The Cost of the Pouring

🕯️ It’s late evening, and the house has grown quiet now that Clive’s back in the office getting some work done. I’m curled up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and the stillness. Outside, the spring night has settled softly over everything, as though nothing in the world could ever be too heavy for it. Inside, I’m still learning how to breathe again.

🌱 The convention weekend began with the sun rising golden over the Waitematā as I crossed the Auckland Harbour Bridge, the city skyline waking slowly in soft light. It felt like a quiet promise of what lay ahead.

I had the joy of serving at the Professional Speakers Association of New Zealand (PSANZ) Trailblazers Convention 2026 ✨ Connect. Grow. Inspire. From the red ropes and balloon arches welcoming everyone in, to the laptops and slides humming quietly at the tech desk, so much of the beauty of an event like this happens behind the scenes. I’m grateful to have been part of the team that helped make the space ready for others to shine.

✍️ Every great convention has a quiet corner where the magic is held together by faders, cables and a steady pair of hands. This year, that corner belonged to Robyn and me, and it was our very first time running the convention sound and slides.

I’m still amazed at how quickly Robyn mastered the sound desk. For a first-timer, she rode the levels with calm confidence and such grace, which freed me to focus on what I do best as administrator: the details, the timings and the countless moving parts that keep a convention running smoothly.

Oh yes, we had our moments of panic! There were last-minute slide changes, internet downtime and nick-of-time tag-teaming between computers, all just to keep the speaker slides rolling.

One of those moments came when we lost control of the slides. For a few long minutes, our screens stopped syncing on our end: no clicks, no control and no idea what was coming next. So I did the only thing I knew to do and breathed a silent prayer. Miraculously, the projector and speaker view kept rolling, slide after slide, perfectly in time, until everything eventually reappeared on our side. Not one person in the room knew. 💙

What a weekend it was:
🎤 Rich sessions on storytelling, presence and connection, from crafting the perfect hook to the brilliant Napkin Test
📚 A book table overflowing with wisdom from our members
🎈 A joyful balloon drop that filled the room with laughter
✨ An elegant gala dinner, with our Bid for Brilliance silent auction
💛 Beautiful reunions and new friendships forged over shared tables

I delivered. The convention was a roaring success, and months of planning, coordinating and holding every thread together finally bore beautiful fruit. Serving is never small, and this time it consumed every break, so I didn’t manage to make as many connections as I’d hoped. Still, every name badge, every cue and every welcome at the door carries the potential to open a door for someone else. I left exhausted and deeply thankful for this community of voices who carry their message with courage and generosity, and for a Father who carries me. Yet, if I’m honest with you and with my Father, a question has been sitting quietly beneath all the applause: at what cost? 🤔

✍️ My body is telling the story that those 200 hours across five weeks on my calendar never fully recorded. This exhaustion runs deeper than the late nights; it has settled into my bones like winter damp. Ill-health has crept in through the doors I left unguarded while I was so busy keeping every other door open. Tears arrive unannounced, at the spur of the moment, over a kind word, a worship song, a message from a friend asking simply, “How are you, really?” 😪

Last night, I found myself in tears over invoices I should have paid last week. This morning, I woke up coughing my lungs out and crying in frustration at needing to cancel two meetings. One was my monthly ministry of presence, a one-on-one in New Lynn I’ve faithfully shown up for over the past four years. The other was a long-awaited catch-up with a dear friend I’d been so looking forward to.

I just couldn’t.

My friend was wonderfully understanding, telling me it’s normal, especially for us women.

“We deal with the crises and crash afterwards in a delayed reaction. I’m here for you if you want me to pray over you and talk. I love you, Trixi. Please focus on being gentle with yourself. Pretend you’re me, and self-care the same way.”

That “I love you, Trixi” undid me. My boys and my husband are the only ones I’ve ever heard those words from.

There’ll be no towel rolling and no NNT stand-up at The Crate. Tomorrow’s Encounter Group and Run Your Race Well meetings may need to be laid down too. Even thinking about that brings a lump to my throat. The woman who always finds a way, who rallies and shows up, has nothing left to bring to the table.

On Monday, I had to confess to the Elijah House team that I was utterly exhausted and felt completely depleted. There’s a particular grief in admitting that, a tender humbling as I discover, once again, that I’m made of clay.

✍️ Burnout. I’ve been here before, and part of me whispers that I should have known better. I recognised the signs; I’ve even walked others through them. Elias noticed them too and warned me in August when U was burrying grief under work. Yet I pushed through, as I always do when there’s work to be done.

