Two years back, my whole personality had become "tired." Getting angry at people over small things, forgetting things, no patience left by evening.

I thought that was just who I was now. Durga Devi was the first person who told me it wasn't a character flaw — I'd been sleeping only four hours a night for years and my body was just done.

No big plan, no pressure. She helped me fix my sleep first, one small change at a time. Most of me came back after that. I only wish I'd understood this sooner.

People think a doctor cannot feel tired like this. I thought so too. I would finish my patients, drive home, and feel like my body was completely drained. Not sleepy — empty. I checked my reports. Everything was "normal." So I told myself it was just age, just work, just life.

Durga Devi helped me see the real question I was avoiding: when did I last feel real energy, not coffee energy? I could not remember. That stayed with me. My energy did not come back in one day. It came back slowly, in small pieces, and I only noticed when one evening I played with my nephew instead of lying down.

That was the moment I understood how far gone I had been.

I am 27. I did not expect to feel lost this early. My friends were travelling, dating, starting new things. I was only working, sleeping, and working again. Slowly I stopped feeling like a person and started feeling like a task list that walks around.

This workshop showed me how much of myself I had quietly switched off — not my energy, me. The things I liked, the person I used to be, all pushed aside for work. I am still working it out.

But I learned to bring small parts of myself back, and I am slowly becoming a person again, not just a worker.

For twenty years, doing something only for myself felt wrong. If I sat down with a book, I felt I should be doing something for the family instead. If I spent on myself, I felt guilty for days. I called it being responsible. It was not. It was guilt running my whole life.

This workshop did not tell me to be selfish. It helped me see that resting is not stealing from my family. Now I take one hour on Sunday that is only mine, and I do not apologise for it.

My family did not fall apart. I only wish I had allowed myself this years ago.

After a full day of teaching other people's children, I had nothing left for my own. My daughter would ask me to sit and play. I was too tired. So I gave her chocolate instead. I ordered her favourite snacks. I said yes to things I knew were not good for her, just so she would be happy and not feel I was missing. I knew it was wrong. She did not want chocolate. She wanted me. But I did not have "me" left to give.

This workshop did not make me a perfect mother. It helped me stop trading snacks for guilt. Now some evenings I sit with her for ten minutes, fully there, no phone. She notices. That is worth more than any chocolate I ever gave her.

"I'm fine, just busy." I said that sentence for a whole year. To my husband, my friends, everyone. I was not fine. I just did not have the words, and when you run a business, you get very good at hiding how tired you are. Durga Devi was the one who said out loud what I kept hiding — that "busy" had become my way of not letting anyone close. That was hard to hear.

I am still not fully sorted, I will not pretend otherwise. But I stopped using that sentence as a wall. I talk to my husband properly again. That is a bigger change than it sounds.