The Disney Cruise: What Burnout Looks Like Before the Collapse

“The Rachel Anne I knew was still there somewhere, but your edges ha󠀆d changed.” Permission To, Chapter 22

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I’ve had two trips that stand out when I look back on my burnout. The first one happened about a month before I ended up in the hospital, convinced I was having a heart attack. At the time, I didn’t know I was burned out. I just knew that everything felt hard. Not emotionally hard in a poetic way. Hard in a practical, grinding, relentless way.

The Disney cruise was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. The one my kids would remember forever. Instead, it’s the trip where they got to see me at my worst.

I don’t say that lightly. When I think back to that week, I barely recognize myself. The way I reacted. The decisions I made. How tense I was. How easily overwhelmed I became. That wasn’t who I am. But it was who I was then.

I wasn’t able to enjoy anything. Every moment felt like work. Every small inconvenience felt enormous. The tiniest disruption could tip me over the edge.

It’s like those days when everything is already going wrong and you drop a fork on the floor, and suddenly you’re crying. Except it wasn’t a bad day. It was my entire nervous system. And it was constantly happening. Multiply that feeling by a thousand.

Nothing was objectively wrong. And yet everything felt unbearable.

In my book, I go into more detail about what happened on that trip and how it affected my husband and my children. I won’t do that here. What matters for this blog is not the itinerary or the arguments or the moments themselves.

What matters is this: I was completely undone, and I didn’t know it yet.

I don’t regret going on that trip. But I do grieve the fact that I wasn’t really there. My body was there. My role as a parent was there. But I wasn’t.

There’s a specific kind of pain that comes with realizing your children have memories of you in a state you don’t recognize or want to be remembered for. I wasn’t cruel or neglectful. I was just... empty.

Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like functioning without margin. Parenting without flexibility. Reacting instead of choosing. Everything feels urgent. Everything feels personal. Everything feels like too much.

From the outside, I was still doing all the things. Travelling. Parenting. Managing logistics. Showing up. From the inside, I was barely holding myself together.

If there’s one thing that trip taught me, it’s that burnout can strip you down long before it knocks you out completely. It dismantles you quietly, piece by piece, until you’re still moving but no longer resourced.

One of my regrets is not having recognized that sooner. Not because I should have known better, but because I didn’t yet have the language to name what was happening. And because of that, my children saw a version of me I wish they hadn’t had to see.

This is what burnout can look like before the collapse. Not dramatic. Not obvious. Just relentlessly, absurdly hard.

If parts of this resonate, you’re not broken. You’re not failing. You may just be carrying more than your system can sustain.

Sometimes the warning signs don’t come as whispers anymore. Sometimes they show up as a vacation that breaks you instead of restoring you.

And sometimes, we only understand what was happening once we’re already on the other side of it.

Have you ever felt like that? Your voice belongs here. This space is for listening, together.