SHAKTIof U.S. households were food insecure at some point in 2024, up from 10.5% in 2020, the year the women wrote.
The SHAKTI Study · Women’s own words
Burnout takes.
Strength gives.
Where does her reset. begin?
Shakti means strength. Black, Latina and White women living closest to burnout in America kept a five-day diary for us. They wrote about what is on their plate, who they feed first, what knocks them down and what gets them up again. For millions of women, that burnout has not lifted. Their words are where reset. begins.
Researcher’s note
Before we begin
In 2020, eight weeks after I lost my father to COVID-19, I launched JIVINITI, the Research and Creative Communications Program of The Virsa Foundation. I knew our work had to begin by listening. The SHAKTI Study was that first step, and it was designed as the first of three.
SHAKTI listened. From November 11 to 23, 2020, Black, Latina and White women on low incomes wrote five-day diaries about their lives, their food and their strength. Their words shaped the questions of The GAIA Study, which we conducted with Ipsos Public Affairs to measure diet, stress, burnout and resilience across 14,626 Americans. Together, SHAKTI and GAIA informed our award-winning documentary, Third Degree Burnout – A Survivor’s Guide.
Research, then story, then action. Project reset., the film’s educational impact campaign, is the action: five pathways that help people move from burnout to resilience, built on what these women told us.
This site gives their words the space they deserve. Read them slowly. Each one comes from a woman who made time, in a very hard year, to tell us the truth about her life.
Nivi Jaswal-Wirtjes, MBA, NBC-HWC (Mayo Clinic)
Lead Researcher, The SHAKTI Study · Founder and President, The Virsa Foundation, Inc.
Six years on
The emergency ended. The burnout did not.
The women of SHAKTI wrote in the first year of COVID-19. Some national numbers have improved since then. The conditions that drive their burnout have not eased. Here is what federal and national data show about women on low incomes today.
of single-mother households were food insecure in 2024, as were 16.2% of women living alone. The rate was 24.4% for Black households and 20.2% for Hispanic households, compared with 10.1% for White, non-Hispanic households.
higher: what groceries cost in September 2026 compared with November 2020, the month the women kept their diaries.
of people in families headed by a woman with no spouse lived below the official poverty line in 2025, about five times the rate in married-couple families (4.4%).
U.S. Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 2025 (P60-290), Sept 2026
of Black Americans and 13.9% of Hispanic Americans lived in poverty in 2025, compared with 7.5% of non-Hispanic White Americans. The Hispanic rate was a historic low, and still nearly twice the White rate.
U.S. Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 2025 (P60-290), Sept 2026
Americans, nearly 1 in 4 adults, are family caregivers. Raising children while also caring for an adult is especially common among Latino (43%) and Black (36%) caregivers, and the financial strain falls hardest on lower-income, Black and Latino caregivers.
AARP and National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the US 2025, July 2025
of women and girls age 12 and older in families below the poverty line had depression in a two-week period, compared with 8.8% in the highest-income families (2021–2023).
of adults with a high school education or less have diabetes, compared with 10.7% of adults with a bachelor’s degree or more. More than one in four adults with diabetes do not know they have it (2021–2023).
billion-dollar weather and climate disasters struck the U.S. in 2024, costing about $182.7 billion and at least 568 lives. Disasters displaced more than 3 million adults in 2022–2023, and lower-income households and people of color were more likely to be forced from home.
As of October 2026; updated each year.
Numbers tell us how many. They cannot tell us what it takes to stretch a grocery budget to the end of the month, to be the one everyone calls at 2 a.m., or to put yourself last, again. That is burnout, lived from the inside. The women of SHAKTI wrote it down, in their own words. That is why their diaries still matter, and why reset. begins by listening to them.
Two ways to read one diary
Follow one life across five days, or one day across many lives.
Read across
Meet the women
42 women who stayed all five days, each with her portrait, and a page for every one of the 56 who wrote, so that no one is left out.
Meet Yvette, 53 →Read downWalk the five days
What the women were asked each day, what we heard, and where their answers differ by community, age and household means, and where they do not.
Begin with Day 1 · You →Read bothOpen the Diary Wall
Every woman a row, every day a column. Read a row for a life, a column for a day, or open any single entry.
Open the Diary Wall →Before the diaries
Fifteen voices from the field
Before we asked the women anything, we listened to 15 clinicians, advocates, educators and makers. Their insight shaped the questions, and the women’s answers sometimes complicated it.
Read the expert interviews →
Free download
The full report
Every finding with its counts, fifteen lives, the women’s letters to the future, and what their words mean for the state of burnout today.
The five days
One theme a day, from who she is to who she hopes to become. Each day of the diary maps to reset.’s five pathways, and its color shows the pathway it speaks to most.
Day 1
You
Five words for yourself. What is on your plate, and why.
What’s on her plate
- Rebalance
Your world
The moments that made you. Who shaped your food, then and now.
Lifelines
- Connect
Nutrition
The food ad you remember. The healthy one you would make.
Remembered vs. reimagined
- Nourish
Resilience
Your superpowers. Who you would call at 2 a.m.
The 2 a.m. call
- Restore
- Connect
Envisioning your best life
One thing to change. A letter to your future self.
Letters to the future
- Nourish
- Move
- Rebalance
- Connect
The five reset. pathways: Nourish (food, water, earth), Restore (sleep, stillness), Move (body in motion), Connect (people, purpose) and Rebalance (life in harmony).
Research · Story · Action
SHAKTI listened. GAIA measured. The film told the story. reset. turns it into action.
- 2020SHAKTI listened.
Five days of diaries, November 11 to 23, 2020, in the women’s own words.
Journey - 2021GAIA measured.
The GAIA Study, conducted with Ipsos Public Affairs, asked 14,626 Americans about diet, stress, resilience and burnout. SHAKTI shaped its questions.
Visit - The filmThe film told the story.
Third Degree Burnout – A Survivor’s Guide, informed by SHAKTI and GAIA, and recognized at 17 film festivals.
Visit - Nowreset. turns it into action.
Five pathways from burnout to resilience: Nourish, Restore, Move, Connect, Rebalance. Where does your reset. begin?
Visit
Project reset.
From burnout to resilience, in five pathways
Project reset. is the educational impact campaign of the award-winning documentary Third Degree Burnout – A Survivor’s Guide, launched at NYC Climate Week 2026. Through screenings, facilitated conversations and the reset. Check-In, it helps universities, clinicians, schools, workplaces and women in midlife move from burnout to resilience. It is the third step of a plan that began with SHAKTI: research, then story, then action.
- NourishFood, Water, Earth
What we eat and drink, and the land it comes from.
- RestoreSleep, Stillness
Rest that refills us: sleep, quiet and time to recover.
- MoveBody in motion
Everyday movement that fits a real life and a real body.
- ConnectPeople, Purpose
The people we can call, and the purpose that keeps us going.
- RebalanceLife in harmony
Bringing work, care and our own needs back into balance.