So "Superwoman" got tangled in her cape and hit a wall, and it was no small crash. It’s me. I’m superwoman. Or was, I thought. Until eight months ago, after nearly three decades on the corporate hamster wheel, I crashed out. Big time. This burnout was coming down the road for a while, to be honest. But I had failed to connect the dots so the warning signs had de-escalated from alarm bells to mere whispers for lack of response from me; culminating in a massive anxiety attack that landed me in the Emergency Room in April. We all thought I was having a heart attack so being told it was "just" an anxiety attack was absolutely the best-case scenario.

There I was, 52 years old, shaking with shallow breaths, high heart rate, blurry vision, and a terror I’d never known, being admitted to hospital while my family panicked. It was absolutely terrifying. Two weeks of recuperation in a mental health recovery centre and a life-changing prescription flipped my world upside down: SLEEP.

Can you believe it? Something as simple—and as necessary—as sleep had caused me to crash and burn! My brilliant quartet of physician, endocrinologist, psychologist, and psychiatrist were unanimous in their diagnosis. I was suffering from chronic sleep deprivation. Let me try and explain: Basically, when we’re sleep-deprived, it’s not just about feeling tired—it’s like our entire body goes into stress mode. My bloodwork showed extremely high levels of cortisol, which is the hormone that kicks in when we’re under stress. Imagine your body constantly thinking it’s in a fight-or-flight situation. That’s what was happening to me.

The lack of sleep also triggered inflammation in my body. The doctors mentioned things like "C-reactive protein" and other markers that showed my body was acting like it was fighting off an infection, even though I wasn’t sick. This constant state of inflammation wore me down over time.

Another thing they found was that my blood sugar levels were higher than normal. NOT great, given that I was already an insulin-dependent diabetic at that point! Turns out that sleep helps regulate how our body processes sugar, and without enough rest, my body became less effective at utilising the insulin so my blood sugar levels remained permanently high. In fact, Dr Matt Walker, a Professor of Neuroscience at UC Berkeley and a Sleep Scientist, says, "The elastic band of sleep deprivation will stretch only so far until it snaps. If I were to take an individual and limit their sleep to four to five hours a night for just one week, their levels of blood sugar will be so high that their doctor will classify them as pre-diabetic." That was my ration! I was routinely getting four to five hours per night.

It didn’t help that the hormones that control hunger were out of balance. One hormone, ghrelin, which makes you feel hungry, was higher, while leptin, which tells you when you’re full, was lower. That explains why I was craving food more often and having trouble controlling my appetite. And, as anyone who knows me knows, my pleasure weakness has always been SUGAR and my comfort food has always been CARBS! Lethal combination.

On top of all that, my immune system took a hit. The number of certain immune cells like natural killer (NK) cells and lymphocytes in my blood was lower, which means my body wasn’t as ready to fight off illnesses. It’s no wonder I was feeling perpetually run down. That should have been a red flag for me as a person living with autoimmune disease.

Lastly, the doctors told me that sleep deprivation can mess with cholesterol levels and put extra strain on the heart. Some of my blood markers were hinting at higher cardiovascular stress, which was definitely something I needed to address given that I was already hypertensive.

Hearing all this was overwhelming. But it was also the greatest wake-up call (pun intended). I needed to make sleep a real priority and make tough decisions about how I was going to “run tings” going forward. When I was wheeled into that centre, my sleep-deprived brain was in utter crisis. Chronic lack of sleep messes with the brain’s ability to manage emotions and make sound decisions so my doctors had to shut down that emotional instability, physical exhaustion, and confusion of my first week there by literally forcing my brain to shut down using medication.

So WHY was I not sleeping? Bad habits mostly: failure to push back on the insane workload brought about by drastic staff cuts and my assistant being redeployed elsewhere in the business; the upheaval of change exacerbated by leading a business through not one but two global mergers in the space of six months (with all the stress that restructuring brings); a couple of toxic colleagues and a particularly toxic client; my inborn proclivity to worry about the smallest things; my lack of firmness to manage personal boundaries regarding extended family demands; the devastation of betrayal by a close family member who tried to poison my children against me; my stress about my ageing parents (IYKYK!) including my mother-in-law being in ICU for three months following a massive heart attack; my unresolved grief from losing my cousin who was also my mentor and confidante in 2021; the blue light of doom-scrolling for stress relief and its attendant consequence of being confronted with the devastating annihilation of Gaza’s children in the face of an impotent and increasingly irrelevant United Nations; the mass rapes of Sudanese women as wartime collateral damage courtesy of the UAE’s unquenchable appetite for gold; the absolute pillage of the Congo’s natural resources by rampant global pirate corporations with a dash of mass child labour thrown in for good measure; the consequent feeling of total and utter helplessness in the face of global political decision-making significantly above my pay grade… The kids say #issalot and it really was too much for my brain. Human beings were never meant to know and do as much as we do today. 

It didn’t help that for years I wore sleepless nights like a badge of honour. In fact, a straight-shooting friend reminded me recently that I used to brag about how little rest I needed to power through deadlines and challenges, believing that sacrificing sleep was proof of strength. Ouch! Working in the modern-day utterly broken corporate machinery, I suppose there’s no escaping picking up such stinking thinking.

