Burnout and Belonging: Being Present in Your Own Life

My guest today is my friend, the poet and educator Tristan Richards.  She talks with me about her own version of a journey that I’m guessing is familiar to many of you: a journey into overwhelm and burnout, fueled by the tangled morass of unrelenting professional demands and personal loss and grief, all while struggling to figure out the relationship – and distinction – between career and calling.  We wonder together, what does it mean to be truly present in your own life?

 

Tristan is the author of two self-published chapbooks: Not All Challenges Are For Us (2022) and The Year Was Done Right (2019). Her poems have been published in ALOCASIA, Writers Resist, trampset, Preposition: The Undercurrent Anthology, the Mankato Poetry Walk & Ride, and Firethorne. Tristan is most well known for creating and facilitating "Unfold: 30 Days of Writing in Community" (a daily poetry writing online workshop every April for National Poetry Writing Month) and other writing workshops. She holds an MA in Leadership in Student Affairs from the University of St. Thomas and a BA in Communication Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College. You can find her on Instagram at @tristanjrichards or at tristanwritespoems.weebly.com