I was based in Bangkok.

Seven countries. Two years of flying between Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Manila, Jakarta, Vientiane, and occasionally Hanoi and Yangon. Repeat. A project that demanded everything and then asked for more.

By year two, I was completely run down. Sick from the travel, empty in every way that matters. But I kept going. I pushed through. I delivered at 100%.

When the exhaustion was visible enough that someone finally noticed, the response was: "Everyone is like this."

Not because they were cruel. Because in the environments we work in, running on empty is not a warning sign. It is just what you do. You get on with it. You do not stop to ask whether this is the right thing for your well-being. You deliver. That is the culture. That is the expectation. And most of us have absorbed it so deeply that we no longer even recognize it as a choice.

I got burned out.

I left. I went back to school, which I thought was the answer. It wasn't. I traded one pressure for another and told myself I was recovering. I wasn't. I was just busy in a different direction.

What I know now is that burnout does not resolve itself through movement. You can change the continent, the role, the institution. It follows you. The only thing that actually worked was stopping long enough to accept that I was burned out. Not performing wellness. Not pushing through in a new context, actually stopping and naming it.

That was the hardest part. Not the leaving. The accepting.

If you are a staff member reading this, I see you. You are not weak. You are not failing. You are running inside a system that was never designed with your sustainability in mind. And you are fed up. You are right to be.

If you are a leader reading this, I am not here to shame you. But I want you to sit with something uncomfortable. The culture did not build itself. Every time you said "everyone is like this," or stayed silent when you should have spoken, you made a choice. Most likely without realizing it. That does not make you cruel. It makes you part of a pattern that needs to be broken.

Both of you are in this together, whether you know it or not.

Movement is not recovery. Acceptance is where it starts. That is not a wellness conversation. It is a leadership one. And somewhere in your institution right now, someone is learning that the hard way.