by Tahnée Sanders
July 6, 2026
https://www.mamamia.com.au/career-change-burnout/
Have you ever fantasised about quitting your job and running away from the daily grind and impending burnout to become a florist?
Well, I did that, and it ended up teaching me one of the greatest lessons of my life.
But first, let's back up to where it all began in 2010.
At 26, I had my dream job (albeit a decade sooner than I had planned). I was the youngest editor of a daily newspaper in the country, was winning awards for my reporting, and ran a team of journalists across a large expanse of outback Queensland.
On paper, and to the outside world, I was climbing the corporate ladder at record pace and winning at life. And for a year or two, I was.
But eventually, the 60-hour work weeks, phone calls at any hour of the day or night, and round-the-clock nature of the job took a toll.
I started declining invitations, too exhausted to socialise. I avoided the grocery store, so a disgruntled reader couldn't corner me in the cereal aisle. I jumped every time my phone rang as it meant switching into work mode. I cried — a lot, and no amount of sleep left me feeling refreshed.
And then there was the day I had my first panic attack. I didn't know that's what it was, as I'd never had one before. All I knew was I was not okay.
It turns out even the most ambitious, high-performing women who pride themselves on their worth ethic have a breaking point, and I'd found mine… or rather, it had found me.
My husband and I decided it was time for a real break. (I hadn't had a weekend off in 6 months by this point.) So we resigned and in 2012 we set off on a five-month backpacking trip of Central and South America.
But as the trip neared its end, I confessed I wasn't ready to return to Australia or journalism. My husband picked up work in Vancouver, Canada and we extended our trip to do 12 months' work abroad.
I was no longer just on a holiday. I was officially taking a "career break", or so I told myself and all of our family and friends back home.
While I was trying to figure out what on earth to do with this career break, I started freelance writing to earn money. Each day I'd walk up this beautiful tree-lined street to a cute neighbourhood coffee shop. On the way, I'd pass an adorable brick and mortar flower shop in a heritage building with the most enchanting window displays. Seeing what the florists inside were working on became the highlight of my day.
One evening when my husband came home from work, I declared, "I think I want to go and work in that little flower shop up the road".
A part of me was hoping he'd say, "why on earth would you do that?". Because this was an insane idea, right? I knew nothing about flowers. This was a rose-coloured-glasses moment and I needed to be set straight.
Instead, he said, "I think that's a great idea!"
SHIT! I'd spoken this insane idea aloud and someone I trusted more than anyone in the world had validated it. There was no backing out now.
But how could I convince a flower shop to hire someone who had zero training, knowledge or experience in their field?
I had one skill that might be useful to them, so I wrote a pitch. I offered to do their social media, blog and website management for free in exchange for a floral internship, They said yes.
There are few words to describe the pure and utter joy of the next six months of my life. I swapped my heels and painted nails for gumboots and grimy hands and spent my days swimming in a literal sea of flowers. I learnt my zinnias from my gerberas and hydrangea from snowball viburnum. I filled my apartment with leftover flowers with all the stems deemed too old to sell, and I became obsessed with learning the meaning of flowers. (Did you know ranunculus means "You are radiant with charms"?!)
I slept at night without the fear of my phone ringing. I woke up excited to discover what the day would bring. I relished the fact I was actually pretty rubbish at floral design when I started, because it meant I had so much to learn. My inner perfectionist had finally taken a backseat.
I'd pack floral shears in my handbag and was always "civic pruning" on our weekend adventures so I could go home and practice making an arrangement. My camera roll was filled with flower pictures so I could Google their names.
I was learning to make bouquets and style photo shoots. I felt present in my day-to-day life and alive, not just ticking the boxes and going through the motions.
When my internship turned into a full-time job, and I was officially a florist, it was clear we weren't leaving Canada any time soon. We extended our visas another two years, but that's when the doubt began to creep in and the inner critic became loud.
"Being a florist is not as glamorous as you're making it out to be. You spend hours sweeping floors and scrubbing buckets while earning minimum wage. This was cute while it lasted, but you're not really going to throw away your journalism career to be a florist, are you?"
And deeper than that, was the acknowledgement that no one back home in Australia had any idea of the reasons we'd left in the first place. They knew nothing of my breakdown, the panic attacks, and the dread I was feeling about work. They thought we were taking an extended trip overseas before returning home to get stuck back into the corporate world and probably, at some point, have kids.
Admitting I wasn't returning to journalism was, in my mind, admitting failure.
I couldn't hack it. I wasn't good enough. I didn't have thick skin. I wasn't the rising star management had flagged me to be.
I still didn't know how to work through all of those emotions, so I continued to push them aside for many more years. We ended up living in Canada for eight years, and I spent six of those continuing to work among flowers in some capacity across Canada, USA and Greece, while also launching the first of my own businesses, The Strategy Studio, in 2018.
Our daughter was born during this time, and in 2020 we relocated back to Australia when I was 20-week pregnant with our son.
With the benefit of hindsight (and a lot of self-work and therapy), I now know this whole adventure was never about the flowers.
It was about overcoming my fear of failure and needing to unlearn all the lies productivity culture led me to believe for the first decade of my career.
That rest is for the weak and busy is a badge of honour.
That self-care is selfish or time spent on a hobby is frivolous unless it can be monetised.
That there is a correlation between my output and my worth, and being stressed means I'm on a path to success.
My belief in these lies almost broke me. Thankfully, creativity saved me.
Through working with flowers, I learnt to get out of my head and into my hands. I learnt the power of making something with no purpose or agenda other than "because it feels good".
It taught me what it feels like to have white space in my brain again, and that shedding my perfectionist tendencies and being mediocre at something is the entire point, because then your brain gets the joy of learning.
I realised that having creative hobbies is what makes me feel most alive and present in my life and changing careers at the age of 30, is the opposite of failure.
The lessons I learnt from walking into that flower shop are what ultimately led to the launch of my second business, Unwind Co, a creative project box company.
In 2025, I built the thing I wish someone had handed me at 28. Now, 14 years on, I look back at that younger, almost-broken version of myself and tell her how proud I am.
Because what no one tells you when you're a young, successful, ambitious woman is that the bravest thing you can do is stop.
What I thought was failure — walking away from a dream job, earning minimum wage in a foreign flower shop, not knowing what came next — was actually the beginning of everything I have now. Two businesses. Two kids. A life I genuinely love.
And that's what I want my children to see in me. That walking away from something that no longer brings you joy isn't failure. That exploring your curiosity isn't frivolous. And that sometimes the greatest lessons in life come from wearing rose-coloured glasses.
Rediscover your creativity with an Unwind Box.