Yolanda Harper LCSW recently sat down with Esther Goldstein LCSW to discuss her book Soul Sabbatical: A Journey to Revive the Heart. This a great interview that gives a lot of information about the book.

For most of us, the waters we swim in choke out our capacity to dream. While we do fine with identifying big life goals – where to go to school, our desired profession, how to climb the ladder

of success, even goals to partner and have children (or not) are not hard to put on our to-do list. We often just take the next step that’s expected of us. But along the way, we lose our capacity to check in with our heart’s desires and ask the question, “What do you want,

Darling?” and to reach deeply with the response of “what if...?”

At Harper Therapy, we use the acronym FOOBS – family of origin bullshit. It’s our colloquial term for another acronym, ACES – Adverse Childhood Experiences, which is a long-standing study about the effects of childhood trauma like physical and sexual abuse, emotional and physical neglect, parental substance abuse, mental health problems, divorce/separation, and incarceration, among other markers.

A very interesting phenomenon was happening around the time that I was exploring taking a sabbatical. It was the Great Resignation. Remember that? Thousands and thousands of people left their jobs for many different reasons. I was so intrigued by what would inspire people to leave the security of a job, so I learned more about those reasons and then explored some of my own. Not so that I could resign from my job, but so I could resign from the things in my life that keep me half-living. These are some of the things that are at the root of our burn out.

What do you do when your life isn’t working? This is the question I asked during a moment of stark realization that, in spite of the hours I had spent meditating, doing yoga, journaling, taking staycations, and countless other “self care” activities, I was still burned out, overwhelmed, and exhausted.