On the Wednesday before the convention, a message arrived with another task. It wasn’t a huge one, yet its weight felt like a mountain to be conquered. I’d only just arrived home from the NNT stand-up at The Crate when, for the first time since beginning my road to recovery, that familiar urge to run, to just get out of here, hit me.

A few minutes later, I was at the beach, knee-deep in the water, crying uncontrollably. My body was screeching to a grinding halt while the old lies screamed that if I stopped delivering, I’d be worthless. 😔 because love had alwaysbeen conditional.

Elias found me there, knee-deep in the water with my flags soaked and abandoned on the sand, and over coffee, ginger beer and muffins, gently reminded me that it wasn’t true.

Yet the old wiring runs deep: this lifelong instinct to give until it hurts, to keep pouring long after the jug is dry. Performance orientation dies slowly. So I pushed on through the convention, and here I am.

Beneath it all, those quieter, crueller voices still whisper that I’m only worth something when I deliver, that my value is measured in outcomes, and that rest must be earned through exhaustion. Recognising those lies doesn’t automatically silence them. They linger in the corners of the 💔heart until it’s fully healed, waiting for a tired moment to speak again.

🪨 Here is the truth I’m choosing to stand on today, even while my heart struggles to believe it: I was loved before I ever delivered anything.

My Father delighted in me long before the convention, the meetings or the applause. He delights in me still, here on the couch with tear-stained cheeks and empty hands.

Healing is a journey, and finding myself here again doesn’t mean I’ve failed it, even though it feels that way. Perhaps He’s taking me deeper, tending roots He’s only now ready to reach.

✍️ I’ll be honest, the weekend didn’t come without its triggers: echoes of hurtful experiences with teachers, rejection, imposter syndrome, and recognising myself as the duck that looks calm on the surface while paddling like crazy underneath 🦆 Old places in the heart have a way of stirring when we’re stretched and stepping into full rooms.

🪨 What lies beneath all these triggers, I’m discovering, is a lifetime of moments when those who mattered didn’t show up. Yet I’m so grateful for the few who have rallied behind me consistently in recent years, helping me build new experiences, as I too am being loved back to life in the very ways I love others.

It started on the Friday when Maria asked the audience to close their eyes and think of the worst teacher they’d had, then the best, focusing on how each one made them feel. Instantly, the tears welled up, and I felt it in my stomach and across my chest. I immediately put the lid back on and kept working.

The next day, during her presentation, Rejection Advantage, Verity Craft invited us to close our eyes and travel back to a moment of rejection from earlier in our lives.

“Put yourself back in that moment. Hear what you heard. See what you saw. Feel what you were feeling. Notice how your body feels.”

After Friday, I should have known that joining in might stir something unexpected. In an instant, my chest tightened and the tears welled. Before I could even recall the moment itself, I felt it in my stomach. My body remembered before my mind had caught up.

I’m on the job, I thought almost instantly. I can’t afford to unravel now.

So I quickly opened my eyes, ignored the rest of the instructions, put the lid back on and steadied myself by focusing on the task at hand. I was grateful to be tucked away in the corner, where nobody would notice me wiping away tears and calming my racing heart. The slides had to keep rolling. (I wrote more about that moment in Lifting the Lid: https://patriziaschwartz.com/my-story/lifting-the-lid)

The next morning, at the Mastermind, I was told to sit among the attendees because I wasn’t there to work but to learn and grow. Something so simple, so kind, yet sitting still without a task in my hands unsettled me far more than I expected.

Then came Mr Happy’s video clip, in which Shanna explained that imposter syndrome doesn’t mean women lack capability; it means capable women second-guess themselves. It can show up as perfectionism, fear of being exposed as unqualified, holding back in meetings and hesitating to step into leadership. She described it as an internal narrative, one that isn’t permanent.

✔️ Check. That’s me, I realised, followed swiftly by relief: Phew, thank goodness it isn’t permanent!

Tim followed with the story of a leaking rain barrel that couldn’t collect the water it was made to hold. He used it to illustrate the opportunities speakers lose when they don’t follow up. I winced, remembering the times I’ve promised to do or send something, only to remember days later without recalling whom I’d spoken to.

Another ✔️ check.

A leaking vessel, I thought, and the image wouldn’t let me go.

Then Vince shared the message he’d drawn from his own story: when hope runs out, love still remains, the love of family, friends and sometimes even strangers. He was honest that love doesn’t guarantee a dream will be realised. Still, he urged us not to give up on love when hope fades, because it can make the difference between “a love story and a tragedy”.

Each speaker tugged at another thread. By the time Dr Jo stepped up to speak about burnout, she was putting words to what was already stirring within me.

