This picture was taken recently on the 4th anniversary of my husband’s death. The rough waves and dark sky parallels the emotions I was feeling the day my beautiful 46 year old husband died in my arms after a 23-month battle with esophageal cancer.

To see this man I loved with my whole heart slip away breath after breath was excruciating. Knowing how badly he wanted to stay. And then to have to call our 8 and 10-year-old daughters to come in to see us, them unaware that this would be the moment they would learn their Daddy had died.

I have also faced intense physical pain. So how can we befriend pain and use it as a tool to help us be our best in work and in life?

In September 2012, shortly after I suffered a brain injury, I was featured as part of a news story in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business section entitled ‘Is Being Superbusy so Bad?’ by Leah Eichler.

At the time, I was a few months out from my brain injury. I knew I was not back to normal yet, but I had no idea that my healing journey would still be going on almost 11 years later…

At the end of July, COVID-19 finally caught up with my household. I felt like we had been playing Dodgeball with it for over two years and it got my daughters and me at the same time. It ended up hitting me hard.

As I lay in bed with a brutal headache, I thought about the journey I had been on over the past 10 years since my brain injury. It has been a wild ride. And, I have remained resilient throughout it all. But, I was tired of being resilient. I was feeling Resilience Fatigue.

I have never heard of the term Resilience Fatigue before. It is something I just coined in a moment of pain lying in bed. But, I think it is a very real thing and it is something I believe many of us are feeling right now.

If you are feeling Resilience Fatigue and it is impacting your life and work, what do you do about it?