Why Broke Decisions Quietly Keep Women Stuck

Ayana (00:01)
Are you like me? Do you make broke bitch decisions?

I've been reading this book by author Rachel Rogers, a multi-millionaire. And the book is called We Should All Be Millionaires. But I was reading the book, and it just happened to tie into what I wanted to talk about. Is for the longest time, and by long I mean several years, I have had this shopping list in my head. And on this list

Are well were, I'll talk about that later, four major purchases. A refrigerator.

A furnace, a mattress, and a gun, a firearm. And no, this is not a list for people who are hiding out from the FBI or gonna be in some kind of gangster movie or something. No, this is the list of things I have had to buy. But for one reason or one reason or another, I have made an excuse for why I can just live with.

whatever it is I'm trying to replace. And those have been my broke bitch decisions that I've been making that have been keeping me from realizing my potential. And my potential is to be happy and to experience joy. I've got some explaining to do. Let's get into it.

Hey everyone, welcome back for another episode of Ayana Explains It All, the podcast bridging the gap between current events and human behavior. I am your Black Muslim lady, lawyer, host, Ayana Fakir. Yes, that is my real name. My birth name is Ayana Rashida Fakir. Ayana spelled A Y A N A, that is one in. And Ayana Explains It All is the podcast, as I said, bridging the gap between current events and human behavior.

And it is available on multiple streaming platforms, including Pandora, Amazon Music, Good Pods, Apple Podcasts, and the flagship Spotify, and a host of others. If you go to the show's website, www.iana, a-y-a-n-a explainsitall.com, you will be able to find all things podcasts, including transcripts, show notes, every episode of the show, all of the sources I use in the making of my episodes.

You can find ways to support the podcast, to collaborate with me, invite me onto your program, come on to my program. I am the writer, producer, host, idea person. I am the key grip. I am craft services. This it's all me. But I would love to have some people collaborate with me. I talk about everything here. That's why it's called Ayana Explains It All, because I talk about everything. I don't know everything.

But I do talk about everything. I've sometimes called myself the explainer in chief. But I am here in Northeast Ohio. it's hot today. It's August 9th, 2026, and it's a hot day, and I love it. I love the summer, I love the heat, I love well heat. I love the the brightness of nature, the green, the flowers, all of that. I have a big garden outside, full of flowers, different types of plants.

Lots of plants inside. I talked about this on my boring plant lady episode. I love plants. I love plants, plants, plants. I also love myself. I do. I promise you I do. So when I talk about this topic, please don't look at the at at the re at whatever device, please don't make a face that indicates you think I'm kind of of a bird because I'm not. I am a woman who has

for decades lived with low self-esteem, undiagnosed ADHD, depression and anxiety, et cetera, et cetera. And so my sense of self was not fully developed until I came to the to understand myself and what I have and who I am and why I have always done the things that I've done until I grew up

I until I grew up, I was not fully a grown up. Even after I bought a house at 30, even after I had had two kids, I was still not fully a grown up. I was an adult legally, but I was not a grown up. Now I am at the ripe old age of 48, a grown up, self realized, self actualized human being who has learned well, not who has had to reroute her brain.

I have had to reroute my brain from all of the things that I knew to the things that I know now. And everything that I know now are the things that are helping to sustain me. Everything that I knew, most of the things that I knew weren't always correct. And so I wasn't doing always correct things. But the more that I'm learning about life and happiness and joy and love and human beings and boundaries and all of these things, and ADHD.

and and and through therapy and and all of that, the more that I'm learning, the better person I am becoming. But there was this thing, ladies and gentlemen, they's and thems, there was this thing that was holding me back. And I didn't know what it was called until I started reading that book, We Should All Be Millionaires. Now I'm reading this book because I want to be a millionaire. Yes, I want to be a millionaire so that I can better care for my kids.

Yes, they are young adults and they could eventually care for themselves, but I would love to give them a head start. But I also would love to be of benefit to my community. I want to give back to my community more than I am able to do right now. And I can't do that with my little mashallah, though, my public service attorney income. I could give a little bit. I want to be able to do more. I want to be able to do more.

And if I can become a millionaire, well then obviously it stands to reason inshallah. So I'm reading this book and

She goes into a bunch of different things that broke people do, that broke women do, because the book is geared towards women, that broke women do versus millionaire women. What what millionaire women do and what broke women do. And one of the things she said in there is that she said, A broke woman will live with a woman, or not a broke woman, but a woman who makes broke decisions. Rather, a woman who makes broke decisions will live with.

