The Great Exhaustion
After a lifetime of going the extra distance and pushing beyond her limits, lawyer Fay Calderone tells how she has mastered the art of ‘enough’.
“It must be hard,” says my sister as she slouches back on her chair and yawns.
“What?” I ask as I momentarily glance up from cleaning my bench tops, perfectly repositioning items as I wipe the surfaces shiny clean.
“Waking up each day and giving 110 per cent to everything you do … every single day. Aren’t you exhausted?”
I stop what I was doing, for longer this time, and stare right past her glance. “I am … I really am.”
One of my earliest memories of school is spending countless hours at home tracing an entire colouring-in book to create stencils for the other children in my kindergarten class. I can’t remember their responses, but I do remember the enthusiasm with which I embraced the project and how excited I was to show my teacher. My need for affirmation came early.
My parents had a bakery that operated 20 hours a day. I was 10 when they bought it, my sister, six. As they ran the shop, I ran the house despite her many protests that I was “not her mum”. I clearly was not but I tried my hardest to fill Mum’s shoes when she was not there. Fair to say they were hard shoes to fill for anyone, much less a 10-year-old.
The moment I could work in my parents’ shop, I did. At 12 years old I started running the kiosk around the corner from the main bakery, ecstatic to have my own little show. The minute I turned 14 and 9 months – the legal age to work – I launched into my first job with a patisserie franchise. I was terrible at making coffee but my customer service skills were exceptional. My boss however was a cruel and special breed of manager who told me he could “train a racehorse but not a donkey” when I used a paper bag larger than his liking for a pastry item. I was happy to resign and move on to greener pastures at Australia’s Wonderland. A dream part-time job for a dreamer like me.
“The more we control the more we need to release. The more we diet, the more we binge. The more we try to control every aspect of our lives, the more leaks out at the seams.”
Despite my ambition and enthusiasm, I was a sickly child. Always unwell, always tired. I was extremely overweight. I couldn’t run, swim or ride a bike, partly because I was often so fatigued, mostly because I was so self-conscious.
Having had operations on my ears, nose and tonsils and seen multiple specialists and dieticians by 13 years old, I finally collapsed and was taken to hospital. I was misdiagnosed with pleurisy and discovered I was allergic to penicillin. Eventually, a local GP decided to send me for a blood test (others had tried before but my veins were hard to find – still are – and gave up). It turned out I had Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. My antibodies were through the roof and my thyroid had completely stopped working. The medicos opined that the antibodies had been attacking my thyroid for years. Treatment for the disease was easy but losing weight was hard work. The scars of being overweight for most of my childhood remained.
Academically, I aspired and persevered, giving 110 per cent to every exam, assignment and task, like it was my last. Like it was do or die. Everything mattered. I studied career guides from the first year of high school. I mapped my future. I planned my courses, my career trajectory, my work options … my life. I was so determined to achieve. To be the best I could be. Always.
I decided on law early, a double degree of workplace relations and law in particular. My middle-aged male career adviser encouraged me to have a plan B. Quite pragmatically, he counselled me that few girls from public schools in western Sydney become lawyers. He was probably right but he underestimated my determination.
I knew graduate jobs wouldn’t be that easy to come by, so I took a full-time, very challenging, but-low-paid, job in a law firm in my third year of university and continued to work and study full-time for two and a half years as I delivered the best grades of my degree. I also got married and bought my first house, all before 23. By 28, my first child was born. By 32 I made partner and was running my own employment practice in a commercial law firm. By 33 my second son was born and we were in our third house. At 44, I have more than 20 years of legal practice and marriage under my belt and we are in our fifth home, our family’s forever home (we think).
110 per cent comes at a price. Any high-performance athlete coach will tell you no-one can operate at 110 per cent all the time. Anyone can tell you no-one can achieve 100 per cent all the time. The quest for perfection is exhausting and undeniably unachievable, inevitably leading to disappointment and burnout.
