I officially paid off my 2025 Tesla Model 3.

I welcomed 31 in 30 days ago by giving myself one of the best gifts I could have asked for: financial freedom.

As of July 20, 2026, I am completely debt-free.

$47,236.55.

Paid in full.

I am incredibly proud of myself.

My original car payment was $791.30/month. But over the past 18 months, I pushed myself to pay $1,500 every month instead.

I was originally scheduled to have the car paid off in December of 2026, but I got paid for my first big brand deal through content creation. Now, of course, I did think about all the things I could buy with that money, but ultimately decided to focus on what I could eliminate instead.

I looked at the remaining balance of $9,000 and deciding to pay it in full, six months ahead of schedule was an easy decision.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want the rest of my early thirties to look like.

I know I want to retire by 40. And if that’s the goal, my early thirties can’t just be about making more money. They have to be about getting my money in order. This means: clearing debt, building cash reserves, investing, creating multiple streams of income, being intentional about where my money goes, and most importantly, building a financial life that gives me options.

So what’s next? Well, now that I’ve spent the last year and a half getting rid of what I owe. I want to spend the next year building upon what I own. I’m interested in what happens when I take the same intensity I used to eliminate $47,236.55 of debt and redirect it toward building wealth.

My goal for 31 is to generate $100,000 in cash!

This goal is daunting, but I’ve done it before … albeit, this was 6 years ago. But it was also back when I had no idea what to do with that amount of money. I found myself “rich” in money, but not rich in other ways that mattered. This time, I am older, wiser and I’ve lived a little (as my mentor says).

Money aside, my life itself is rich, I now want the money to match.

Here’s to 31.

After everything they did for them, how could they leave?

This has always troubled me because this implies that the person who sacrificed, supported, contributed, believed in, or “built up” the other person more automatically becomes entitled to the relationship forever.

Permanence is owed …

“He can’t leave after everything she did for him.”

“She owes him because he supported her.”

Once someone has benefited from a persons love, they should be morally required to stay with them no matter what.

Y’all make romantic relationships sound like a prison!

Now, I may not believe people owe each other permanence, but I do believe they owe each other honesty, care, gratitude, and dignity. Leaving a relationship is not wrong, but treating someone as disposable after they helped shape your life is.

That being said, just because you loved someone through uncertainty, supported their dreams, or held them down during difficult seasons to help build the life they now enjoy, does not mean they owe you a romantic relationship forever.

Building someone changes them.

Building someone changes you.

And sometimes the person who helped build the life is not the person best suited to sustain it.

Most modern relationships seek to blend partnership and romance, which complicates things.

Partnership thrives on loyalty, stability, sacrifice, predictability, compromise, selflessness, and long-term investment. It requires choosing another person’s wellbeing alongside your own and at times, over your own. There are seasons where one person carries more than the other and seasons where you pour into someone because you believe that they could become.

Romance is different.

Romance thrives on desire, admiration, autonomy, curiosity, mystery, aliveness and selfishness. Romantic attraction relies on wanting someone, not simply being committed to them.

Ironically, the very acts that make a strong partnership possible can alter and diminish the conditions that initially fueled the romantic interests. When you’re constantly overlooking flaws, compromising, sacrificing, caretaking, carrying emotional labor, and prioritizing another person’s growth above your own, this can shift and weaken romantic attraction.

Like I said, this complicates things.

Building someone up often requires a certain neglect of self. You spend years investing energy, attention, encouragement, resources, and emotional labor into another person’s becoming. Meanwhile, your own growth slows down and then one day, the person you helped build up arrives at their new destination and they are operating differently emotionally, financially, spiritually, and physically. This can lead to their desires changing, their ambitions expending and their priorities shifting.

The frequency you both were on no longer matches.

And sometimes this is when the relationship ends. This is the risk of loving and pouring into another human being. Their growth does not guarantee compatibility down the line.

The message isn’t to stop building people up, but rather to never build someone up to the point that you neglect building yourself. The goal is to build alongside someone, not disappear inside their becoming. Never give to the point where your own growth, wellbeing, and aspirations are constantly deferred while someone else’s life expands. Never pour so much into another person that you become depleted, resentful, or unrecognizable to yourself. You can give freely without giving away yourself.

I believe in loving and pouring into anyone I am partnered with. Anything I do for someone I love, I do it because I genuinely desire for them to flourish with or without me and I do not expect permanent access to them in return.

I want anyone I am partnered with to feel free.

Free to stay and free to leave.

If you are only with me because you feel indebted or obligated to me because of what I’ve done for you, then what we have is no longer love.

I never want my love to feel like a debt that can never be repaid.

Love is a gift.

A pattern I have noticed in women and myself:

A woman is on her grind, building something, a career, a business, a degree, a brand, and for a while, she’s on fire, posting, planning, executing ... but then the path gets harder than expected and almost like clockwork, she suddenly wants a baby.

