Burnout is Real. Rest is Necessary.
A raw, personal, and gentle reminder to my fellow writers, creatives, and anyone feeling stretched thin—on pausing, noticing beauty, and finding your way back to Sukoon (peace).
Before I start, I want to take a moment to thank each of you: my paid subscribers and those of you who simply choose to be here and read along. Your presence, patience, and support mean the world to me.
Hello, dear friends,
It’s been a little quiet on Spice Spoon. Not because I didn’t want to write to you, but because I was feeling something I can only describe with a word I learnt while living in Rome: pesante. Heaviness.
I first came across this word in the summer of 2003. I had moved to Rome about six months earlier, on my own. It was the summer of the heatwave, when we lived on cold dishes of large, plump olives + bread, salads of peppery arugula, tiny orbs of cherry tomatoes, and slices of mozzarella that left small pools of milk on our plates.
I often spent my weekend evenings around Piazza Navona with my friend, Patrizia. We would walk along the serpentine Via del Governo Vecchio, looking for a place to eat. Passing trattorie serving hot pastas and slow-cooked sauces, Pat would shake her head and say, è pesante, it’s too heavy.
At first, pesante was just about food.
But once we found our little enoteca, we would sit for hours, chatting over plates of cheese, grilled vegetables marinated in olive oil and vinegar, and cold glasses of fizzy Franciacorta. We talked about heartbreaks and job insecurity (we were both contractual consultants at the UN at the time).
We talked about the unspoken weight we carried.
It was then that I began to understand that pesante meant more than just heavy food.
It was the word we used for feelings that sat thick on our heart.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about that word again.
Life has felt pesante in the accumulation of small weights. The work I love. The deadlines. The (invisible labor) of running a home. Navigating friendships that shift and evolve over time. Holding space for my parents who live far from me.
I was simply burnt out.
We don’t talk about this enough: the weight of keeping everything afloat, the longing to create, and the tug of responsibilities that make us set down our pens. Those of us who love our craft know how burnout can slip in quietly, like a thief in the night, even when you love what you do.
Writing here on Substack is a joy and a privilege. But it’s not my only work. My days are shaped by earning a living through my food blog, recipe development for publications, client shoots, workshops, and lately, a bit of lecturing at the university. These are the things that keep my business alive and support my family—we are a dual-income household, and that reality underpins it all.
In the middle of all that, there is the work I love deeply: being a Mamma. This adds to life’s fullness and asks me to show up completely, even on days when I’d love to stay in my pyjamas, make lemon balm tea, and watch old Truffaut films (my favorite escape).
I think about this often: How do we keep creating when life overflows?
Even when I feel stretched thin, I continue to notice beauty everywhere, which is why I started my Sukoon series here. In Urdu, Sukoon means soft joy, peace, and comfort; not just the kind around you, but the kind you feel deep in your bones.
If pesante is the word for heaviness, Sukoon is its opposite, it is that feeling of lightness, that reminds us we are here and we are alive.
I have learnt that rest is not a luxury. It’s not laziness or indulgence, though I grew up believing it was, shaped by my parents who worked tirelessly.
Rest is part of the work and a necessary space where ideas can breathe, and where we can find peace—Sukoon—as writers, and as creatives.
I don’t have a perfect answer. Maybe you don’t either. But I wanted to share this very raw truth with you, so you know that if you’ve felt this too—that feeling of life being pesante, the pull between what you have to do and what you long to do—you are not alone.
That was my very long way of telling you where I’ve been.
I hope you’re still here with me.
Thank you for reading, and being patient with me. I’ll be returning to more regular letters soon, with stories, recipes, and reflections. But for today, I wanted to offer you this small note and a reminder that it’s OK to pause, to rest, and to find your way back to writing and creating, to finding Sukoon when you’re ready.
I’ve missed you. And I’m so grateful you’re here.
All love, Shayma x
As always, this newsletter is written entirely by me. No AI tools, just my own words.
All photographic beauty in this newsletter is by me, unless otherwise credited.
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In the thick of the first lockdown when I was co-chair of the Union where I worked, I gathered the committee to talk about sustainable activism. We had so much policy work to do during that time as there was a restructure all of which was happening remotely. I suggested that we needed to have a radical rest approach. I had no idea that this would become a thing and a book has been published about it recently. When I said it to my colleagues, I had meant it in a way that we needed proper rest. Not the fluffy stuff like baths, salt soaks and the like. We needed to work out how to really care for ourselves through unplugging, having dedicated time away from activism and doing restorative things. Rest is the absolutely necessity and vital for creativity so this made so much sense.
The idea that rest is part of the work is one of those things I must remind myself almost daily. This post was today's reminder. Thank you.