Ballad of Burnout: a tribute to Eastbourne

by Ann Packer

An Eastbourne clinical psychologist with years of experience in counselling trauma victims has bared her own soul, in a lyrical memoir in blank verse documenting her personal journey from burnout to balance.

Kerry Makin-Byrd’s self-published The Ballad of Burnout: a helper lost and found is already a #1 New Release on Amazon and will be formally launched in Petone soon.

It comes with endorsements from, among others, Oprah Magazine’s 2020 Visionary Dr Kelly McGonigal, author of The Joy of Movement and The Upside of Stress.

One of around 5 million medical professionals who suffered burnout – defined by the WHO as an occupational rather than medical condition – as a result of the Covid pandemic, Dr Makin-Byrd has set down her struggle in an accessible form that credits locals with being part of her recovery.

Kerry received her PhD from Penn State University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University. After working at New York University and the National Center for PTSD, she was a founding psychologist (and employee #5) of a mental health start-up. She came here from Colorado just two years ago, with scientist husband Tim Hilton and daughter Liliana, arriving at a time when many colleagues world-wide were suffering similar symptoms.

Dr Makin-Byrd was experienced and well-qualified in dealing with people who had been through the mill in terms of violence such as abuse, PTSD and other trauma, and marginalized groups such as new immigrants. She came from a family of helpers – caring professionals, including pastors, who as she puts it “want to be present with great suffering”. Her dad was a school psychologist, her mother a social worker. It was practically in her genes. Widely published, peer-reviewed and a contributor to books on trauma and resilience, Dr Makin-Byrd had even earned a Special Contribution Award from the US Veterans’ Health Administration, recognising her policy contributions and clinical teaching on veterans' mental health services.

Work had become her identity. But when she found herself unable to function in the job she once loved, couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to eat, she didn’t know how to help herself. “If I work hard enough I can overcome this” leads only to exhaustion, she found.

She watched herself even as she suffers, in a disembodied state.

“I was giving talks on the definition of work burnout as I was experiencing it,” she says. “Denial works until it doesn’t” she writes, laying out the excuses she used to blame herself, as she bargained her way to rock bottom.

One of the benefits of waiting for her work visa to come through was having the time and space to practise self-compassion, she says. Her slow recovery, over the enforced hiatus, she credits largely to Eastbourne – the natural environment of sea and bush, the people befriended here, and being able to talk with loved ones – her husband and daughter, as well as colleagues and friends overseas, via the internet.

“It’s not won and done,” she warns. “There will always be a struggle between the need to control and let go. But New Zealand gave me a chance to heal. The people I met here, being welcomed into a society that values having a rich, full life outside of work, it all helped me recover. This book is dedicated to all helpers, but it probably should also be dedicated to the people of New Zealand.”

For others wishing to “find meaning from madness”, Dr Makin-Byrd’s next book is a manual entitled Start Here: a guide for the overwhelmed Ballad to Burnout is available from

Screening success

A full house turned out for the world premiere on 2 July of At the Bay: A Photographic Tribute Capturing Five Scenes.

The audiovisual presentation featuring five vignettes from one of Katherine Mansfield's most-loved stories was part of a tribute by Eastbourne creatives to mark the centenary of the death of the writer who will always be associated with Eastbourne, and Days Bay in particular. Appropriately, it was screened in the assembly hall of Wellesley College, the Anglican boys’ school centred around the imposing twostoreyed building known in Mansfield’s day as Days Bay House.

The evening included a selection of the author’s favourite music, and the AV, which will be screened again at Eastbourne Library as part of a commemorative exhibition later in the year about Katherine Mansfield’s relationship with the Eastern Bays. It’s also available for screenings in schools and at KM-related events and seminars. View it on: vimeo.com/ southlightnz/KM2023