If you are a young woman who is on your grind and building something, pay attention and be on the lookout for this feeling, particularly if you’ve always been indifferent about children. This craving for motherhood will show up when life is good and your path is clear. It is rather insidious and arises when things start getting hard, the path seems uncertain, the pressure rises, and the responsibility of your life becomes real. The idea to have a baby will seem urgent, comforting, and almost perfectly timed.

When you start to realize the sacrifice, discipline, and resilience that is required of you, naturally, your mind will look for a relief and a way out. Motherhood can be that exit that gives women an unspoken permission slip to step away from the very thing they once said they were called to do.

A baby is the most socially accepted pause button a woman can hit … and you will be celebrated for it.

Motherhood instantly shields a woman from scrutiny and the moment she steps into it, what is demanded from her shift. People stop asking about goals, progress, and unfinished plans and society wraps you in understanding, patience, and will make excuses for you.

If you abandon a business venture, quit a degree, drop out of college, shelve a thriving career, people will eventually ask why … but get pregnant? The conversation shifts, the pressure lifts, and scrutiny fades.

Society softens around pregnant women. You’re given space, grace, and time.

“What are you working on?”
“What’s next for you?”
“How’s your business going?”
“Are you still pursuing that goal?”
“What happened to that thing you were building?”

All of that disappears and replaced with:

“Congratulations.”
“Take your time.”
“Being a mother is the most important job anyway.”

Motherhood pauses and reset the world’s expectations of you. The bar for your success is different and if you are terrified of failing at something bigger, this reset is intoxicating.

I would say that motherhood gives a woman about a good 2–3 year “break”. Pay attention to what happens when that window starts to close and the child becomes more independent. People slowly start looking at the woman and asking what’s next again and this is typically when baby #2 often shows up to extend the reset.

Motherhood is not the issue here, using motherhood as a shield is. While motherhood is a beautiful and meaningful path, it’s important to be honest with yourself about your timing and your intentions. Most women don’t suddenly “feel called” to motherhood … they run to it.

If the desire to have a baby shows up at the exact moment your life demands courage, discipline, and uncomfortable growth, I encourage you to question it.

Am I truly moving towards something I want or am I stepping away from something that feels difficult?

This is me at 27.

Bloated stomach and all, living at my parents' house with no sense of purpose or real footing under me.

I was supposed to be studying for my CPA and I remember so many people asking about my timeline, my next move, who I was dating, what my plan for the future was, blah, blah, blah.

The questions felt relentless.

I was finding that studying for the CPA was harder than I thought it would be, but I had already spend the $5,000 on Becker and committed to this path out loud, so I felt even more pressure! At the same time I also wanted to do social media and content creation, but had no idea where to even begin. I was directionless in a way I didn’t fully have language for yet. I took this photo and sent it to my boyfriend at the time and do you know what I said?

“How cute would I be pregnant?”

Keep in mind, I had also told that same boyfriend that I didn’t want children. And yet there I was, standing in a mirror, trying on the idea of motherhood … not because I was I was feeling maternal, but because I was feeling lost. Somewhere in my subconscious, a baby started to look like a solution to a problem that had nothing to do with children.

I have felt the pull of this exit and understand completely why women run there. I too wanted the pressure to lift and for someone to hand me a congratulations card instead of a hard conversation about where my life was going.

Thankfully, I didn’t take that exit, but if I, a woman who has always been indifferent to motherhood could feel that pull, what about the women who already want them someday, who are already on the fence and looking for a reason?

I was able to catch this feeling, choose differently and get back on track. This was greatly facilitated by being in spaces with older wise women, specifically, my mentor Kendal St. Charles, . Her teachings and wisdom caught me at the right time in my life and I was able to adjust before making such a catastrophic and life-changing decision.

I’m hoping this write-up does it for the next woman or girl who finds herself in my shoes.

If the thought of your dream feels heavy …
If the responsibility feels overwhelming …
If you suddenly crave an “out” …

I urge you to not abandon your path just because it’s challenging.

Do not use the role of mother to justify walking away from your purpose and calling. I can tell you this now, your purpose and gifts will not go away quiet just because you chose to. That business idea won’t disappear, it’ll be the thing you think about at 2AM when the baby is finally asleep. The unfinished work doesn’t go quiet, it instead turns into a specific kind of grief and turns you resentful. And the cruelest part? The very child(ren) that were the exit plan and escape, in your new narrative, will now become the thing that blocked your potential.

This is not fair to you or the child.

Your goals, your creativity, your purpose, they deserve your full effort and attention. If you truly want motherhood, choose it from a place of clarity and readiness (deep down, you will know the difference).

I’ve been dealing with alopecia for a while, but I never talked about it online. When I finally underwent a hair transplant, I found myself in a surprisingly honest debate with myself: do I tell people, or do I quietly disappear and reappear later with a fuller head of hair and no one the wiser?

I gave myself permission to stay quiet. I don’t do much content on hair, so I wasn’t obligated to share. But then I asked myself the harder question: if I could share, but I’m still hesitating, what is that hesitation actually about?