The kitchen cabinet that continues to bang when you close it so that, or doesn't close all the way when you you you close it, so that sometimes when you go to get something, it falls out onto the floor and breaks. And a woman who makes millionaire decisions will obviously pay someone to fix that cabinet door so that things aren't falling out. And so that's one less thing on her plate that she has to worry about so that she can.

at least be that much more happy or or have that much more time in her day. And she said that, you know, when you you you don't get the cabinet door fixed, she gives the example of the the mug, the coffee mug. You ri you go to reach for the coffee mug, you're in a hurry for a meeting, you're gonna get some coffee, you go to reach for the coffee mug, you it falls onto the floor because the cabinet isn't fixed, right? It falls out of the cabinet and onto the floor.

And you have to spend time cleaning up the glass off of the floor. And so the momentum and the happy feeling you had going into your meeting is lost and time is lost. And now you feel like crap. And so you probably go into your meeting not able to fully explain yourself or participate because you you haven't made the millionaire decision to just have somebody come and fix that thing so you're not having to clean up spills.

So you're not having to bump into it every time you go into the kitchen. She said that there are women who live with those inconveniences because number one, they don't make the time to fix things. Number two, they minimize their problems. Number three, they don't understand that if they just took a few minutes to deal with something, that it could be over and they could move on to the next thing. And and on and on. And and I'm still reading it. So.

But I'm I'm probably doing a a poor job of summarizing it. But when she said that, I was like, damn, that's me that's me. And I've I've talked to my therapist about this before, and she's you know, really driven it home to me that you really need to do these things, Ayana, just get them over with. I have needed to, but not anymore, because I did eventually have to get it over with, purchase a new furnace.

Number one, huge purchase, by the way. purchase a new refrigerator, another huge purchase, a new mattress for myself. Again, it could be a huge purchase or it could be a $200 purchase. And I've been shopping for a firearm. Why am I shopping for a firearm? Because so many people have told me that I need to get a firearm, that I need to learn how to use a firearm, that I need to have one.

when I go out. I'm not s I'm not really sold on on having it on me when I go out, but so many people have said, yes, you need to do this. Yes, you need to have it on you. you're a woman, you're you're this, you're that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. T in today's America. And I just I'm like everybody we're we're all out here walking around with guns, ready to use guns on each other. Like it's it's so sick to me. But

You know, I I just never I mean, I've gotten this far without needing one, but you just never know. y you don't know. You don't know. But this this this list of things has been going on in my head for several years. Like my refrigerator, my old refrigerator now. This will be the third refrigerator that I've had since I've lived in my house. And I have lived here for eighteen years. When you have kids

Things don't last very long. If I lived alone, I probably could have gone on with that same refrigerator that I had originally when I came into this house.

But years of going in and out of the refrigerator, in and out and in and out. Now, so the refrigerator leaked water. And I couldn't be bothered to have somebody come in and and look at it and fix it. Because in my mind, that's gonna cost a lot of money. And I I just don't feel like figuring out where I'm gonna get the money to spend the money to fix this refrigerator.

I've done it with other appliances, right? I've done it with the furnace, the old furnace now. That old furnace was like 36 years old. It came with the house. I've done it with the dishwasher. Dishwasher, absolutely. But for some reason, the refrigerator, I was just okay with just living with taking a towel every week or so, putting it under the refrigerator to soak up the water. It kept the food cold. It kept the food cold. And that's all that matters with the refrigerator, right?

That it keeps the food cold, at least for me. I don't need a refrigerator with all the bells and whistles, the ice maker and the water dispenser. I don't need that. Plus, I'm I'm living in a an old house and the cubby space, there's a cubby space for the refrigerator, and it wouldn't allow for a w a water line to go through. And it it it only allows for a certain size refrigerator. So keeping that in mind.

Trying to find a refrigerator that fits that kind of space takes a lot of time, you know. And when you're working in a budget, you can't just go into a a store and point to the one you want and be like, bring that one to my house. You got to make sure it fits, make sure it'll fit through the door, your front door, your make sure it fits through the narrow hall, whatever. I just couldn't be bothered. I couldn't be bothered. But it was bothering me. I couldn't be bothered to take care of it, but it was.