The more we control the more we need to release. The more we diet, the more we binge. The more we try to control every aspect of our lives, the more leaks out at the seams. Everyone needs a release. For some it’s alcohol and smoking, for others it’s exercise or food, sometimes interchangeably. I took up smoking during the HSC and smoked through university until my admission day to legal practice when I took up exercise to kick it.
For the next 15 years I dragged myself out of bed in the early hours of the morning and flogged myself in spin classes, boxing, body attack and pump classes. They made me feel alive in the morning. It gave me sense of control. It didn’t matter how busy work got, how late I worked, if the kids were up all night teething, with fevers or viruses, I would press on and show up. Until I couldn’t.
“My condition is complex, but stable. Anyone with autoimmune disease will tell you this is the best we can hope for.”
The harder I trained the more tired I got. My fitness over the years was not improving, and in fact was getting worse. I was dizzy, breathless, fatigued, my hands ached, my heart raced, my hair starting falling out. I put it down to stress, being a tired working mum and the thyroid condition. As it turns out there was a little more going on – a rare autoimmune disease called systemic scleroderma (limited rather than the more aggressive version of diffuse) and a few heart complications to go with it. Naturally this rocked me, as I Googled life spans and future possibilities. As I approached my 40th birthday, I was also being investigated for a serious complication with this disease called pulmonary artery hypertension, and was devastated to read of the poor outcomes people with it face. The boys were six and 11 and I couldn’t believe I might not see them as adults; as the main breadwinner, not be able to support them. It sent me into a spiral. A self-destructive spiral. What was the point of all the striving, achieving and self-control if ultimately I was to succumb to a disease I had no control over? A disease for which the trajectory was completely unpredictable.
Fortunately, the worst has not eventuated health wise. I have yearly screens which have become a little less frequent than yearly thanks to the pandemic. I take 10 tablets a day and my condition is complex, but stable. Anyone with autoimmune disease will tell you this is the best we can hope for. COVID, of course, adds a layer of health anxiety and as a vulnerable one, I need to be more cautious than most.
Professionally, I have landed in the perfect place. A high performing firm that embraces flexible working, diversity and encourages people to stay true. I am living my purpose of helping employers build respectful healthy and inclusive workplaces and leading our progressive diversity, inclusion and wellbeing initiatives. I am determined to make the legal industry a more healthy and inclusive profession for those that follow. I continue to work hard but reap the rewards of that hard work. The harder I work the luckier I get. I continue to give 110 per cent. I aim for 110 per cent and beyond in my financial performance, in my profile building and marketing endeavours, in the pro bono work I do and in the things I do outside of work to support others in the community … 110 per cent is difficult to let go of but exhausting to hold on to.
Growing up, I found it really hard to know how much study was enough to pass an exam. I always feared I would fail. I never did. This approach is a metaphor for my life. I worry that I never do enough, both at work and as a parent, often interchangeably. I usually excel at work. The jury’s out on parenting. Regardless, the art of enough is hard to master.
This year, instead of setting goals, striving, aspiring or climbing I am going to take it down a notch. I need to focus on my health, work on being comfortable with the mess that is life and the challenges it throws us. I need to practice some of what I preach about health, wellbeing and balance. I need to learn the art of near enough is good enough. I need to accept that I am enough, that I do enough, we have enough and that 110 per cent as a goal is far too rough. My goal is to not have a goal. To take one day at a time, with one foot in front of the other and see where it takes us. To breathe and simply be.
It took me more than 40 years and a pandemic to get here. Many are reflecting on life post-pandemic: re-evaluating career options, escaping to the country. If there’s a silver lining in the loss, chaos and exhaustion that has been the past couple of years, perhaps it’s in the reflections we gain and slowing down a bit, as more of us master the art of enough.
Fay Calderone is a partner at Hall & Wilcox and chair of the firm’s Diversity, Inclusion and Wellness Council.