Your Business Will Survive a Day Without You. Will Your Body?

Julie Burns

🔥

2h • Communities

**Warning some possible triggering content and long post alert--but I hope you take the time to read my story

I want to share something personal, because this conversation matters.

Back in 1998, I didn’t think of myself as “busy.”

I was just doing what needed to be done.

I was a single mum to a beautiful 7-year-old boy.

I was working two jobs, often 50–60 hours a week — not because I had to, but because I genuinely loved the work.

I’d spent over 10 years as a contract administrator in construction, then walked away to start my own fitness business. Around the same time, I was offered a 2IC and group fitness manager/PT role at a local gym, and I took it. I was in my element.

One day, my receptionist came in for her shift and stood chatting to me. The light must have hit just right, because she suddenly said, “What’s that lump on your neck?”

She was a third-year nursing student.

I touched it and said, “Oh that? It’s nothing. It’s been there a while. Comes and goes.”

She didn’t look convinced.

Long story short, I went to my GP. He thought it was an infected salivary gland. It wasn’t.

I was sent for a scan, and the next day he rang me with an urgent referral to a surgeon.

A week later, I was in hospital with aggressive thyroid cancer that had already spread to 30 lymph nodes.

I had over six hours of surgery — unheard of for that type of operation.

Recovery was long and slow. No coaching. No exercise. No doing the thing I loved most in the world.

And then, exactly twelve months later, at my six-month check-up, the cancer was back.

I share this not to scare anyone — but to say this clearly:

Your business will survive without you for a day.

For a week.

Even longer.

But your body might not survive being ignored indefinitely.

We are so good at pushing. At coping. At telling ourselves we’ll slow down later.

I did everything “right” by business standards.

And I paid a price I never saw coming.

This is why I take self-care seriously now.

Not as a luxury. Not as a reward.

But as something that deserves attention before things break.

And it’s why I created The Shine Lounge — so women don’t have to learn this lesson the hard way. I offer easy to do- no thinking required under 10 minute self care just for women like you.

Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do for your future is step back today.

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