With content creation, I have found that the reluctance to show up is rarely about the thing itself, but rather what you believe the thing reveals about you.

I sat down and made myself go through every fear, one by one and sit with them.

— What if I’m ugly?

— What if people make fun of me, online and offline?

— What will this do to how people see me?

So what if I’m ugly? My content has never been built on my appearance. My message doesn’t live in my hairline. It’s just hair, I’m doing what I can to address it, and if it doesn’t go the way I hope, I’ll go from there.

What if people make fun of me? I have no control over what other people think or say. But here’s what I know: no one can make me feel ashamed of something I’ve already claimed. The moment I disclosed it, I took the power out of it. I could have hidden the procedure, waited for my hair to grow back, and returned like nothing happened. But I identify as someone who shows up, and showing up means showing up when it’s uncomfortable too. People may talk offline. I can’t control that. But they know better than to do it to my face.

What will this do to how people see me? I have limited control over this. How do I see myself is what is most important.

Showing up on social media is the best shadow work tool.

Every hesitation you feel before posting is data. Every time you ask yourself should I say this, should I show this, what will they think, that’s your shadow asking to be looked at.

The fears that come up around visibility are almost never about the content itself. They’re about what you believe that content reveals: your flaws, your failures, your ordinariness, your trying-too-hard-ness, your not-enough-ness.

Social media, when you approach it with intention, holds that up for you and asks: what are you actually afraid of here?

You don’t have to share everything to do this work. But notice what you’re choosing to hide, and then ask yourself why. The answer is where the real work begins.

Pro-choice advocates spend enormous energy arguing that a fetus is not a life, that it’s just a clump of cells, and personhood doesn’t begin until some arbitrary developmental milestone. Pro-life advocates spend their energy arguing the opposite. And while everyone is screaming at each other about biology and theology the conversation becomes a question of what the fetus is, not a question of who has authority over it.

When I say it is a life and I make the final decision, this forces a conversation about power and who gets to be the decision-maker over life itself. We are uncomfortable with the answer being a woman.

Think about every story we tell ourselves about women and power. Think about how the image of a woman calmly, rationally, guilt-freely choosing to end a pregnancy makes people react. We expect women who have abortions to be tragic, conflicted and devastated. We want the story to be one of anguish so it acknowledges the weight of what we believe she is overstepping.

A woman who says I looked at my life, I made my call, and I’m fine is threatening in a way that “it wasn’t really a life” never is.

As a society, we are not actually uncomfortable with life-and-death decisions. We accept them all the time.

Every single day in this country, men are given weapons and sent out into the world with the authority to make life-and-death decisions and we celebrate it and call it service and protection. We have built institutions around it and fund it with trillions of dollars. We give them uniforms and badges and medals and say: use your judgment. A police officer on a street corner decides, in a split second, whether to pull the trigger. A soldier in a foreign country decides, based on his read of a situation, whether a life continues. Commanders sign off on airstrikes that end the lives of entire communities. Men in suits in Washington authorize missile launches.

We arm these men with instruments of lethal force and say: we trust your judgement and call.

Now contrast this to how society treats women making a life-and-death decisions.

The government convenes, courts are assembled, laws are passed … pills are banned from the mail. Men in robes issue a ruling saying: not your judgement; not your call.

We never had a problem with humans having power over life and death. We have a problem with women having that power. What is currently happening is not a moral debate about the sanctity of life, but a power struggle about who gets to be the arbiter of it.

To every woman and girl reading this who is capable of giving birth, the government did not give you your reproductive authority and the government cannot take it away. What they can do is make it harder for you to exercise it and hope that enough barriers accumulate that the right becomes theoretical.

Unlike an officer’s life-and-death authority that is granted by the state. Our authority as women authority lives in our body and was never granted by anyone. It is ours by birthright. They cannot take it, but they can keep trying. Your job as a woman is to stay ahead of the barriers. The window to act can be narrow and the system is designed to make you miss it.

• Keep Plan B accessible

• Get on birth control

• Know where your nearest clinic is

• Know which states have shield laws protecting providers.

• Stock up on abortion pills while you can

• Share information with the women in your life

• Know your options before you need them

Do all of this without guilt. Guilt is the weapon they are counting on, the internalized shame that makes a woman second-guess a decision she has every right to make.

A military commander does not agonize publicly about whether he had the right to authorize the mission. A police officer does not preface his report with an apology for making a judgment call. Men are trusted with lethal authority and they exercise it as a matter of course and function of their role, without being required to perform sufficient grief and guilt to satisfy an audience.

You have been trusted with something far more fundamental: the power over whether a human being enters this world.

This authority lives in your body and always has. The government has opinions about it and courts have rulings about it, but none of that changes whose call it actually is.

If your answer is no, the answer is no.

Pull the trigger.

There’s a difference between reading a book and truly entering it. One is a task you complete, the other is a place you go.

Instead of simply picking up a book, create a ritual for crossing over into another world; turn reading from a habit into an experience.

Here’s my simple “recipe” I’ve come back to again and again along with everything I use to make it happen.