Bothering me. I was making broke bitch decisions.

Not that I'm broke, no. Alhamdulillah. I I I I I have a nice salary. I've been an attorney for how many years has it been? Twenty-three years? And I make a a nice living. I'm not a highfalutin attorney. I'm not making the two hundreds and the three hundreds, but I've been able to live in a house and take care of my kids. But money is very tight.

As it is for a lot of middle class Americans, and I am a middle class American. Money is tight and it's gotten tighter since twenty twenty five. I'll leave you to guess why. Things have gotten more expensive. And so I'm not exactly jumping to spend money on a new appliance. I would I'm more keen to live with cleaning up the water off of the floor every week. You know, taking a towel and putting it on the floor to clean up the water. Broke bitch decisions.

Not millionaires, I could just buy a new refrigerator, save the money to buy a new refrigerator.

Or put it on a credit card, pay for it over time, and not have to deal with this cleaning up the water, because the cleaning up the water was an inconvenience, by the way. It was an inconvenience. And I had been doing this for a while. And you know, gotta clean the towels after you you use their kitchen towels. Kitchen towels can kitchen towels soak up water very well, by the way. Cleaning up the water off the floor, dealing with that every winter.

For the last, I would say 10 years. Gotta get somebody out to the house to replace some part in the furnace that has gone out because the furnace was old. The furnace had been in this house since 1994, which is you know ancient in furnace years. And I was okay with that. Whatever. And every time somebody would come out, they would say, Lady, you gotta do this, lady.

You you you're eventually just gonna have to replace it. You're eventually just gonna have to replace it. And me just thinking, I can't even I can't wrap my head around replacing a furnace, picking out a furnace. How do you do that? How do you buy a furnace and then you have to have somebody install it? And why can't I just do this? Because I'm I was satisfied with just having somebody come out every once in a while, you know, clean it out, replace the part, and go on with my life. I was content with just I'll just spend a couple hundred dollars every year.

to do this and you know, because a new furnace can cost anywhere between from seven thousand to ten thousand dollars. And sis ain't have seven thousand to ten thousand dollars, okay?

So I was left with no choice though. In January. I was left with no choice. In was it January or December? I can't remember exactly. But the furnace finally went out. It was January. The furnace finally went out as in would would not work again. And I had to.

replace it. I had to. I had to. And so I just did it. I just did it.

Why d why why would I have someone keep coming out to my house every year, replacing this part, investing more money in this, investing more money in that? Just have somebody replace the furnace, which is what I did. I finally made a

Million dollar decision.

Stop dealing with these inconveniences when you could just replace it and not have to deal with this anymore and move on and have the comfort in your home, the comfort of consistent heat in your home, the comfort of consistent air blowing through your home.

comfort of knowing that when you turn on your your your thermostat, when you hit the on button on the thermostat, it's gonna come on and not have that pit that that's that anxiousness, that nervousness in your stomach that it's not going to do anything when you turn it on. I used to live with that feeling every single year that I'm gonna, you know, go and go look at the thermostat and it's gonna show me that it's not operating

That it's not clicking on. You know how you hear that click when it comes on, and I don't hear that click, and I see that the temperature in the house is either hotter or colder than what I want it to be. I would live with that anxiety every single year. Lord have mercy. Instead of just being the millionaire woman I was destined to be, replace it, pay for it.

I mean, this is this is the decision I made for myself, right? I made the million-dollar decision to buy a house, to have this investment, not just for myself, but for my kids, so they could go to a nice school system and have a house to grow up in with a yard and they could have friends and they've Alhamdulillah had all of that. So this is one of the things that comes with having a house. You have appliances, you have a furnace, you have things that will break down.

Because they get used so much and they are used over the years, eventually they're going to break down. Or you're going to have to replace them altogether. And I was just so content with having a house. I never really thought about all of the other things. I never thought about all of that, you know, replacing appliances, replacing a furnace, replacing this, and having plumbing work done, and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And

I mean I

I wasn't thinking two steps ahead. I wasn't thinking two steps ahead when I bought the house. Alhamdulillah that I was able to to buy the house and I'm happy to have it. Now I think two steps ahead. Now I do. And you know, making the broke bitch decisions. The the way this the the author framed it is just so amazing to me. But now I'm finding myself in the same

Thinking mode again because I've knocked two things off of my list. I got the new refrigerator. I was able to save up enough money to get the new refrigerator. I'm I'm financing the new furnace. I'll pay it off early, inshallah. And now the mattress and the firearm. Now, firearm, and you know what I feel like? I feel like that girl whose mother, that PBS

Little cartoon where the mother sent the girl to the store to get a stick of butter, eggs, milk, and bread. That's how I feel. I feel like her. but she wouldn't have a gun on her list, obviously. I I don't know anything about guns. I don't know a crack a lacking thing about guns.

