I wasn't going to pick it up.
It was just sitting there on the floor of the hotel — a single penny. Normally I'd walk right past it. It's a penny.
Maybe make the joke to myself of it being lucky heads-up and leave it for a kid... if they still tell em that these days! But something made me stop, lean down, and grab it.
I turned it over. 2006.
I don't know why that stopped me. But I stood there for a second, just holding it, feeling something shift.
Because in 2006, I was 16 years old.
· · ·
That little coin stayed with me the rest of the day. I kept pulling it out of my pocket and looking at it. And slowly, this thought started building: I'm about to turn 36. That's 20 years. And somewhere in those 20 years — not all at once, but slowly, quietly — I lost a big piece of myself.
The piece that was loud. The piece that had opinions and wasn't afraid to say them out loud. The piece that was, honestly, a little bit of a handful.
When I was 16, I was expressive. Fiery. Outspoken. I stood up for myself and for other people without thinking twice about it. And I've spent the last year or so trying to find my way back to her — to that younger version of me.
I got a real reminder of who she was when I started thinking about something that happened when I was 13.
· · ·
I had one of the bigger parts in a school musical — Once on This Island. I'd worked so hard on that solo. The night of the performance, during my moment on stage, a woman in the audience stood up and made it very obvious that she was leaving. Not quietly. Just — up, out, done.
That week, she wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper. Back when local papers still ran those...
She said the school had "lost its way" in letting students perform a show that involved, in her words, "island gods." She had religious objections and she wanted the whole town to know it.
I read that letter. And then I wrote one back.
As a 13-year-old, I told her that I was the one she walked out on. I told her that I had worked incredibly hard for that solo. I told her that regardless of her personal beliefs, she was an adult — and there were a hundred other ways she could have handled her objection that didn't involve walking out of a child's performance in a way that made sure everyone noticed.
She responded. She said: "When you become an adult, you'll understand." Our back and forth became the talk of the town... it was a small town...
Well. I became an adult.
And I agree with my 13-year-old self more now than I did then.
· · ·
But somewhere between that 13-year-old writing letters to the editor and today, I became "Renae, the outspoken one" — and that title slowly shifted from something I wore like a badge into something I had to manage.
Tone down. Filter. Make easier for other people to swallow.
I stopped writing the letters. I started staying quiet when I had something to say. I got really good at keeping the peace — at everyone else's expense, and eventually at my own.
I shrank myself. Bit by bit, so slowly I didn't even notice it was happening. Even prided myself as a "chameleon".
"That penny wasn't about nostalgia. It was a little mirror."
And here's what I want to say about burnout, because I think we talk about it completely wrong.
We treat it like a scheduling problem. Too many hours. Too much on the calendar. Not enough vacation days. And sure — those things contribute. But that's not the root of it. Not for most of us.
Burnout is grief. It's the exhaustion that comes from living out of alignment with who you actually are. It's what happens when you've been abandoning yourself for so long — saying yes when you meant no, staying quiet when you had something to say, performing a version of yourself that's easier for other people to be around — that your system finally goes: we're not doing this anymore.
It doesn't usually show up as a dramatic breakdown. It shows up as:
I don't feel like myself anymore.
I don't know what I want.
I'm just... tired.
Yeah. Of course you are. You've been working overtime to be someone you're not.
· · ·
The fix isn't time off. It's not a better morning routine or a new planner or a week at the beach — though God knows we could all use one.
The fix is honesty. It's getting real about where you've been shrinking and deciding if you're actually done with that.
That penny didn't give me an answer. But it asked me a question I'd been avoiding:
What if she's still in there?
The girl who wrote the letter. The one who was 13 years old and looked at an adult's bad behavior and called it what it was. The one who wasn't subtle, who was a lot to handle, who said what needed to be said.
I don't think she went anywhere. I think I just got really, really good at overriding her.
· · ·
There's something kind of poetic about the penny, too. They've basically phased it out, you know? It still exists — you'll find one on a hotel floor — but it doesn't really circulate anymore. It's been quietly set aside.
Kind of like that version of me.
Still here. Just not really in use.
That small moment in the hotel — bending down, picking up a coin I normally would have ignored — turned out to be one of the more transformational things that happened to me this year.
Not because of magic. Because it made me stop. It made me remember. And it made me ask whether I was actually ready to stop shrinking.
I think I am. What about yourself?
This Week’s Nervous System Regulation...
Three Practical Steps to Try This Week to Avoid Overwhelm and Connect with Yourself:
GROUNDING YOURSELF IN THE BODY
Take a breath. Not a deep "performative" breath — just a real one. Notice your feet on the floor. Press them down slightly. This is called grounding through physical contact, and it's one of the simplest ways to bring your nervous system back online when a memory or emotion pulls you sideways. The body needs to know it's safe before the mind can process anything clearly.
Follow my Regulation Triangle video to help!:
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL SIGH
If you feel some tension rising as you read this — because maybe this is hitting close to home — try what researchers call a physiological sigh: a double inhale through the nose (short breath, then a second sniff on top of it), followed by a long, slow exhale through the mouth with a sigh. This is the fastest known way to downregulate your nervous system. One or two of these can genuinely shift your state. Your body doesn't distinguish between a past threat and a present one — so if remembering who you used to be feels activating, this is how you remind your system that you're safe right now.
A SELF-COMPASSION PAUSE
Place one hand on your chest. Feel the warmth of your own hand. Take a breath and try saying — silently or out loud — "This is hard. I'm not the only one who feels this way. I'm allowed to come back to myself." This practice, rooted in self-compassion research (Dr. Kristin Neff's work), activates the care circuitry of the nervous system — the same warmth you'd offer a friend. Most of us are dramatically better at offering that to others than to ourselves.
🎧 This Week on the Hustle Rebels Podcast
If this topic resonated, head over to Hustle Rebels to catch the latest episode.
This week's episode, I break down why burnout isn’t something you can fix with better habits alone — because you can meditate, breathe, and “take care of yourself”… and still feel completely drained if you’re going back to the same environments, expectations, and patterns that are keeping your system activated.
It also sets the stage for this week’s conversation with Wade Simmons, who shares how that kind of prolonged stress and burnout didn’t just stay mental — it showed up physically in a way he couldn’t ignore.
🎧 Listen here: [Why High Achievers Burn Out (Even When They’re Healthy)]
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- Renae
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