By Julie Orozco
What I shared about burnout at the Women’s Leadership Conference and what I wish more leaders understood.
When I was invited to speak at this year’s Women’s Leadership Conference hosted by the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, I knew I wanted to talk about burnout. Not the polished, “sounds like you need a bubble bath” version of burnout, but the real experience of it. The reality where you keep functioning long after your mind and body are asking you not to.
I talked about burnout differently than we usually do. Not as weakness or an inability to handle leadership, but as the cumulative impact of carrying too much for too long and what that means personally + professionally + societally. That distinction matters, especially for women.
The moment that shouldn’t have broke me, but did
The end of 2025 was objectively brutal for my family.
Growing up, my two cousins were like sisters to me. We did everything together: the three musketeers. Life eventually pulled us in different directions, but that bond never really changed.
One of those cousins, Andrea, faced lifelong challenges related to her disability. She was deaf and non-speaking and she often struggled with housing stability and safety. Then in a tragic accident, she was struck by a car she could not hear approaching and died instantly as a result. The grief that followed was strong and complicated.
Around the same time, my partner’s niece was in a severe, nearly fatal car accident.
Both of these events were catastrophic by any measure, yet I kept moving through them and doing what needed to be done because, in my mind, that’s what good leadership meant. I’m not weak by any stretch of the imagination, and there was important work that still needed to happen, and I was going to keep showing up to do it.
So I was genuinely confused when my breaking point came from something that felt comparatively small. My son was in a relatively minor car accident. Most importantly, he was and remains totally fine, but the car wasn’t drivable and suddenly the logistics of just getting to work became the thing that pushed me over the edge.
That was the moment I thought: I cannot absorb one more thing.
The small thing didn’t break me because it was significant. It broke me because I had nothing left. It pushed me to a point where I needed to take a short sabbatical because I was breaking down.
I share this story because I think it captures something important about how burnout actually works and why we so often fail to recognize it in ourselves until we’re already past the edge. It wasn’t the tragedies that took me down. It was the weight of everything layered on top of everything else, month after month: grief, caregiving, decision-making, emotional labor, leadership responsibility, and the constant, relentless functioning required of someone in my role.
The irony I had to name out loud
Here’s what made this particularly uncomfortable to sit with: I had spent real time and intention building anti-burnout structures and culture at Abby’s House for our team. I believe deeply in those structures. And yet, I had a remarkably difficult time leaning into them for myself.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. There’s something about the female experience in leadership, be it the pressure to remain capable, emotionally steady, responsive, organized, and dependable regardless of what is happening in your personal life that makes it genuinely hard to extend to yourself the grace you readily give others.
What actually causes burnout (and what doesn’t fix it)
I challenged the idea that burnout is primarily a problem of self-care or time management. Those things can help at the margins. But they don’t address structural contributors. You can have a perfect morning routine and still be burning out because your workplace normalizes unsustainable expectations or creates culture through default rather than intention.
The question I asked the room (and that I’d ask any leader) is this: What are we normalizing, rewarding, or structurally creating that contributes to burnout?
What organizational leadership can actually do
I’m not interested in lowering expectations or reducing accountability. High standards matter, and the people doing this work deserve to be in environments where excellence is genuinely possible. And by the way, the women we serve deserve the most as well. That’s exactly the point. These are the approaches I believe make that sustainable:
- Offer real scheduling flexibility that actually accounts for caregiving and the realities of people’s lives not flexibility in name only.
- Vet policies and decisions through multiple people’s lived experiences. What works for one person’s life may quietly be impossible for another’s.
- Build in genuine opportunities for professional replenishment (different from professional development), reflection, growth, and connection not just as perks, but as structural investments.
- Be honest about workload and capacity. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make the work disappear; it just makes it invisible and unsustainable.
- Name and address invisible labor and emotional labor. If it exists in your organization (and you can be sure it does) it deserves to be seen and compensated accordingly.
- Define your organizational culture clearly and bring it to life actively. It’s okay to hold people accountable to it and its essential to include leadership in that accountability.
- Create expectations that are sustainable and that still hold people to high standards. These are not in conflict because they require each other.
Burnout is often deeply human and deeply structural at the same time. People don’t need perfect workplaces or perfect lives. They need environments where they can remain human while still being excellent at what they do.
So yes, go ahead and get your nails done. I’m all for that. But real self-care is bigger than small comforts, and it’s not something we should have to earn by pushing ourselves to the edge first. It also is not only an individual responsibility. It’s a structural one. Sometimes self-care looks like listening to yourself when you need rest. Sometimes it looks like support. And sometimes it looks like asking more of our environments, our organizations, and our leadership, so that rest and honesty about capacity are built in rather than treated as exceptions. Burnout should never be the norm we quietly accept. It should be the signal that pushes us to ask what needs to change.
About the Author
Julie Orozco, LICSW is the Executive Director of Abby’s House. She brings a deep commitment to advocating for and empowering women, along with extensive executive leadership experience in behavioral health and recovery-focused services. Julie has held senior leadership roles at Community Healthlink and ConcertoCare and has long been engaged in the nonprofit sector. She leads Abby’s House with a focus on trauma-informed care, equity, and integrated service delivery, working to advance long-term stability and dignity for the women and families served. Connect with Julie today!
About Abby’s House
Abby’s House is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing shelter, affordable housing, and advocacy services to women and children experiencing homelessness and housing instability. For 50 years, Abby’s House has remained committed to creating safe, supportive environments where women receive resources they need to build self-directed live. Grounded in principles of DEI, accessibility, antiracism, and belonging, our work is guided by a deep commitment to advancing social justice and strengthening our community.
In 2026, Abby’s House proudly celebrates its 50th anniversary honoring five decades of impact while looking ahead to the future of our mission. To mark this milestone, we invite you to join us at our 50th Anniversary Gala, where everyone that has been a part of the Abby’s House story will come together to celebrate what has been accomplished and look forward to what is to come for the women and children we serve. Your participation helps open the door to opportunity. We hope to see you there.
Learn more about our work, place an ad in our gala program book, or make a difference today.