Monica McCleary, owner of Yen’s Garden, observes how modern life often places people inside a constant stream of information, expectations, and uncertainty. From global tensions and economic pressures to endless notifications and competing demands, she notes how burnout increasingly extends beyond the workplace and into everyday life.
This perspective comes from her lived experience. Long before she began guiding others, she spent years navigating emotional pain that remained unnamed and unexamined. Growing up with limited support and entering adulthood without foundational resources, she learned to navigate life largely on her own. Later, after becoming a mother, that accumulated weight intensified into a period of deep despair.
For a long time, she pushed forward while carrying burdens she could not fully understand. Eventually, she made a decision that would change the direction of her life: she chose to pay attention to her pain instead of moving past it. “Pain is information. It can reveal exactly where care is needed, but only if we acknowledge it,” McCleary says.
That realization arrived during a deeply difficult period when she found herself searching for relief from emotional exhaustion. In a moment of desperation, she sat alone on the floor and permitted herself to stop searching for immediate answers. The invitation that emerged was, as she recalls, remarkably simple: sit, be still, and listen. “At first, the experience was uncomfortable. Silence offered no instant solutions. But as I returned to it again and again, something began to shift,” she shares.
The significance of that turning point extends beyond McCleary’s personal story. Burnout has become a wider societal concern. More than a quarter of workers affected by significant policy-related workplace changes reported emotional exhaustion. At the same time, broader discussions around burnout increasingly recognize that caregiving responsibilities, life transitions, health challenges, and chronic stress outside of work can produce similar outcomes. Emotional exhaustion often emerges from the way people are living overall, not solely from their jobs.
McCleary sees that reality reflected in the people who seek her guidance. “Many come to me believing they need a single answer to solve everything,” she says. Instead, she introduces the idea of a personal ‘tool belt,’ a collection of practices that support well-being in different ways depending on the individual and the moment. She adds, “There’s no universal tool. The goal is learning which ones help you hear yourself more clearly.”
For some people, that toolkit may include meditation. For others, it may involve energy work, tarot, creative expression, time in nature, water rituals, crystals, community connection, journaling, simple moments of reflection, or therapy. McCleary emphasizes that many of these practices require little or no financial investment. Their value, in her view, comes from creating opportunities to reconnect with intuition and self-awareness.
That philosophy aligns with a growing recognition that burnout recovery is highly personal. Sustainable well-being often requires multiple forms of support because every individual’s circumstances are different. McCleary has witnessed that firsthand. Through her online live sessions and client conversations, she found that people resonated with discussions about personal growth because they were seeking guidance tailored to their own experiences.
Underlying all of her work is a belief that answers become easier to recognize when people spend time understanding themselves. “I encourage my clients to examine habits and assumptions that keep them disconnected from their needs. Statements like ‘I don’t have time to rest’ usually become invitations to explore priorities more deeply,” McCleary says. In her experience, rest and self-knowledge support better decisions, healthier relationships, and a stronger sense of direction.
Creativity also plays an important role in that process. McCleary views creative activities as a pathway back to purpose because they may urge people to participate in something meaningful beyond daily obligations. Whether through gardening, sewing, art, writing, music, or other forms of expression, creativity, she emphasizes, can reconnect individuals with parts of themselves that have been overshadowed by stress.
Although many people come to McCleary seeking guidance, her long-term goal is independence, not reliance. She hopes clients leave with greater confidence in their own judgment and capacity for self-reflection. Her role, she explains, is to help people redirect themselves toward what they already know deep within.
Her own journey serves as an example of that principle. Through years of reflection, learning, and personal practice, she turned a period of profound struggle into a foundation for helping others. That experience informs her optimism about burnout and emotional exhaustion. Recovery may look different for every person, yet she believes most people already possess more resources than they realize.
The first step, she suggests, is allowing space to pause. Within that pause, people can begin building a toolkit that supports a more sustainable relationship with themselves. For those seeking a starting point, Monica McCleary offers guidance and a reminder that wisdom often emerges when there is enough room to hear it.