I know the names of some of the manufacturers because I I grew up listening to rap music. You knew Smith and Weston. You knew The Mossberg. You knew I know I know Charles Bronson carried a a revolver and Dirty Harry carried a revolver and I love that. I love those movies.

But I don't want a revolver. That's an old timey gun, right? What am I gonna do walking around with a freaking revolver?

But I so I don't know anything about it. And I've asked people, and I'm sure these same people are wondering why I haven't done this yet. But this is what Ayana does. This and and and not not having a firearm is not an inconvenience to me now. It was probably on a specific occasion I could have used it because somebody this was in 2025.

January 2025, someone decided to accost me at a gas station pump because I pulled ahead in front of him. I didn't know that I was pulling ahead in front of him, obviously. Otherwise, I would have fallen back and been like, hey, you go ahead. I'm not the type of person who's gonna jump ahead if it's not my turn. He was way he was back away from the pump. And I just pulled into the gas station and pulled right up to the pump. I didn't see him.

He was not even preparing to pull in, but he insisted that it was his pump.

And so he wanted to go back and forth with me. He wanted to shoot me. He wanted to shoot me over a damn gas pump. Now, if I had had a gun, I mean, I would have been able to defend myself with a gun. I call the police instead. I call the police. But it was at that moment a friend of mine and then my son, they were both like, you need to get a gun. Get a gun, get a gun, get a gun, get a gun.

But you can't just get a gun. You have to know how to use it. You have to be trained in using a weapon. So that's another layer to this. I would have to go to well, I'm in Ohio. So Ohio has open carry, concealed carry. You don't need a concealed carry license unless you're taking the firearm to another state that will allow you to conceal carry. Then you have to have a license. But in the state of Ohio now, the law has changed rapidly in the last few years.

Now you can open carry, you can conceal carry, you can carry, carry, carry, carry, carry. So there are a lot of people around here who have firearms. Who have firearms in their car and their handbags and their their what do you call those things? Their fanny packs on their person in case something pop off. I don't know where people are going where things are gonna pop off, but you just never know in this place.

You you really never know. I mean, we've s we've all seen the stories. Fast food joints, malls, department stores, you're at a picnic in a park, you're at the beach, you're at a movie theater, you're at school, you're at work, da da da da da. There are so many places where somebody just decides that they want to start something with you, or they want to be violent, or they want to end your life, they want to end their life. And

In those cases, sometimes it has helped that someone else around has had a firearm or that someone has been able to disarm the person. But a lot of people feel like they have to have a firearm. And most people feel like a woman should have a firearm and she should know how to use it. I didn't grow up with men who were teaching me how to use firearms, and I don't have men in my life who would coop have the the

The time or attention to teach me how to use, because so it's something that I have to do myself, right? It's another thing that I have to do myself. All of these things that I'm talking about, all of these millionaire woman decisions that I'm having to make are all decisions I've had to make alone by myself. And that's perhaps the other scary part of this is that these big, big girl millionaire.

Woman decisions are things that I have to do alone. I don't have a husband to rely on. I don't have uncles. I don't have a grandfather. I don't have a father. I have a brother. I'm my brother. He lives in another state. He's not here. I'm sure if I text him and I said, Hey, what kind of gun should I buy? He would give me a list of

of guns and tell me the the costs. But still that's something I have to do myself and then I have to do the training myself. And you know, when you're a woman who got a man in her life, your man helps you, right? He does, doesn't he?

And I guess part of me just gets tired of doing all of this stuff by myself.

But if I'm gonna be a millionaire woman, I don't need a man. I mean, I'd I would love to have one around. But these are the things that we have to do. And then, you know, my my therapist, when I was telling her the story about the refrigerator and having to clean up the water off of the floor from the refrigerator and not buying the refrigerator yet, and she looked at me and she said, Just buy the damn refrigerator.