Ingredients

• 1 Cup of Your Favorite Tea

• 6 Tbsp of a Heated Blanket

• 1 Book of Your Choice

• 1 Aesthetic Background Matching the Vibe of Your Book

• 1 Hourglass Timer (optional)

• 1 Cuddle Buddy (optional, but highly recommended)

Step One — The Main Event

Brew Your Tea

Choose a tea that matches your mood or simply one that tastes good to you. There’s no need to overthink it. The goal is comfort, not perfection.

My personal go-tos are:

🌿 Lemongrass

🌺 Hibiscus

🫚 Ginger.

And if you can, make it beautiful. Having tea accoutrements you genuinely enjoy using. A mug that feels good in your hands, a teapot that looks lovely on the tray adds something subtle but important to the ritual. I choose pieces that match the colors of my home, so everything feels cohesive and calm without trying too hard.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate, just intentional.

I’ve spent a long time brewing tea in whatever mug was clean. When I finally let myself pick pieces I actually loved, the whole ritual clicked into place.

What I Use

Tea Accoutrements

I look for pieces in earthy tones that match my home palette, nothing matchy-matchy, just cohesive. When your tea setup feels considered, the ritual does too.

Shop my tea time picks

Step Two — The Cozy Core

Fold in a Heated Blanket

One of my favorite parts of my living room is having a blanket that not only matches my couch, but also happens to be heated. As someone who runs cold no matter the season, this single thing changed how often I actually sit down to read and instantly makes everything cozier.

I always turn mine to the highest setting and yes, it gets hot (which I love).

Wrap yourself up fully and let it be a signal to your body that you can soften and that there’s nowhere else you need to be.

What I Use

Heated Throw Blanket

Mine comes in several colors. I chose one that matches my couch so it looks intentional rather than tacked-on. It’s the single purchase that’s most improved my reading sessions.

See the blanket I use

Step Three — Main Ingredient

Choose Your Book

This is your main ingredient. Pick whatever genre you’re craving in the moment, not what you “should” read or one that seem most impressive.

The ritual only works if the book earns your attention willingly. A book you’re forcing yourself through will always compete with your phone. A book you genuinely want to read will make you forget it exists.

My choice for this ritual was Little Women. Something about it feels especially right when spring is in the air. It’s warm, unhurried and full of small domestic beauty.

My book list and recommendations

Step Four — The Atmosphere

Set the Scene with an Aesthetic Background

You’re entering another world through reading. One of the best ways to deepen that experience is by letting your real environment echo the one on the page.

I’ve found so much inspiration from YouTube creators who create long, immersive aesthetic videos and some of them run for hours, building entire moods you can sit inside while you read. It’s a simple way to transform your space without changing anything physical.

Think of it as setting the stage:

Mystery — Rain sounds and dim corners

Dark Academia — Candles, deep tones, and classical music

Historical Romance — Greenery, softness, wood and soft golden light

Horror — Flickering candlelight, deep shadows, just enough unease

Poetry — Quiet, natural light, a window slightly open, something reflective and still

Personal Development — Clean, bright space with a notebook nearby and little to pull focus

Memoir — Warm, lived-in spaces, lamps, soft textures, a sense of intimacy

Since I was reading Little Women, I chose a video titled “Pride & Prejudice Inspired Ambience 🌧️ Rainy Afternoon at Pemberley.” It had a perfect blend of softness, rain, and old-world charm and felt like stepping into a quiet evening in another century.

I loved those small moments when I would pause from reading, look up, and let the world on the page blend with the one around me. It made everything feel more immersive and real.

Optional but Transformative

The Hourglass

When you want to give your reading session a soft boundary, resist reaching for your phone and use an hourglass instead.

It sounds like a small thing, but it isn’t. Your phone is a portal to everything competing for your attention, even in timer mode, it sits there radiating possibility. An hourglass is just sand and asks nothing more of you. It keeps the experience free from notifications and distractions. There’s no urgency to it, just a quiet awareness of time moving, which somehow makes it easier to stay present.

I flip mine at the start of a session and make a loose agreement with myself: stay until it runs out. Some days I keep going long after.

What I Use

Hourglass Timer

I have a 15-minute one on my reading table. It’s also just beautiful to look at, a small decorative object that doubles as a gentle keeper of time. Much more ritual-appropriate than a phone screen.

See the hourglass I use

Optional but Highly Recommended

The Cuddle Buddy

There’s something about holding or leaning into something warm while you read. A pet, a partner, even just a good pillow, it all works. It’s about comfort, softness, and that subtle sense of being held while you drift into another world.

Reading is already an act of solitude. A cuddle buddy makes that solitude feel less empty.

Final Step

Mix Everything Together & Enjoy!

Settle in. Sip slowly. Read deeply.

Let everything you’ve gathered come together without forcing anything else. This is what turns reading from something you do into something you experience.

When you ritualize it, even a short session can feel restorative. It becomes a way to reset your mind, reconnect with yourself, and step away from the constant noise of everything else competing for your attention. You return from it differently than you arrived.

