Building trust takes deposits. Small consistent ones. Showing up when you say you will. Following through. Listening. Being honest even when it’s uncomfortable. You build up a balance over time, and that balance is what lets you navigate the hard stuff. When you have to deliver bad news or ask for something difficult, you’re making a withdrawal. And if you’ve been making deposits all along, the account can handle it.

But if you’ve only been withdrawing? If you’ve been taking and taking without putting anything back? Eventually there’s nothing left. The relationship can’t absorb anything. One hard conversation and the whole thing collapses.

I’ve used this metaphor for years. I’ve coached people through it. I’ve drawn it on whiteboards. I’ve talked about it with friends so much they probably roll their eyes when I bring it up.

But I was only ever looking at individual relationships. One account at a time. I never stepped back and looked at my whole life as a portfolio.

Early last year, I was in total despair. I wrote about this recently, how my world had shrunk down to the size of my laptop, how work became the only place I was investing, how a series of curveballs knocked me flat because I had nothing to fall back on.

But here’s the part I’ve been sitting with since: just a few months later, I felt like myself again. Not perfect. Not finished. But genuinely okay in a way I hadn’t been in years.

How did that happen? Three months from desperate to steady. What changed?

I kept turning it over, trying to understand what I’d actually done. And I kept coming back to this idea of deposits and withdrawals. Except not just in one relationship or one area of my life. Everywhere.

I heard someone talking about her life as a portfolio. Different areas she was trying to invest in. And something clicked.

I started thinking about my own life that way. Not just “work” and “everything else,” but four real areas where my time and energy were going every day: myself, my career, my closest people, and my broader community. My health, my ambitions, my marriage and friendships, the world I was building around my daughter.

When I looked at it honestly, the picture was brutal. I’d been treating my life like it only had one account. Career. I was pouring everything into that one place and letting every other area run dry.

I wasn’t just tired. I was bankrupt everywhere except one place.

And then that one place started making withdrawals too.

When work got hard, it didn’t stay contained. The stress bled into my sleep. The anxiety lived in my chest all day and followed me home at night. I was irritable with my husband. Short with my daughter. My blood pressure was out of control. My body was keeping score.

The one area I’d been investing in wasn’t just failing to hold everything. It was actively draining the areas I’d already emptied. I had nothing in the bank and the hits kept coming.

That’s what burnout actually is. Not just exhaustion. A portfolio that’s gone to zero everywhere, with one overloaded area that’s now taking from the rest.

When I started to climb out, I didn’t do it by resting. Rest is important, but rest alone doesn’t rebuild what’s been depleted for years.

I started investing.

I set up weekly calls with my closest friends. That was an investment in my inner circle. In my sense of being known by people who knew me before all of this.

I joined a coworking space and reached out to old colleagues and mentors. That was an investment in my village. In my professional identity outside of my current job. In relationships that reminded me I had value beyond my org chart.

I started talking to other parents at the playground. Setting up playdates. Volunteering at my daughter’s school. More village. Building a life in this city I’d chosen so intentionally and then neglected for years.

I started paying attention to where my energy was going. Not just my time, but my best energy. I stopped giving my sharpest thinking to problems at work I couldn’t control. I stopped spiraling. I redirected that energy into things I could actually affect. That was an investment in myself.

Each investment was small on its own. But they compounded. The more I invested outside of work, the more capacity I had. The more grounded I felt. The more I could absorb the hard stuff when it came, because I had reserves again.

I’m sharing this because I spent years not seeing what was happening. I thought I was just tired. I thought I just needed to push through to the next milestone at work and then I’d feel better.

I didn’t need to push harder. I needed to invest differently.

And honestly, even that’s only half the picture. Where your time goes matters. But I’ve been realizing that how you spend those hours matters just as much. You can pour time into your career and feel alive doing it, or you can pour time into your career and barely remember doing it. Same area, completely different experience. I’m still working through what that means, and I’ll write more about it soon.

But the portfolio piece was the first unlock. Seeing that I had four areas of my life that needed investment, and I’d been pouring into one while the others went bankrupt.

If your life feels like it’s running on empty, it might might be because everything you’re doing is going into one place. And when that place takes a hit, there’s nothing else to hold you up.

The question isn’t just “where is my time going?”, but, “where am I investing? And where have I been withdrawing for so long there’s nothing left?”

You might not like what you find when you look. I didn’t.

But it was so worth it. Because now I can see that in my recovery, I was building something. Every investment I was making—in my friendships, my community, my sense of self outside of work—was developing a capacity I hadn't known I needed. I'll write more about that soon.

I could have gone home to see my family or hosted them here. I deliberately said no. I was too stressed, too overwhelmed, too empty to handle the logistics of being around the people I love most. So it was just me, my husband, and my daughter. A quiet Christmas that felt more like hiding than resting.

I told myself it was fine because she wouldn’t remember.

But I remember. I remember not having the capacity to carry the mental load of the holidays on top of everything else. I remember feeling like even the bare minimum was almost too much. I remember thinking this is just a season, I’ll come back to myself eventually.

I didn’t, though. Not for a while.

So how did I get there?

