By day, Kari Smarts is a healthcare consulting actuary, having accidentally gotten herself deep into health insurance after her interest in pre-med school fizzled out for practical reasons (including that she never really wanted to be a doctor, anyway). Over the last 25 years Kari has slowly but surely climbed the corporate latter and now clings to the middle-management rung, hoping she doesn’t get replaced by AI before her life coaching biz takes off. By afternoon, evening and weekend Kari is mother to a beloved middle-schooler. By aspiration and training, Kari is a life coach who helps burned out working moms (like herself) get unstuck.

One morning not too long ago, Kari woke up and thought—I can’t do this anymore. This meaning her life the way it was set up then. It was a confluence of events that burned Kari out so completely—one too many fights with her partner, one too many criticisms from her son’s dad, one (thousand) too many work emails and meetings, one too many things to do around the house, one too many wrinkles, one too many complicated medical problems. It was all just too much for what Kari could handle. Sleep became elusive, weight crept on, and she started making margaritas from scratch more often than she liked. A journal entry from January reads, “Why can’t I just get it together? I’m just a total failure in all ways, and I’ll never feel better. NEVER EVER.”

In typical Kari fashion, she persevered through this crushing depression as long as she could until it came to such a crisis point that she realized if she didn’t do something pronto she’d be checking herself into an institution. Accepting that her depression wasn’t going to make it self go away, Kari took massive action and did seventeen things to help herself.

Seventeen Ways Kari Helped Herself:

1. She scheduled extra therapy appointments with her therapist.

2. She reduced the dosage of a medication that was causing anxiety.

3. She told her co-workers that she was having a small mental crisis and would be fine but needed to take off some PTO here and there over the next few months to rest up.

4. She used PTO to create four-day weekends every other weekend for two months.

5. She had her blood drawn to make sure a vitamin deficiency (iron or D) wasn’t a factor.

6. She signed up for Thistle meal delivery service.

7. She set up a recurring Walmart grocery delivery service.

8. She paid a cleaner to deep-clean her house.

9. She canceled her physical therapy appointments.

10. She changed her last few manual-pay bills to be autopay.

11. She got back in touch with an old friend (they talk on the phone while they walk).

12. She started a daily gratitude practice (not this is not the usual “I’m grateful for coffee,” sort of gratitude practice. It’s an “I’m grateful that I’m the kind of person who takes massive action, because these seventeen things are helping,” kind of gratitude.)

13. She started taking virtual meetings on her work phone while walking in the neighborhood. She now regularly walks for hours during meetings each week—sometimes hours of meetings on a single day. Sometimes she wears sunglasses, sometimes she carries and umbrella and changes into dry shoes halfway through. She uses noise-cancelling headphones, carries a small notebook and pen to take notes, and find she’s actually more engaged with her team.

14. She asked her son to help out around the house. (Kari lives alone with her son). She loads the dishwasher; he unloads it. She loads the washing machine; he transfers to the dryer. (They both fold). She takes the garbage bins down to the street; he brings them back up. When he whines about doing chores Kari shrugs and says, “I know, wouldn’t it be nice if the house could clean itself?”

15. She started giving herself permission to rest at home. She leaves at least one weekend day free of plans, and gives herself permission to stay in her pajamas all day (if she wants). If it’s a weekend when her son is at his dad’s house, Kari putzes around the house looking at old photographs, making art, writing, reading, bingeing crime dramas set in wild places. She eats Thistle salads or orders Domino’s pizza delivery. If her son is around they work on puzzles, play games, read, play Minecraft Dungeons, make art. They walk to sushi or cook simple pasta with butter and parmesan.

16. She started paying attention to what activities burned her out the most and she discovered that while some were a slow burn, some were immediate catastrophic explosions. She’s currently experimenting with ways to circumvent the explosions.

17. She started paying attention to what activities restored her the most. She loves listening to an audiobook (Matilda is a favorite) with her son while they work on an interesting and colorful medium-difficulty puzzle. ”Redwood Forest Tiny House” by Ravensburger and “Common Quilt Block Patterns” by Cobble Hill are two recent favorites. She loves walking, especially out in nature, with a small notebook to record ideas as they pop into her head.