The Price of the Final Brick: When the Body Speaks

After stepping away from photography and returning to accounting to support the family I chose, I believed I was building something stable. I traded the lens for ledgers, convinced that security was a fair exchange for inspiration. But building a home, even an internal one, is not a gentle process; it is a structural overhaul that leaves scars. In the final stretch of writing Book 5, I finally hit the wall. I learned the hard way that while the mind is a master at convincing you to keep going, the body always holds the veto power. And mine just cast its vote.

For 12 years, I lived a life of “shoulds.” I worked as an accountant, taking on the lowest-level, most exhausting projects just so I could work from home and be there for my two children. For 12 years and 11 months, I prioritized the financial stability of my family over my own soul, believing that money was more important than my own calling. I was an exhausted builder, carrying bricks that weren’t mine to hold.

The pressure reached a breaking point in my final year of university. While still maintaining my 12 year accounting career, I attempted to pivot by working as a nurse. But my body began to protest almost immediately.

I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, a physical manifestation of years of strain, forcing me to give up the IVF nurse role after only three months. I then worked as a nurse in a kindergarten for another three months (where I discovered my love for working with children, even if I was just taking care of scraped knees and ensuring the food met their dietary requirements), before quitting the nursing career for good. I kept pushing, oblivious to the fact that the collapse didn’t happen when I was doing nothing; it happened when I was doing everything.

While finishing my own thesis for Psychology, I wrote two other theses for colleagues to make ends meet. I did my own work so well, with so much heart, that I was the one accused of buying my thesis, the irony of life, because the work was “too good.” For two hours every night during five days, I had to defend my integrity in video conferences with my coordinator, proving that the words were mine. I was fighting for my truth while my body was preparing to surrender.

The Silence of the Fever

A week before the end, the rhythm stopped. I crashed into a burnout so severe that for seven days, I couldn’t eat. I had a high fever and was vomiting constantly, yet medical tests found no infection. There was no “germ” to fight, only the total exhaustion of a person who had spent almost 13 years being a calculator instead of a human being.

For the next week, I lived on nectarines and water; it was all I could digest. Then, another two weeks were spent slowly relearning how to eat, how to exist, and how to recover.

“Burnout is not a lack of strength. It is the result of using strength to sustain a lie for too long.”

Because of this collapse, I missed the summer exam session to obtain my license as a psychologist, even though I had already finished the year’s exams. I missed the chance to enter the Clinical Psychology Master’s program that year. In the eyes of the world, I had “failed” a deadline. But in the eyes of my own soul, I had finally stopped building a house for others and started inhabiting my own.

From Numbers to Souls: The Final Transition

That burnout was the fire that forged my new life. It gave me the courage to do what 13 years of “responsibility” had prevented: I quit accounting forever. I didn’t wait for things to be perfect. I took my license exam in the autumn, completed my pedagogical training in a concentrated burst, and started working as a psychologist with children who struggle with the same things I do: dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia.

Between that exam and my eventual Master’s degree, I did the only thing that made sense: I wrote.

I wrote the books that were waiting in the shadows of my mind, even after finishing this five-book series. I found my reflection in the laughter of the children I helped and in the ink of the stories I mapped. I realized that my dyslexia wasn’t a broken gear in a machine; it was a different way of seeing the world. So, I kept writing until my soul stopped bleeding and I finally found where I belong.

The Rhythm of the Resident

Today, after 17 years of hard work, I don’t write from a place of exhaustion. I write from the hearth of the house I finally finished building.

Book 5 is the record of that transition. It’s the moment I stopped being a martyr for a career that stifled me and became a healer for myself and others. The “Final Brick” wasn’t just an achievement; it was the moment I allowed myself to rest and begin writing new stories.

The Covenant Isles say, “Begin.” And so, after 13 years of counting other people’s wealth, I have finally begun to spend my own life.