So let yourself be fully there. The real value isn’t just in finishing the book, but in how you felt while reading it.

What does your reading ritual look like?

I’d love to know what makes your sessions feel like an experience rather than a task.

Leave a comment

And if you have been privy to the DMV weather as of late, you know how much effort that took on my part.

I’ve never been someone who never goes out. But somewhere between building my career and various social media platforms, I became reclusive. So I decided that in 2026, I will be outside more, but not just physically outside, socially outside. I have been listening to a very wise women, who talks about women and their lack of social skills and graces.

It’s imperative that I develop my social skill as it will benefit me when it comes to content creation and eventually opening up my own tax practice. I am a pretty social person, but I am social by going out and just watching people without much interaction with them. So, my task for when I go out will be to mingle and talk to different people and analyze what comes from these various interactions.

I took the metro into DC, which, I will always choose over driving. There’s something grounding about it. Being amongst people but not required to engage with them. It’s the best social warmup (in my non-expert opinion).

The event itself was good and did exactly what I hoped it would do.

It showed me something about myself: I am extremely uncomfortable with silence in social interactions.

At the beginning, I had no trouble talking. But when the conversations lulled, I felt quite anxious.

My mind kept saying:

Say something.
Bring up a topic.
Don’t let this die.
Fill the space.

At one point, everyone else was paired off and I found myself standing alone. I felt so exposed and wanted to run for cover. I felt the strong need to justify my solitude in the moment by being visibly occupied, even when I really wasn’t.

My instinct was to immediately take out my phone to “text” or at least pretend to check something so it would look like I was “doing” something. If not my phone, then my water glass. I kept pouring more water, drinking it, then pouring more water again, just to keep my hands busy. Even when I was not thirsty, I kept up the charade.

At some point, I caught myself mid-behavior and decided to try something different. I leaned back against a table, put my phone away, let my hands rest and told myself this too is okay.

It is okay to not be talking, for there to be silence and for me to be alone in a room full of people.

Without realizing it, I had internalized this idea that when you go out socially, you must always be “on.” That being social means constant motion, moving from group to group, story to story, laugh to laugh. And when you are not this way, it is unacceptable.

But that’s not my personality. I am someone who prefers speaking when I have something to say. In social settings, this is okay too. I do not have to fight against who I am and fill every space with words. Silence is not uncomfortable when I am by myself. Why should that change because others are suddenly present? And the moment I stopped trying to perform sociability, I actually felt more socially capable.

I felt confident in the room for the first time while on my own with nothing to preoccupy me until the next interaction. I sat back and just observed the various groups and different individuals and made notes. It felt good.

There is a quiet confidence in someone who doesn’t rush to fill space. Someone who can stand alone without appearing lost and speaks when they genuinely have something to say, not just to avoid discomfort.

I haven’t mastered this … yet.

As I go out more, I will probably still reach for my phone and over-pour water. But at least now I see the pattern and can interrupt it.

- Ruhamah

Enrich Your Life

.

And I’m noticing something early enough that it’s forcing me to ask myself the following questions.

Do I actually want this? Or do I just want what it represents?

Will my quality of life be enhanced by making this my primary source of income? Or will it quietly erode the very freedom I say I value?

In small ways I’ve started to feel what this path requires and the tradeoffs.

I am genuinely grateful for all the PR I’ve received so far. And also, sometimes it feels heavier than I expected.

When products arrive that aren’t already part of my routine, it asks something of me. I have to shift what I’m using to pay closer attention so I can film, test, and report back. Something I would have simply bought, tried, and enjoyed privately and maybe then shared organically becomes an obligation … work.

And that subtle obligation, multiplied over time, is lending answers my questions.

I don’t believe I want to be an influencer in the traditional sense.

Yes, I love beautiful things.
Yes, I love skincare.
Yes, I love travel.
Yes, I love being in inspiring spaces.

I’m happy for the girls who receive mountains of PR, truly. When I see unboxing videos and rooms filled with packages, I understand the appeal and why many women want this.

But I also know myself more now.

I’m intentional about my space and what enters my home. My home is my sanctuary. I don’t like excess. I don’t like clutter and the way it affects my nervous system. Even beautiful clutter changes the energy of my day.

Seeing packages I can’t open yet because they need to be filmed first would sit in the back of my mind, quietly pressuring me. It would subtly weigh on my day-to-day life and not in a positive way.

And I know that about myself now. I’m not saying I don’t want PR. I want PR that I would have bought anyway. Products that are already align and are additions to my life, not disruptions.

Sometimes I wonder if feeling this way means I’m blocking blessings. If gratitude is supposed to look like accepting everything. If saying “this might not be for me” is small thinking.

I see influencers on brand trips and think: that looks beautiful.
But when I sit with it honestly, I don’t want to be flown somewhere to work on someone else’s agenda.

I want to travel on my own time.
Move freely on my own itinerary.
Wake up without a call sheet.
Experience luxury without deliverables attached and needing to document it on someone else’s timeline.