✍️ She described burnout as more than exhaustion: a mind-and-body response to sustained work pressure. What begins with energy and ambition can give way to physical symptoms, neglected needs, overwhelm and a growing sense of being unable to do the job.

She challenged our habit of saying, “I’m fine,” when we’re anything but.

Wait, what? F.I.N.E. (Freaked Out, Insecure, Numb & Empty) Or, as I’ve noticed here in Kiwiland, GOOD. For a season, I'd switched to that one too.

She compared it to putting a lid on a boiling pot. The pressure keeps building until it spills over.

Another ✔️ check.

I’d put the lid back on my emotions twice that weekend, retreating to the “naughty corner” whenever tears surfaced during the presentations. Stress, she explained, is better processed by naming it than by avoiding it, and speaking about an experience helps us think it through.

Then she described two kinds of people: the “roosters”, who openly show their distress, and the “ducks”, who glide across calm water while paddling furiously underneath. Looking around the room, she suggested that most of the PSANZ committee were probably ducks. Looking calm didn’t necessarily mean we were doing okay.

✔️ Check. Me again.

I thought I’d dealt with all of this, and recognising myself so clearly was a hard pill to swallow. Performance is a difficult habit to break when you’ve spent your life serving to buy the time and affirmation that were lacking in childhood.

She invited us to consider who in our professional community might be paddling hard, gently reminding us that it could be ourselves. She spoke about peer support, including a speakers’ mastermind, as a place to share our challenges honestly.

Then she told a tender story about her father calming her distressed baby, illustrating how one person’s calm can help another settle. Our stress leaves an emotional “wake” that touches those around us; our calm can offer them somewhere to rest.

I thought of my husband, Elias and my heavenly Father, whose peace has quieted my distress more times than I can count.

🪨 Dr Jo questioned the idea that resilience means pushing through while ignoring our basic needs. Her closing message has stayed with me: burnout isn’t caused by pressure alone, but by pressure that goes unspoken, unsupported and unsettled.

She encouraged us to speak honestly, check in on those who may be struggling quietly, and find a calming strategy that works for us.

The key, I’m learning, isn’t to push through but to process through. Instead of pressing on and burying what surfaces, I’m learning to pause, notice and invite the Lord into those moments. He’s patient with the process, and His grace meets me right in the middle of it. 💛

By lunchtime, I could no longer hold back the overwhelming emotions. 😢 I’m so grateful for those who rallied around me with hugs, comfort and compassion. I felt the very thing Dr Jo had described: the gentle wake of someone else’s peace settling my own.

✍️ The four days of the Convention had filled me to the brim and emptied me out all at once. The ride home became another mentoring moment. Elias didn’t simply drop me off at home. He carried the boxes into my studio, helping me bring the weight of those extraordinary days to a close. On his way back to his car, he noticed the magnet on my door, pointed at it and read it aloud:

Healing 💔heARTs💖. Changing the world 🌏 one broken 💔 heart at a time.

It’s a mission that grew out of my own journey through brokenness, depression, restoration and rediscovered joy.

“Start with yours,” he said. With that, he turned away, got into his car and left.

The very next morning, a message arrived from him: “Take this week off from PSANZ activities. Use the time to look after yourself and to heal after the weekend.” He had already moved the meeting scheduled for that afternoon. I didn’t have to ask, explain or rearrange a thing. He knew about all the emails waiting in my mailbox and the backlog of tasks waiting for my attention, yet he had simply cleared the space, handed me the key and given me permission to rest.

I stayed home on Monday and did a whole lot of nothing, though my mind wouldn’t rest at the thought of the to-do list. I did manage to process Maria's and Verity's triggers, but somehow, the day I broke the chair surfaced. At this time, 9 years ago, I was struggling with serious overwhelm too. I realise the situation may not have been the same but the feelings from this moment had not yet been resolved and could have been a major contributor to my intense drivenness. https://patriziaschwartz.com/my-story/the-day-the-chair-broke(/my-story/the-day-the-chair-broke).

On Tuesday, I went to The Crate, thinking I’d spend some time on my blog posts and book. By the time I got home, I’d completely crashed. I couldn’t do anything, so I spent the rest of the day sleeping and gently began processing some of what had surfaced over the weekend. It was only then that I realised how deep the exhaustion lay. I stayed home again on Wednesday and felt a whole lot better.

On Thursday, I joined the Business Leaders Breakfast, after which Elias asked whether I had time to help with something. Of course I had plenty, I told him, since I’d been told not to touch any PSANZ work for a week. What I didn’t mention was how close to empty I’d been running only days before. I still rallied to run my Encounter Group, then went straight back to work.

Even as I write it, I can see the duck paddling furiously beneath the surface.

