaries. Better time management.

And yes—those things matter. But they often miss something deeper.

As a therapist, I want to say this clearly:

Burnout is real.

And if you’re feeling it, you are not weak.

Stress is absolutely a part of life. We all need ways to build resilience and capacity.

But burnout is something different.

In my work, I see deeply thoughtful, capable people who have been carrying far more than one person should be expected to carry—often for a very long time.

Burnout isn’t a failure of discipline.

It’s often what happens when a body has been asked to keep going without the conditions it needs to recover. It is a predictable outcome stemming from a systemic mindset of extraction, rather than sustainability.

Burnout is real (even when the definitions fall short)

The World Health Organization defines burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic stress that has not been successfully managed.

And I’ll be honest—that definition has never sat quite right with me.

Because what does it mean to “successfully manage” chronic stress?

For many people, chronic stress isn’t something you can neatly resolve. It’s structural. Financial pressure. Caregiving responsibilities. Systemic instability. The cumulative weight of modern life.

To suggest that burnout comes down to whether or not someone has managed that well enough… it misses something vital. It risks placing the responsibility back on the individual to adapt to conditions that may not actually be sustainable. And it also tends to frame burnout as something that belongs to work.

But in real life, it doesn’t stay contained there. It spreads.

It shows up in how you care for yourself. In your relationships. In your ability to regulate emotion. In your motivation. In your body.

Burnout isn’t just about work.

And we need to expand what we mean by work, too. Paid labour, yes. But also childcare. Emotional labour. Caregiving. Managing a household. Supporting others.

That is all work. And for many people, it never really stops.

Burnout as an ecological mismatch

Another way to understand burnout is through an ecological lens.

Human beings are not machines. We are living systems that rely on cycles—effort and recovery, activity and rest, expansion and contraction. Winter and spring.

But many of us are living in conditions that flatten those cycles. There’s no true off-season. No real winter. Just a continuous expectation to produce, respond, adapt, and keep going.

So when spring arrives—when your system should be ready to mobilize, to wake up, to meet the energy of the season—there’s nothing in reserve. Because the rest never happened.

From this perspective, burnout isn’t a personal failure. It’s a mismatch between what your body needs and what your environment has allowed.

No ecosystem can sustain endless extraction. Eventually, the soil gets depleted.

When the body starts refusing

Burnout often builds slowly.

At first, it looks like fatigue that a weekend can fix. Then the rest stops working. Sleep doesn’t restore you the way it used to. Small tasks take more effort. Focus slips. Emotions sit closer to the surface.

And eventually, the body starts to push back. Aches. Tension. Irritability. Brain fog. Anxiety. Shutdown.

From a mechanical lens, it can feel like something is going wrong. But from a biological lens, something might actually be going right.

The body is refusing to continue under conditions it can’t sustain.

Just like the ground outside right now. Soft. Heavy. Holding everything it’s been carrying.

Not ready to bloom yet.

A small pause (before we keep going)

Take one slow, natural breath in… and let it fall out of your body.

Then notice: Where does your body resist letting go? Jaw. Shoulders. Chest. Belly.

Places where the tension doesn’t just sit—but feels like it’s holding you hostage.

See if you can feel that without trying to fix it.

Because this matters: That tension isn’t random. For many of us, it’s learned—shaped by urgency, productivity, and the pressure to stay “on.”

So if your body resists softening, that’s not failure.

It’s not even entirely yours.

Just notice it.

Completing the stress cycle (in real life)

Even when we can’t immediately change our stressors, we can support how stress moves through the body.

One helpful distinction comes from Emily and Amelia Nagoski: stressors vs. stress.

Stressors are the external pressures.

Stress is what happens inside your body.

And the body needs a way to complete that response.

Not through thinking. Through sensation. Through movement. Through discharge.

This doesn’t have to be complicated.

It can look like:

• walking at the end of your workday, letting your body shift states
• shaking out your arms, stretching, or changing posture
• an awkwardly long hug (20 seconds at least) with someone you feel safe with
• placing a hand on your chest or shoulders for a moment of contact
• letting your eyes slowly scan your environment to orient to safety
• making a clear transition between “work” and “not work”

And again—work here includes all forms of labour.

Paid and unpaid.

The goal isn’t to optimize yourself.

It’s to let your body finish what it started.

A slower kind of return

If you’re feeling burnt out right now, especially in this heavy, muddy stretch of spring, it might help to shift the expectation.

Spring is not just bloom. It’s thaw. It’s saturation. Softening. Release.

It’s the awkward, necessary middle where things don’t look alive yet—but are quietly reorganizing underneath.

And maybe making peace with this version of spring— the wet, unfinished, not-quite-there version— is part of making peace with that in yourself, too.

Moving forward

If you’re here, I want you to hear this:

You are not broken. Your body may be responding exactly as it was designed to.

There are ways to support yourself—through boundaries, through completing stress cycles, through reconnecting with what actually nourishes you.

And there are also larger conversations we need to keep having.

Because burnout is not just individual.

It’s cultural.

Spring reminds us of something simple, but easy to forget: You can’t skip winter and expect to feel spring.

And if your system is still thawing— that’s not failure.

That’s part of the process.

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If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:

Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.

<3 Rachel