Now, this doesn’t mean I’m resisting being in those spaces at all, but rather that since I want access to these beautiful spaces, I need to enter them differently.

Not necessarily as the face or the talent, but as an autonomous woman building something of her own.

My next chapter isn’t about scaling visibility and trying to get on the radar of brands, but about building my own personal brand, creating products of my own so that I can curate experiences on my own terms.

I want to design a life where luxury isn’t sponsored by someone else, but owned by yours truly ;)

I don’t have the full blueprint yet, but I do have clarity.

Having this clarity so early on is a gift and I receive it with gratitude.

-Ruhamah

But when you have no children, who are you creating for?

As childfree women, just because we are not creating children doesn’t mean we leave this earth unimpacted by our presence. We are allowed to document, archive and create things that technically are for being passed down even though we do not plan on having children.

So many people talk about children as their legacy, the way they’ll live on after death. But for those of us who are childfree, our legacy isn’t smaller. It’s just different. The things we create in this lifetime are what we leave behind.

I recently saw a photo of a handwritten recipe on my phone that inspired me. I had taken the photo after making the recipe with an aunt; the recipe was her mothers. The ink was faded, the paper worn thin, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how intimate it felt. How someone’s hands had written this and it survived way past them to bring value into my life in the present.

It sparked something in me. I suddenly wanted to create a recipe book of my own; handwritten, curated slowly over time. Notes in the margins. Corrections. Food spots on the pages. Memories tucked between ingredients. I have so many recipes in my notes app, but I want something that feels lived in, right in my own kitchen.

I then thought about passing it down like the mother had to her daughter and my mind immediately said: What’s the point?

I don’t plan on having children so there will be no one to pass it down to

And I realized how strange that thought was.

Being childfree should not disqualify me from archiving my life.

I exist. I have existed on this earth. And when I leave it, I still want there to be evidence that I was here.

A handwritten recipe book deserves to be made even if it isn’t destined for a daughter or a granddaughter. Crocheted items deserve to exist. Scrapbooks filled with collected wisdom, thoughts, and observations deserve space. These are heirlooms, even if we don’t know exactly who will inherit them.

Maybe they’ll be found by a friend.
Or a niece.
Or a stranger.
Or no one at all.

And still, they matter.

I find myself making that same pineapple upside-down cake, following the recipe that had been passed down from mother to daughter and somehow, through the years, found their way into my hands. The recipe was never meant for me, and yet I carry it forward.

As childfree women, just because we are not creating children does not mean we move through this world without impact. We are allowed to create slowly. We are allowed to preserve ourselves. We are allowed to leave something behind simply because we were here.

I plan on spending my lifetime asserting my presence on this earth.

I will leave behind things that are sure to bring value in the lives of others way past when I am no longer here.

I will not have children, but I will still be remembered.

- Ruhamah

“The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief. To increase knowledge only increases sorrow.
— Ecclesiastes 1:18

I recently read Ecclesiastes and the verse above made me pause and reflect on an uncomfortable question:

If it increases ones sorrow, is wisdom actually a good thing?

As someone actively pursuing self-mastery, I can honestly say my wiser self has experienced more grief than my ignorant self ever did. Yes, I see more clearly now and notice patterns I once missed. But, I also recognize responsibility where I once had excuses. And that clarity has brought sorrow and grief.

I was happier when I knew less as I was able to blame circumstances, people, timing and anything but myself.

Then wisdom called.
And naively, I answered.

This isn’t meant to discourage anyone from the path of self-mastery, but to inform you of what you’re stepping into. Decisions should be made from a well-informed place.

Wisdom, gotten through the path of self-mastery stripped me of my favorite comfort: plausible deniability.

I can no longer unsee things.

The bad habits I though were personality traits, were actually choices made by my own free-will. The stagnation in certain areas of my life were not bad luck, but rather avoidance. And the majority of the suffering I experienced was not random, but often self-inflicted.

I now see the hand I played in every thing that happened in my life. The good and the bad, I see it always.

I lost my virginity at 27, largely out of a desire for knowledge and self-understanding. I believed being with only one person for life was limiting. During that relationship, my boyfriend stealthed me.

What he did was wrong.

Before self-mastery, I would have blamed him and stopped there. But wisdom demands more than blame, it demands accountability. I suspected he had done it before, yet I continued to have sex with him anyway. I didn’t want the responsibility of thinking for myself when it came to contraception, so I placed it in his hands.

When you give someone responsibility over you, you also give them power to wield it, even though you will bear the consequences.

Acknowledging my participation does not excuse what was done to me. It simply means I no longer deny where I abdicated personal responsibility.

This is what wisdom does.

I can no longer claim innocence through ignorance. I understand myself now, and through that understanding, I have lost the right to remain the same.

This loss is not gentle. It feels like grief because it is grief.

You grieve the death of the person you were allowed to be while you were ignorant.

“Ignorance is bliss” is true, but only if you plan to stay ignorant. Once knowledge is gained, there is no neutral relationship with wisdom. You cannot simply observe. Action must follow.