I had been working remotely for years before the pandemic, but when lockdown hit, I was only about a year and a half into building a life in Chicago. Tentative friendships. The beginnings of a network. Roots that hadn’t taken hold yet.

And then everything froze. The meetups stopped. The networking events disappeared. After being online all day for work, I couldn’t bring myself to log on again for virtual happy hours with friends back home. I just didn’t have it in me.

When your social life disappears, your job fills the space. My coworkers became my only community. My Teams channels became my water cooler. My laptop became the container for almost every meaningful interaction I had. I didn’t notice how small my world was getting because I was still so busy inside of it.

Then I got pregnant.

I think all new parents go through a haze. Your world narrows to feedings and sleep schedules and just getting through the day. You tell yourself you’ll resurface eventually. When the baby is older. When things settle down. When you can think straight again.

But I entered motherhood and leadership at the same time, and that haze never really lifted. Instead of resurfacing, I leaned harder into work. I kept chasing growth in my career, kept saying yes to more, kept thinking that if I could just reach the next level I would finally feel like myself again.

It didn’t work that way.

The more I climbed at work, the more I was pouring my best energy into problems I couldn’t control and ending my day at home with nothing left. I was giving my sharpest thinking to my job and leaving scraps for everything else. My husband and I stopped making plans together because we were both just trying to get to bedtime. I stopped texting friends back because I was too depleted by the end of the day. I stopped doing anything that was just for me because there was always something more urgent.

Unfortunately, even the hours I was pouring into work weren’t good hours. I was getting things done, sure. Checking boxes. Keeping the machine running. But without replenishing myself in any other domain of my life, even the work became grinding.

My world had shrunk down to the size of my laptop screen. That’s not a metaphor. My community, my friendships, my sense of self... they all existed in this virtual ecosystem that was draining me. And outside of it? I had almost nothing.

And then work went from hard to harder.

A series of curveballs hit at the same time. Things outside my control that made my job, the one place I had been pouring everything into, suddenly feel unstable. The details don’t matter. What matters is that I had spent years withdrawing from every other part of my life, and when the one thing I was invested in started shaking, I had nothing left in the bank.

No reserves. No safety net. No other sources of identity or support or joy to fall back on.

My body started keeping score. I wasn’t sleeping. My blood pressure was out of control. I was irritable with my family, snapping at the people I loved most. I was anxious all the time, the kind of anxiety that sits in your chest and doesn’t leave. I was this close to taking a leave of absence. This close to starting medication just to get through the day.

I had built a life with no shock absorbers. And I was falling apart.

One morning I woke up and thought: I’m not going to live like this.

Not “I should probably make some changes.” Not “maybe I’ll try to find more balance.” Just: I’m not going to live like this. Something has to be different. Now.

That wasn’t a goal. I didn’t write down a 90-day plan or set a target. It was more like a direction. A line in the sand about what I was willing to keep accepting. And from that direction, I could figure out what to do next.

So I stopped waiting to feel ready and I started moving.

I set up weekly calls with two of my closest friends. I joined a coworking space. I reached out to five former colleagues from my more entrepreneurial days, including three who had always been like mentors to me. All of this within maybe a month.

I stopped spiraling about things at work I couldn’t control and started putting that energy into things I could. I volunteered at my daughter’s school. I started actually talking to other parents at the playground and setting up playdates, so that I could have community and my daughter could too.

Each conversation, each coffee, each small investment outside of my corporate world felt like coming home to myself. I started to remember who I was before my entire identity got swallowed by my job title. I started to feel more stable. More grounded. More like a whole person instead of just a function.

The more I invested outside of work, the more capacity I had.

I’m not sharing this because I think my story is unique. I’m sharing it because I know it’s not.

I know there are other women whose worlds have shrunk down to the size of their laptops. Other moms running on fumes and telling themselves it’s just a season. Other people pouring their best energy into work and wondering why they feel so empty everywhere else. Other people one or two curveballs away from discovering they have nothing to fall back on.

If that’s you, I want you to know there’s a way out. You have to start looking honestly at where your time and energy are going. You have to start investing in the parts of your life you’ve been neglecting, even when it feels like you don’t have the bandwidth. You have to start believing that filling your own cup isn’t selfish, because it’s truly what makes everything else possible.

The work now is about protecting what I’ve rebuilt. Making sure the new patterns stick. Noticing when I start to slip back into old habits and course correcting before I end up back where I started.

This year was different before December even started.

We put the tree up early. I watched my daughter place the star on top, her face lit up by the glow of it. We had breakfast with Santa. We walked around looking at Christmas lights. I had everyone’s gifts bought and wrapped weeks before Christmas, sitting under the tree like they belonged there. I made the plans for my family to fly in. I had the capacity for all of it.

And then a respiratory virus ripped through our family in the early part of December and a stomach bug meant within 24 hours of my family landing in Chicago, we were all hunched over buckets and passing saltines around. That’s how we spent Christmas day: my whole family sick together in my living room.

I’m not going to pretend that was magical.

But my daughter had already gotten her magic. She’d gotten weeks of it even, and I’m the one who gave it to her.

That’s what this work is for. Not a perfect life. Just enough in the tank to show up for the one you have.

My daughter will remember this Christmas season. And I’m so proud I could give that magic to her.