Erin Brown

About

One thing I notice regularly: someone lists their week aloud, gets about two-thirds of the way through, and stops, because hearing it in one go is quite different from living it one day at a time. Usually nobody has ever asked them to say it all in sequence before. That exercise does most of the early work. People who are burned out have almost always lost the ability to see the total, having adapted to each addition as it arrived. We reconstruct the whole picture first and then decide what can actually be put down. Some of it can, rather more than people expect. Hospital and intensive outpatient settings taught me to look at load rather than at character. Load explains most of what gets called weakness. If you have never heard your own week said out loud, get in touch. Seeing the total is usually the first honest moment.