This September, when I shared that I would be speaking at several events, a few people were surprised.
Is this your new thing?
I smiled. Enough time had passed that some people had forgotten this was my thing before Covid. Others had only met me afterwards, so they had never known that version of me.
I don’t remember exactly what I answered. But secretly, inside, I was saying something else.
Yes. I am back. Finally.
In 2020, at sixteen weeks pregnant, I had to end a pregnancy because my baby had not developed properly. Covid restrictions meant I went through it alone in hospital, without my husband, family or friends beside me.
Not long after that, I was fired. I was not at my best. Of course I wasn’t.
Eventually, after IVF, I became a mother. Something I had wanted so much had finally happened. And then postpartum depression arrived.
Sleep deprivation is serious business. I don’t think I understood how serious until I no longer felt like myself.
There was brain fog. I lost my sharpness. I forgot memories and stories that had once been easy to reach. I would go to job interviews and, when someone asked me for an example of my work, I knew I had one, but I couldn’t find it. The story was somewhere in my head, but I could no longer reach it when I needed it.
It was dark. Very, very dark.
Still, I kept pushing. I tried to keep my career going, to keep proving, to other people and probably to myself, that I could still do this.
Then came burnout.
My head literally stopped working. I spent days looking at my computer, unable to do even the smallest task. Complex problems that had once excited me now looked like enormous mountains I could not begin to climb.
That was the moment when pushing through stopped feeling brave and started feeling frightening.
I kept asking myself the same questions.
Did I lose my brain? Did I lose my sharp thinking, my attention to detail, my ability to just… think?
For a while, it felt as if I had.
And I was terrified that I might never be able to work again.
My body had changed too. Throughout those years, the medication I needed came with weight gain. I looked different. I thought differently. I worked differently. There were days when I barely recognised the person I had become.
This was not only a difficult period in my career. It was a long separation from myself.
The first time I stepped onto a stage again this September, I was nervous and tense. It felt almost like the first time I had ever done it.
I had spoken many times before, but my body did not seem to remember that. Or perhaps it remembered everything that had happened since.
Then I did it again. And again.
After a couple of times, something began to settle. I could think while I was speaking. I could read the room. I could find the story I wanted to tell. I could improvise. I could be present instead of watching myself from the outside, afraid that my mind would suddenly go blank.
I felt at home again ❤️
And every time, underneath the nerves and the preparation and the relief, there was gratitude.
Gratitude for having my brain back.
Gratitude for having my charisma back.
Gratitude for being able to do something I once feared I had lost forever.
I recently read Oprah’s reflection on Céline Dion returning to the stage after six years away, following her diagnosis with stiff-person syndrome.
The part that resonated was what standing on that stage represented: the long, mostly invisible fight behind the visible return.
Everyone sees the performance, but what we don’t see are the days spent wondering whether the part of you that made it possible is still there.
Her story reminded me of my own, not because our circumstances are the same, but because I recognised that fear. The fear that something you trusted your whole life might no longer be available to you. And the complicated joy of discovering that, although you are not the person you were before, another chapter is still possible.
I am not back because everything has returned to the way it was before 2020. It hasn’t.
I am back because I can think again. I can tell stories again. Complex problems excite me again. And when I walk onto a stage, after the fear begins to settle, I recognise myself.
Not the old me exactly.
Me, now.
Thank you for being in the room,
Sónia
First published in the LinkedIn edition of In the Room, 29 September 2026.