From Burnout to Purpose: A Mindfulness Manifesto

This blog gets a little personal, yet it’s worth it.

My brother’s birthday was this week. Had he lived, he would have been 57. My mom would be 76. They both died young from brain cancer.

In my final corporate role at a Silicon Valley software company, I moved up the chain twice into the software partner program manager position on the business development team. I was thriving on paper — two promotions, a six-figure salary, and work I genuinely enjoyed. I managed partner relationships, trained sales teams, and consistently delivered results.

Just after the 1^st year of that role, my brother and mother both were diagnosed a month apart.

A woman's hand with an IV on a hospital bed.

For some reason, my manager advised me to keep this private. It went against everything in my gut, but I did as he asked. I was still pretty new in the role, and didn’t want to make waves. The impact this took on my mental and emotional well-being was gigantic. I was left carrying a heavy personal crisis without any workplace support. 

Even while on family medical leave, I was still expected to work. No one else had been trained to cover my role. The result? Exhaustion and a creeping sense of isolation that deepened every month.

As the year turned into a second year of dealing with two family members battling cancer and telling no one about it, I began to see that my days at this company were numbered.

The breaking point came when I had a trip planned to see my brother during treatment — approved months in advance — and was asked to attend a partner conference at the last minute. My assistant went in my place, but the message was clear: my manager had reached the limit of his support and I was replaceable.

I’ve often thought about how differently this could have played out if I’d had the tools I teach now. Back then, I was five years into my mindfulness journey but had no home practice and no structured support for regulating my nervous system. My mindfulness teachers didn’t form communities outside of their classes. They didn’t encourage us to practice on our own.

Had I been able to ground myself daily, recover from stress in real time, and navigate difficult conversations from a centered place, I could have made better decisions, set clearer boundaries, and sustained my performance without depleting myself.

I also think about the workplace culture. If my manager, and the C-level executives, had been exposed to the financial benefits of empathic, self-aware, and mindfulness-based leadership strategies — understanding that openness fosters trust, that empathy builds resilience in teams — they could have mobilized support without compromising optics. Without the support of the executives, my manager was unwilling to try.

I left with no real plan. The experience I had left me so hollow inside, that even though there was a recruiter from another company that offered me my “pick” of three available positions based on my work experience, I couldn’t do it.

I was burnt out.

I later learned that when a male colleague in another department faced a family cancer diagnosis, his leadership team openly shared the news, rallied around him, redistributed his workload, and allowed him a hybrid schedule. The contrast was striking, and telling.

That team did it right.

A diverse work team enjoying a laugh.

Gender-based bias? Lack of fear by the Chief Marketing Officer?

It’s hard to tell. What I do know is the team acted like a team, and did the right thing to support their teammate. Even within that company, different teams lead by example on how to support a workmate and still get the work done. From what I heard on the grapevine, that man went on to work at that company for quite a few years. You can imagine the company loyalty his treatment induced.

Whether man, woman, non-binary, or anything else, every person deserves to choose to leave or change careers from a place of empowerment, not a place of desperation.

Right now, McKinsey reports that women in the workplace face much of the same challenges as they did ten years ago. Although there has been an increase in women achieving vice president or higher executive roles in US corporations, the pipeline to continue to support women advancement is fragile, and especially weak for women of color, LGBTQIA+ women, and disabled women.

The study reported that many corporations are abandoning their commitment to mentorship programs and diversity support communities, yet still expecting middle managers to support their teams and make their workplace life enjoyable. And, these same companies are relaxing their financial commitment to train middle managers to do this, which in and of itself, will lead to burnout.

And yet, McKinsey also reported in 2023 that companies with a more gender diverse executive team are likely to perform 39% better financially than peer companies in the same sector. Study after study shows women in management levels or higher at corporations, and especially women in the C-suite, increases company profitability.

Because of these data points, and my personal experience, now is the time to make my why known. With humility, I actively commit to shifting this old burnout to purpose.

I commit to impacting 1 million women in business throughout the US and Europe. Yep. Go big or go home, right?

My goal is to equip one million women with the practical, mindfulness-based leadership strategies that I wish I had in my last corporate job. My plan is to offer support to both women leaders as individuals, and organizations, to reach as many women as possible. The reason for this combination is to not only help one single woman at a time, which may leave them feeling isolated if they are the only one with these skills in their workplace. Yet to also build the framework within organizations to better support their women employees.

It's a lofty goal, but doable when we come together to create a community of embodied support.

Working women kicking up their heels like the Rockettes.

Be prepared to see new branding and a new company name, to support this effort.

And, if I’ve reached out to you for market research and the like, I encourage you to join me at the ground level of this company, and share in the excitement of making mindfulness and bioenergetics the “x” factor that elevates women everywhere in the world and everywhere in the workplace.

Welcome to my mindfulness manifesto. Thank you for joining with me! Together we can take burnout to purpose through mindfulness.

With love and leadership,

Marissa