When you know better but do not do better, you experience a specific kind of suffering, one rooted in self-betrayal.

When you don’t know better, there is innocence. When you do know better and refuse to act, there is constant inner conflict.

When you don’t know better, you can rest. When you know better and don’t act, you live with quiet, constant self-contempt.

This is where the grief and sorrow is born.

It’s not the pain from learning, but from knowing exactly what to do and refusing to do it.

Wisdom will ruin your life if you are not prepared to act. Not because she is cruel, but because she is honest. She removes excuses and illuminates the precise changes required of you and that is deeply uncomfortable. If you get wisdom, but do not embody it, she will accuse you … every day. When you betray yourself, when you avoid conflict to keep the peace, when you people-please, when you say “yes” when you really wanted to say no, when you chose comfort over discipline … she is right there to remind you. Quietly. Relentlessly.

Until you act, wisdom will continue to feel like a burden rather than a gift.

You are no longer unaware, but you are still unchanged. And the gap between who you are and who you know you could be becomes painful and unbearable.

If you have no intention of applying wisdom to improve your life, ignorance is genuinely a kinder act to yourself.

The whole purpose of wisdom is transformation. Many people collect information endlessly, books, podcasts, videos, quotes, etc. without ever integrating what they learn. They know the language of healing, discipline, boundaries, purpose … yet their lives remain the same. Some of the most miserable people I know are “self-aware”. They have the language and can explain their trauma, patterns, attachment styles and fears. But nothing changes.

This is why many people become more anxious, more bitter, more restless after they “wake up.” They have acquired sight without surrender. They have opened their eyes but refuse to move their feet.

“Get wisdom! Get understanding!
Do not forget or turn aside from the words of my mouth.
Do not abandon her, and she will protect you.
Love her, and she will watch over you.et wisdom! Get understanding!
Wisdom is of utmost importance, therefore get wisdom and with all your effort, work to acquire understanding.
— Proverbs 4:5–7

The joy I attribute to self-mastery does not come from knowing more. It comes from applying what I know and watching its fruit bloom in my life.

From doing the uncomfortable things after I learned it was necessary.
From cutting off options I knew were harming me.
From choosing discipline when I no longer had ignorance to hide behind. From learning to say “no” and actually saying it

That’s when wisdom stopped hurting and started working.

Not when I understood more, but when I obeyed what I already understood.

I will caution you in your getting of wisdom, she does not promise happiness, but rather responsibility. She takes from you the life you could live by accident and demands you live deliberately instead.

Self-mastery is not for everyone.
And that’s okay.

If you want comfort more than truth, stay ignorant.
If you want peace more than growth, don’t look too closely.
If you are unwilling to change, do not seek clarity, it will only torment you.

Light is only a gift if you plan to walk by it.

If you choose to pursue wisdom, do not stop at understanding.

Act. Apply. Transform.

For those who chose to stay in the dark, I understand.

I on the other hand though would not trade it. Wisdom gave me something ignorance never could: alignment. I would rather live awake, responsible and aligned than comfortable and asleep.

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When we were kids, that first moment of the morning felt electric. Remember that? The nights when excitement kept you wide-awake before a “big day”? We called it childhood hype, but I think it was something deeper - an unfiltered excitement for life itself.

There was a time when tomorrow felt so thrilling we could barely fall asleep.
The first day of school.
A field trip.
A birthday.
Some unnamed adventure waiting for us.

That’s the feeling I want to invite back into my everyday life.

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us traded wonder for survival mode. As kids, excitement made it hard to sleep. As adults, exhaustion keeps us from fully living. And that contrast taught me something: maybe our lives are meant to energize us.

“When I became a man, I put away childish things.”

This is one “childish” thing I’m picking back up.

I want a life that feels worth waking up to, a life that stirs me, not one I have to drag myself through.

How often do I fall asleep just to escape a day I don’t want to repeat?

Life isn’t supposed to drain you to the point where rest becomes the only relief. If you’re finding more comfort in sleep than in the life you’re waking up to, that’s not failure, that’s feedback. That’s your life quietly asking you for an update.

Sleep should recharge you to live your life, not to escape it.

You’re allowed to want more.
You’re allowed to choose habits, places, and people that wake you back up.

Yes, rest when you need to, just make sure you’re not sleeping through the life meant for you.

P.S. I still love me a good nap though!

We’re now 24 days into the Great Lock-In of 2024, and let’s be honest — most people have already started to slack off. If they haven’t fully given up, they’re halfway there.

Remember those folks who were jumping out of bed at 3:30 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., hyped to hit the gym and transform into That Girl or That Guy?

Where are they now?

Life is a Journey, Not a 90-Day Sprint

You cannot design your dream life in just four months.

The definition of design is

“the process of creating a plan or concept for a system, object, or experience to achieve specific goals, considering functional, aesthetic, and contextual factors.” 

It’s not a one-and-done event. It’s a process. It’s strategy. It’s iterative.

