Healthy relationships don’t require perfection. They require two people who are willing to be honest. Most unhealthy relationships don’t begin because two bad people met.

They are the result of at least one person’s toxic relationship with themselves.

I just finished my design school for interior designers yesterday in Phoenix.

Every time I run one of these intensives, there’s a moment I recognize immediately. It doesn’t announce itself. It isn’t dramatic. But once you’ve seen it enough times, you can’t miss it.

It’s the moment someone stops managing the conversation in their head and starts telling the truth.

Before that shift, people are usually articulate, thoughtful, and careful. They explain their situation well. They’ve done the thinking. They’ve researched. They can outline the risks and tradeoffs better than most.

What they haven’t done yet is decide.

Then something changes.

What got you here will not get you there.

The behaviors that built your current life are optimized to maintain it. The thinking that helped you survive, stabilize, and succeed up to this point cannot be the same thinking that builds what’s next.

This isn’t a failure. It’s a function.

You learned how to be careful. How to be competent. How to make choices that protected you. Those skills worked. They produced the life you’re standing in now.

But protection and expansion require different behaviors.

Money decisions are rarely just about money.

For many women, especially mothers, they’re tangled up with guilt, responsibility, and identity. Wanting more income, more autonomy, or a different career path gets framed as taking something away from the people you love.

So the question stops being “Is this right for me?” and turns into “Is this selfish?”

That’s where things stall.

Not because the numbers don’t work. Not because the desire isn’t real. But because the emotional cost feels higher than the financial one.

Women are taught to prioritize stability, caretaking, and restraint. Ambition often has to justify itself. Desire has to be explained. Earning more has to be earned morally before it’s earned financially.

Over time, this creates a distorted relationship with money.

You might not have one big thing you’re avoiding.

You might have seventeen medium ones all asking for your attention at the same time.

You’re not lost. You’re overloaded. You’re capable, curious, interested in a lot of things. And somehow that gets translated into being unfocused or behind.

The problem isn’t that you don’t know what you want.

It’s that wanting many things makes choosing one feel like betrayal.

So nothing gets closed.

If a decision keeps coming back, it’s not because you haven’t solved it yet.

It’s because it matters.

Unimportant things fade. They resolve themselves or lose urgency. Decisions that resurface do so because something real is at stake.

People often interpret recurrence as confusion. It’s not. It’s signal.

The mind keeps bringing a decision forward when it knows it hasn’t been handled honestly. Not intellectually. Honestly.

You can suppress it for a while. Stay busy. Focus elsewhere. Tell yourself you’ll get to it later.

But it doesn’t disappear.

People often tell themselves they’re not deciding yet. They say they’re waiting, gathering more information, or staying open.

But waiting is not neutral.

Waiting preserves the status quo and carries consequences, whether you acknowledge them or not. Time is still spent. Momentum is still affected. Other options quietly narrow or disappear.

The cost of waiting is rarely obvious upfront. It tends to show up later as lost momentum, fewer viable paths, or increased pressure created by delay.

People often assume clarity will feel like confidence.

It usually doesn’t.

Clarity is quieter than that. Less dramatic. Less charged.

When a decision finally resolves, there’s rarely a rush. More often there’s a subtle sense of relief. A lowering of volume. A sense that nothing else needs to be considered.

That quiet is frequently mistaken for doubt.

Most people arrive thinking they’re deciding between options.

They’re not.

They’re deciding whether to accept responsibility for a direction that’s already clear.

That’s why decisions often feel heavier than they look on paper. The surface choice is usually simple. The consequence beneath it is not.

Most people assume they’re stuck because they haven’t found the right option yet.

They’re wrong.

They’re stuck because every new option adds responsibility. And responsibility is heavy.

At first, more input feels useful. It creates a sense of momentum. You’re “doing something.” You’re researching. You’re being thoughtful. You’re staying open.

But then something shifts.