From Burnout to Breakthrough: How One Woman’s Sabbatical Sparked a New Era of Leadership By Lynn Wong, Executive Well-Being Coach and Founder of Nourish & Trade Co.
When Power Pauses: A Woman Leader’s Journey from Collapse to Clarity
In a world that prizes productivity and celebrates the hustle, I did everything "right"—until my body said no. As a corporate leader managing multimillion-dollar teams and mentoring talent across global markets, I thrived on performance. Yet one Monday morning, I could not get out of bed. There was no fever, no diagnosis, just a bone-deep exhaustion that years of achievement had buried under the surface. It was not burnout as a buzzword. It was a full-body shutdown.
After mandated rest, a bald patch the size of my fist, and a reckoning with autoimmune triggers, I realized I was not weak—I was misaligned. Like many women in leadership, I had learned to equate value with velocity. I had modeled resilience but ignored rest. I had achieved much—but at the cost of my health, joy, and presence. The Sabbatical That Rewired My Life I did what most high-achievers avoid at all costs: I stopped. I resigned without a plan, choosing instead to take a full career sabbatical—something I thought I would earn later in life. It felt like failure at first. Then it became the most courageous leadership decision I’ve ever made.
That unraveling was the beginning of my reclamation.
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