🕯️ Today, the tears still come uninvited. The girl who used to push through all kinds of pain finds she simply can’t, and perhaps, for the first time, is beginning to accept that she doesn’t have to.

✍️ As if the Lord wanted to underline the lesson, yesterday I was asked about contingency plans in the unlikely (and very unwanted!) event of me being “hit by a bus”.

I laughed at the time, yet the question has lingered. Who else knows how this works? Where is it all written down? 🤔

In all my busyness creating order out of chaos, I haven’t finished documenting the systems for those who will come behind me. Sometimes, being indispensable can feel like being valued, though it’s often just a heavier way of being tired.

Perhaps the kindest thing I can do for the work I love, and for myself, is to open my hands, share the load and trust that what God has planted will keep growing on the days I can’t tend it.

🪨 I keep picturing an old earthenware jug, the kind my Mams used to keep on her windowsill. Poured out for one guest, then another, then a whole house full of people, until fine hairline cracks begin to spread across its surface.

Nobody notices the cracks while the water flows. It’s only afterwards, when the jug sits empty on the bench, that you see how much it has given.

Tim’s leaking rain barrel comes to mind too, unable to hold what it was made to collect. I think I’ve been a little of both: cracked from all the pouring out, and leaking because I’ve rarely paused long enough to be filled.

📖 “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” — 2 Corinthians 4:7 (NKJV)

The treasure lives in clay, so that the power would always be unmistakably His.

My cracks and limits don’t disqualify me from my calling. They remind me that I’m human, poured out and dependent on the One whose strength I was never meant to replace.

In the gentle art of kintsugi, broken pottery isn’t discarded; it’s mended with gold, and the places of breaking become part of its beauty. I’m beginning to believe the Lord does some of His finest goldwork in seasons exactly like this one.

Vince’s words return to me: when hope runs thin, love remains. Paul wrote it long ago: faith, hope and love abide, and the greatest of these is love. Even when my hope feels frayed, His love is holding every broken piece together.

🕊️ This morning, the Holy Spirit whispered something so softly I almost missed it:
“You were never asked to be the well, My daughter. Only the vessel.”

I’ve been treating rest as something I must earn, a reward handed out once everyone else has been cared for. I’ve written health and rest so far down my list of values that they’ve quietly slipped off the page.

Even Jesus, with crowds pressing in and needs all around Him, withdrew to quiet places to pray. There were still people waiting. There was still work to do. Yet He made room to be alone with the Father, without apology, and came back full.

Perhaps courage, in this season, doesn’t look like pushing through. Perhaps it looks like a cancelled meeting, a closed laptop, a blanket on the couch and a heart brave enough to say, “Lord, I’m empty. Fill me again.”

I can’t help smiling at the gentle irony that one of the meetings I may need to cancel is called Run Your Race Well. Every runner knows the race isn’t won by refusing to stop for water. Maybe running my race well this week means sitting at the water station a little longer and letting Him hand me the cup.

🌱 I picture a bird after a long migration, feathers frayed and wings weary from carrying her across oceans. She doesn’t grow new feathers in flight. She grows them while she’s still, sheltered and resting in the nest, with no distance left to cover today.

That’s where I am, and I’m learning to call it holy rather than wasted. New feathers may already be forming beneath the surface, even when all I can see is the fraying.

The tears, too, I’m choosing to receive as water rather than weakness. They’re washing the dust of the road from my soul, softening hardened places and watering seeds I can’t yet see.

He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul in His own patient time.

🪨 Here’s what else I’m learning:

🐢 I need to slow down to speed up.
🤲 I mustn’t try to do everything for everyone.
🙋‍♀️ I need to be vulnerable enough to ask for help.
❤️ When hope runs out, there’s still love.

🌱 Today, I’m grateful for Clive, who came home early from work to see how I was coping after my early morning meltdown.

I’m thankful, too, for Elias, who stopped by to check in and remind me that a “broken” me would be of no use to the team, and that my wellbeing matters more than getting the work done. He encouraged me to rest, set boundaries and stop pushing myself to the point of overwhelm.

Their kindness felt like the Father’s own hands reaching through the people He’s placed around me. Most of all, I'm grateful that the Holy Spirit is Lord of the stirring and that He only allows resurfacing of the things He plans to heal.

So now, I’m not delivering anything. I’m simply being delivered: carried, held and gently mended with gold.

As for tomorrow, I can’t promise I’ll keep doing nothing. I’ll probably feel a little better, and sitting still without a task in my hands still unsettles me more than I’d like to admit.

Perhaps that’s alright. Grace doesn’t ask me to get rest perfectly. It invites me, one gentle day at a time, to keep choosing Him over the striving.