When nothing is “wrong,” but something isn’t right
A personal reflection on burnout, creativity, and coming home to yourself.
Real talk? I spent so many years driving into work with the music turned up loud, singing at the top of my lungs, just trying to process what I was feeling. I’d arrive in the parking lot and sit for five minutes, trying to squeeze in a moment of meditation.
From the outside, it looked like I had it together. A really great job at a really great company. Responsible. Capable. Reliable.
Inside, I was falling apart. Not in a dramatic, wailing way. There wasn’t anything outwardly “wrong.”
Just a never-ending sense of doing too much, holding too much, bracing all the time—my shoulders up to my ears—and not really knowing where to put what I was carrying. Or even how to name it. I didn’t have the words, and frankly, I didn’t make the time to try to figure it out.
I didn’t hate my life. I was just utterly exhausted by it.
There was this bizarre grief I couldn’t find a name for—for parts of myself I couldn’t find anymore. Someone would ask me what I wanted to do, and I didn’t know how to answer. I’d get irritated at the very thought of the question. I’d bristle.
Creativity had disappeared. Joy felt far away. And no amount of time off ever really worked—no matter how much I tried to convince myself it should, and no matter how many Disney trips I could squeeze in.
What I didn’t understand then was that my nervous system had been living in survival mode. And thinking more about it wasn’t going to bring me back. The weekend yoga retreat? Fun—but everything came flooding back when I got home.
Color and art entered my life during that season, not as something to share, produce, or be good at.
They entered as a place my emotions could finally land. I began to return to a piece of myself I had long locked away. Art became somewhere my energy could soften. A way to begin listening to myself again. Those slow, quiet mornings in my little art studio began to change everything. I started to find what I guess I’ll call “purpose.”
I’d paint and cry, or paint and laugh. The very fact that I went to work some mornings with a little bit of blue paint beneath my fingernails became a talisman for getting through the day.
It’s also why I’ve been teaching so many other women how to work with art and color. The women who find me now tend to look “fine” on the outside and feel worn down, disconnected, or lost on the inside.
They’re not broken, or failing, or “falling apart.” But they do have the sense that there’s something more. I hear them ask over and over, Is that all there is? And my heart breaks to hear that question because no, my darling girl—there is so, so much more.
I took a flying leap of faith off the side of a cliff nearly six years ago, and some days I’m still looking for the net. But I haven’t fallen. I look back at that time and think, Holy crap, I blew up my life. But in some ways, I think you have to have the breakdown to have the breakthrough.
So no, I don’t help women blow up their lives, change careers, update résumés, or find work-life balance. Ugh (that phrase alone!). What I do help them do is reconnect with themselves. A return. A rediscovery. A truth revealing itself, little by little. Letting out steam.
If this feels familiar, or you’re sitting in that space right now, you’re not alone. I assure you. If you’ve been carrying this all around, I see you. And I promise—there is more.
This is the work I care about most: helping women come back to themselves, gently, in their own time.
Heather Eck is an intuitive artist, color expert, creative healing practitioner, writer, and host of the Your Radiant Spirit podcast. She’s a former HR gal turned artist and a recovering people-pleaser. You can follow her art adventures at @HeatherEckArtist and visit her website at www.heathereck.com.