You can’t blueprint a life you actually enjoy living in a 90-day challenge.

But you can start somewhere—and that somewhere is your morning.

How I Became a Morning Person

When I first started waking up early, I wasn’t dragging myself out of bed to lift weights in a cold gym or meditate for 30 minutes.

I was waking up early to scroll TikTok.
To watch movies.
To crochet.
To listen to audiobooks I couldn’t get enough of the day before.

I was excited to wake up because I had something to look forward to.

That’s the real secret.

Over time, I started to fall in love with moving my body, not because someone on YouTube told me to, but because I genuinely enjoyed how it made me feel. Eventually, I moved my workouts to the morning, not because it was trendy, but because I loved starting my day that way.

Most days, I love my morning routine more than I love sleep. I wake up early to work on my business, to move my body, make money and to chase the kind of success that fills me with purpose.

I wake up early because I genuinely love the life I’m designing.

Don’t Wake Up Early to Be Miserable

Here’s where people go wrong: they force themselves to wake up early to do things they hate.

If the first thing your brain associates with your alarm is something unenjoyable—like a workout you dread or a task you resent—you’re setting yourself up to snooze your life forever.

That’s not discipline; that’s punishment.

Instead, ask yourself this:
“What do I love doing that I never seem to have time for during the day?”

Now—wake up early and do that!

Maybe it’s writing.
Maybe it’s painting.
Maybe it’s reading in complete silence before the world wakes up.
Maybe it’s just sipping coffee and doing absolutely nothing.

That’s where the habit starts and eventually, you won’t wake up early for discipline, you’ll wake up early for joy.

Your Dream Life Isn’t Built Overnight

Early mornings, joyful routines, building a life that feels good?

It takes time.
It takes trial and error.
It takes refinement.
It takes design.

Designing a life you want to wake up early to starts with a simple mindset shift:

Stop forcing yourself to wake up early for things you hate.
Start waking up early for things you love.

Eventually, the rest will follow.

💬let’s talk about what makes mornings magical

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• What’s one thing you’d love to do in the morning but never have time for?

• Are you a natural early riser, or are you trying to become one?

I turned 30 on July 20th.

As I sat in reflection — thinking about what I’ve accomplished, what I haven’t, and what I hope for — something hit me hard:

I’m still here?

I never actually planned my life — definitely not intentionally.
Most people turn 30 with dreams realized or goals unmet. I turned 30 and realized I never had any to begin with.

Most of the birthday reflections I’ve seen fall into two camps:

1. People who are proud of what they’ve accomplished by 30.

2. People who are disappointed that they’re not where they thought they’d be.

Me? I didn’t feel either. I didn’t have expectations for this age — because I never made any plans.
I genuinely didn’t think I’d be here.

My Escape Plan

I hoped I’d be raptured out of personal responsibility.
That was my escape plan — my get-out-of-adulthood-free card.

Adulthood always seemed scary. The idea of taking responsibility over my life and its outcomes was overwhelming to the teenage version of me. I didn’t want to carry the burden of building my future.

Somewhere in my childhood, I told myself: Surely I won’t have to be an adult before the return of Christ.
That belief — conscious or not — led me to avoid planning, avoid decisions, and avoid long-term thinking. I don’t know if I truly believed I wouldn’t grow old, or if I just didn’t want to.
Either way, I lived as if it wasn’t going to happen.

I didn’t prepare. I just... let life happen. I made choices on the fly and dealt with consequences as they came.

The World Just Kept Going

It was a shock when I turned 25 and life just ... kept going.
Worse — I realized it would keep going. And I had no plan.
I kept waking up in a world that wasn’t ending.

At 26, it slowly dawned on me that my escape plan — this “rapture clause” — wasn’t going to save me.

The rapture wasn’t a retirement plan.

If I didn’t take charge of my life, I could easily wake up in 20 years with nothing to show for it but regret and missed opportunities.

That was a painful, disorienting realization.

Living on Purpose and With a Purpose

Ironically, that realization was one of the reasons for my deconstruction. Not just of my faith — but of my entire approach to life.

I started asking the questions I never dared to ask.
I moved out of my parents house.
I got a life coach.
I got over my fear being seen and started posting on social media.
I started investing in personal growth, casting vision, and setting goals.

I began to imagine — and actually build — a future.
One that might not be interrupted.

Now, at 30, I am living intentionally and actively creating a desirable life for myself. As a wise woman I listen to often says: “living on purpose and with a purpose.”

I think about the woman I want to be at 40, 50, 60 — and I keep her in mind as I make decisions.

• How do I want my day-to-day life to feel?

• What kind of experiences do I want to have?

• How do my actions help or hurt the version of myself I say I want to become?

At 20, I never imagined I’d be unmarried, childfree, and living alone at 30.
And yet — life is good. Really good.

Even without a plan, it didn’t fall apart.
So now I wonder: what could it become with one?

So here’s to the next 10 years.
To living intentionally.
To finally showing up and actively participating in my life.

Because at 30, my life is only just beginning✨