There’s a lot I still don’t understand about myself.

There’s a lot I still don’t understand about myself. I used to be so confident about what mattered to me and what guided my behavior. I had a really strong sense of purpose. I believed in my ILR practice. Many things I thought I knew about myself fell apart when I burned out. I used to believe, as I’ve heard another seasoned ILR practitioner express, that “if you hit a wall, you just climb the wall.” I agreed with them until I hit the wall of burnout.

Nothing in my old beliefs and old behavior helped me climb the wall of burnout. The exhaustion was all encompassing. I tried willpower (used to have a lot of it). I tried guilt (used to always whip me into action). I tried shame (“get it together loser” used to work). I tried lots of old behaviors. I clawed desperately at the bottom of the burnout wall for a long time before I realized the necessity of change.

The body knows things that the mind does not. Burnout was my body’s way of telling me that I needed change. It was my body’s way of slowing me down and asking me to listen. My body did lots of other things trying to make me listen. It broke out in hives, gave me brutal migraines, and was filled with constant tension. I was not a good listener.

In my experience, lots of ILR practitioners are not skilled at listening to their bodies. We train ourselves to endurance. We blunt ourselves to pain. We ignore exhaustion. We keep working.

We overlook trauma because it’s everywhere in ILR work. How would we get anything done if we stopped because of trauma?

We develop thick skin. How would we get anything done if we felt it every time somebody attacked us?

Maybe some people manage to keep climbing the wall for their whole life. That’s not my experience and I don’t think it’s a healthy way to engage in language revitalization.

I had to learn the hard way but now I believe language revitalization needs to be slower, softer, and kinder. There needs to be a lot more listening to what our bodies tell us- not just to protect our wellbeing-but because so many of the challenges in ILR have their origins in embodied experience.

As an advisor to ILR programs, I’ve learned to watch people’s bodies. I’ve learned to observe how their bodies tense when, for example, I ask them to let go of English and speak only their Indigenous language. That tension-the fear behind it-comes from embodied experience. It comes from physical beatings, mouths being washed out with lye, but mostly from the profound shame of being stripped of your capacity to communicate in your own language, with your own people, to your own ancestors.

I’m not just talking about boarding school survivors. I’m talking about all of us. Some people-I was one of them-can push through the fear to let go of English. Many people can’t push through the fear, or even recognize that it’s fear that’s getting in the way of their learning, and their ILR effort will always be limited by that impulse to switch to English when things get hard.

Conditions help. Kind mentors, good teachers, solid curriculum, etc. Yet sometimes-even in ideal conditions-our bodies don’t feel safe. (And let’s be real, how many ILR practitioners work in ideal conditions?)

Safety is ultimately an internal experience. Without internal awareness of what your body is telling you, you might not even feel your own fear, or pain, or need. That means you don’t get to exercise agency over your own behavior-whether it’s letting go of English-or recognizing that you’re about to hit the wall of burnout.

Thankfully, the world is filled with systems like meditation, therapy, or Buddhism that were created for developing internal awareness. These systems give you greater agency over your own experience by helping you recognize-and if necessary change-the emotions behind your behavior. If you need a starting point, try Balance.