Q on Queue 111: Running on Empty

Send us a message It's almost the end of the school year. For school staff, many at this point of the year are just exhausted - but it's way more than being just tired, it's depletion. There’s a difference. Tired can be fixed with rest. Depletion runs deeper. It shows up when you’ve been giving, carrying, and pouring out for a long time without enough space to be refilled. You can still show up, still do your job, still keep everything moving—but something underneath it all just feels… off. The goal isn’t to push through and ignore it - it’s to pay attention to it. Because those signals aren’t weakness, they’re feedback. When we slow down enough to recognize what’s draining us and what actually restores us, we begin to move out of survival mode and into something more sustainable. Not perfect and not instant, but more aware, more grounded, and more aligned. In this first episode of a 4-part series I'm calling "Refuel - Finishing Well Without Running Dry", we talk about "Running on Empty" - what it feels like to simply not have any more to give AND how we can address it and point ourselves to a path to replenishment when we look in the right places. Though this series is themed for teachers, it's applicable to anyone who is at a point in their life when they just feel they have run out of what they have to give.