At that moment, a five-year flashback sprinted through my head at speed. Memories were replaying, fast-forwarding and rewinding – both on shuffle and loop. The times I’d said yes to please others but ended up hurting myself. The times I worked non-stop while doing my best to build a side hustle without getting any rest because social media had glamorised sleep as being “for the dead”.

This was a loud, piercing wake-up call. One I needed to answer. I was no longer the ‘last gal standing’. What was suddenly clear was that I critically needed to slow my lifestyle down. And even more so, I needed to develop the courage and confidence to put my needs first.

Over the next couple of weeks, I received tremendous support and treatment from the NHS staff, who were able to bring my eye pressure back down into the normal range. Although my eyesight never went back to how it was prior to the incident, it was mostly restored. From then, I vowed to build the necessary structures and implement relevant strategies into my life that have shifted me from an unsustainable hustle-and-grind culture to one of blended harmony (even when the going got tough). So, I took the following two years to withdraw from everything that was no longer serving me and, instead, I looked after the parts of my life that had been left malnourished and bone dry.

“My people-pleasing burnout almost made me blind – now I work to help people set boundaries”