I thought it was my chair. Then my mattress. Maybe I just needed rest. But it wasn’t the furniture. It was burnout. My body had been sounding the alarm for years. This is what happens when we ignore the pain our shoulders carry for too long.
I smiled and chewed through nausea, swallowing more than just broccoli to secure a million-dollar gift. This is the cost of performance—the silent bargains we make with our bodies in service of the cause.
I thought the climb would bring freedom. Instead, it revealed the bars. This post traces the journey from rising star to burned-out leader—and the truth about what success costs when the system was never built for your liberation.
I didn’t grow up calling it philanthropy. It was fish fries, church dinners, and passing the plate so someone could get by. Before it was a job, it was community. Survival. What we did for each other.