I had to address the prolonged sleep debt to regain myself. Through therapy, I came to learn that burnout isn’t just about the big things; it’s the accumulation of smaller decisions. I can’t help but think about all the times I chose work emails late into the night over playing with my dogs or watching anime with my kids, routinely shaving an hour off my sleep every morning to squeeze more “productivity” out of my day, or staying out late at work functions. In “hustle culture” these are often seen as signs of ambition when you are young and commitment when you are more seasoned. To my brain, they were clear proof that I was ignoring my body’s desperate cries for rest. It wasn’t just about working hard. It was also about the lies I told myself. That I had to do it for my children, to make my parents proud, to save my team from retrenchments... Messiah much?

Added to this, I was really missing doing epic work! The kind of stuff that makes work worth waking up for. Longing to recreate what it felt like to take first place at the Folio Show in New York ahead of Wallpaper by my magazine idol Tyler Brule with our little Design Indaba magazine and to have the Tate Modern be an early subscriber to it; what it felt like to get Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town’s first finalist certificate at the Cannes Festival; what it felt like to see my work published in Lurzer’s Archive; the joy of launching O, The Oprah Magazine under my magnificent mentor Jane Raphaely; what it felt like to work with my Mother to raise R3.8m worth of textbooks for university students who couldn’t afford them (in less than ten months), and so on and so forth… I desperately wanted that hit of adrenaline that comes from professional achievement and being part of a winning and willing team. But that was really difficult to achieve when an ordinarily high-performing group was under the gun waiting for the hammer to fall. Sorry for the mixed metaphor but you get my point! It’s hard enough to keep a team motivated during one restructure but it’s well-nigh impossible during two. I struggled. I missed many family game nights and karaoke sessions hammering away at my computer, producing reports, proposals and spreadsheets, many of which I suspect never even got read sadly, persuading myself that I was “providing” by working harder and setting a strong example for my daughters regarding what determination looked like. But now I see that depriving myself of rest was entirely the wrong lesson to model. 

I’m still working remotely with my four avengers, the doctors, to execute the recovery plan to improve my sleep and give my body the rest it needs to heal. But undoing decades of conditioning hasn’t been easy, I must be honest. I come from a long line of women who have done and survived big and tough challenges. I’ve always been very proud of my internal stamina, and like so many “Strong Black Women,” I had internalised that I had no choice but to push through at all costs at all times. Rest felt indulgent. Asking for help felt weak (and pointless, given the support everybody else was needing from me in both my personal and professional spheres!). But my body was “keeping the score” of this self-neglect, as the psychiatrist, author, researcher, and educator Bessel van der Kolk famously and aptly expressed it—through high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, autoimmune disease, and, ultimately, burnout. There is strong work ethic and then there is self-abuse. By the time I fell sick, I was firmly in the latter camp. 

A dear friend advised me, “You have to make your body a place your soul wants to reside. And that begins with rest.” I listened. And began with a commitment to making quality all-about-me decisions going forward, starting with quitting my job in May, serving notice for four and a half months, and finally gifting myself the last three full months of this year to simply sleep and recharge. This was a tad radical for me given that I’m not a trust fund kid and would like my children to be! But my girls were the first to say, “Yes, Mama take the time off, we will be okay!” How blessed I am with those three.

Resilience without boundaries isn’t strength—it’s a slow road to self-destruction. Now, after three months of prioritising high-quality, restorative sleep, my mind is so much clearer, my body is healing, and I feel like I’m truly living again and not just getting through the day. I chose deep rest, and my soul feels at peace and in place within my body. My brain is no longer revving in first gear while in flames. I feel I am almost back in my creative sweet spot with the work I am experimenting on. As I prepare to re-enter the corporate fray in 2025, I’m holding onto these lessons with both hands and for dear life. 

Needing sleep isn't a sign of weakness; it’s fuel for the good life I really want to live and fair warning is fair game. When I do hop back into the circus ring, it will be with clarity and purpose, working only on projects and in environments that prioritise well-being over perpetual grind. My days of glorifying overwork and accepting every invitation are done. It’s a scam. 

The well-rested me fully intends to be closing my laptop at the point where my workday ends. And I will insist on a point. No more sacrificing evenings, weekends, and precious family moments to the altar of overcommitment. The world won’t end if an email goes unanswered until the next morning, but MY world very well might, if I go back to dishonouring my boundaries.

Rest is now my rebellion, a radical act of self-care that flies in the face of everything hustle culture taught us all. I don’t need to compete with anyone, least of all the version of me that thought busyness equalled value. Instead, I choose presence, intention, and a deliberate focus on the things that truly matter to me. Meaningful work, good people and lots of laughter.

As for my daughters, I have a new lesson to teach them: that strength isn’t about proving how much you can endure, but about learning when to stop, rest and recharge. We’ll turn those missed family game nights into the old rituals that used to bring us so much joy—movie marathons, late-night baking experiments, and long, lazy breakfasts where we laugh until our sides hurt. These moments were always the picture of success on the home front for me and I can’t wait to get back into our groove. 

To anyone reading this and nodding along because you see yourself in my story, I urge you: listen to your body, respect your limits, and above all, make time to SLEEP. Your families will thank you. So will your heart, brain and immune system. Prioritise rest, and you might just find the clarity, balance and joy you’ve been chasing.

To my fellow Superpeople out there: I promise you, rest isn’t indulgence; it’s survival. Go claim your cape… and grab your pillow. Both are waiting for you!

TGX.