And I have been talking to people. I've been talking to my best friends about this, about buying a refrigerator. And yeah, just buy the damn refrigerator. That's what I did. I came home from a therapy session one one night a couple weeks ago. It's been like a month now since I've had the refrigerator. it's been a little bit longer than that, but and I did it.

I just sat down and I ordered I did all the things, ordered it, you know, the delivery and everything. And it came a couple days later. And I was so afraid that when they moved the old refrigerator, that there would just be mold and mildew underneath. No, there was nothing. It was it was dirty, yeah. But I have a refrigerator, new refrigerator that keeps the food cold, by the way. That was the whole point of having a refrigerator. I just needed to keep the food cold, and it absolutely does.

And it makes, you know, it freezes the ice, freezes the water in the ice cubes within an hour. My old refrigerator, it would take about 12 hours. Why was I living with that? Why was I making these broke bitch decisions? Because I didn't believe in my potential, in my ability, and my I didn't have the want, the desire to do this thing for myself. I was just kind of going through the motions of life every single day. The wake up, pray.

Go to work, pray, work, pray, work, pray, eat, take care of kids, take care of kids, pray, work, eat, take care of kids, take care of house, take care of plants. That's my life. That's been my life. I I I don't prioritize fun. I used to. I used to. I used to prioritize fun. And then I got away from it because

The demands of life have become heavier and the need for me to work more has become pressing, you know, so I could buy a new refrigerator. And so I work a lot. And I and when I'm not working, I'm tired and I just wanna just chill out. I was also doing my politics things. I was doing the TikTok live town halls. That has now slowed down, and I was doing a bunch of of just, you know, just

Chilling. I kind of got away from going out and doing things and living life and being happy. You have to prioritize happiness. Yes, you do. You don't always have to be happy. my gosh, everybody walking around happy, happy, happy, happy, happy. You can be sad. You could be sad. Yes. Don't be angry because you're sad.

Just understand, sometimes you you can be sad, sometimes you you have to be quiet, sometimes you have to you have to be slow, you have to slow down. I was listening to this y lecture from this Islamic, I guess you can call him a scholar. He's pretty he's knowledgeable. He's he's a scholar. and he's talking about market correction. And he's talking about how.

You know, you have so many days of high, high, high, high, high that you have to have some days where it's low, where you have lows so that you don't crash. If it goes really high and then really low, that's a crash. But if you have some highs and some lows and some highs and some lows, the market is correcting itself.

And it's okay to have some lows. It is absolutely okay. It's okay when things are going your way or the way you want them to go. Even when things aren't going when things are going the way you want them to, you feel good. But when things are not going the way you want them to, understand that that's still going your way because maybe there's something that's being delayed. Maybe there's something that's

You're you're you're needing to prepare yourself better for. Maybe God doesn't think you're ready to receive it. Maybe it's not the right time. Maybe the the the parts are still being assembled and put into place. And we want to experience highs all the time. We want everything to go our way all the time. We want every opportunity that we seek to be ours every time. We want every job that we go for, every promotion that we go for.

We want every piece of money that we chase to be ours. We want when we order some food, we want it to be exactly how we want it. We when we buy a dress, we want it to fit exactly correctly. we want everything to go our way. We can't have even a little bit of off. That little bit of off throws us off course and we feel sad. And then it's like, my gosh. Then or or we're up, we're upset.

And this is is another reason why I have had a hard time making these decisions about these these big purchases about making these, you know, these millionaire woman decisions. Because sometimes I think, well, if I choose this thing, what if it's the wrong thing? What if I buy the wrong size refrigerator? And I cannot tell you guys how many times I measured the space that the refrigerator would go in.

I have the exact measurements in my phone. I took a picture of the measurements from the old refrigerator because it's inside, it was inside the the freezer door. And I had that, and I would plug these numbers into like Home Depot or Lowe's and pick out the refrigerator and put it in the cart and then just not click buy. No. Just find something else to do, something else to be distracted by. Because I couldn't br I couldn't.

Just p pull the trigger, so to speak.

Now I'm listening to this book. We should all be millionaires. And I'm like, yes, I'm gonna start making millionaire woman decisions. I'm not gonna be making broke bitch decisions anymore. I'm not gonna be living anymore with these inconveniences just because I'm scared. I'm scared of what could be or what could happen or of things not working out. If they don't work out, they don't work out. We pivot, we move on, we do something else.

Or we just, you know, we're just kind of quiet for a little bit. It's okay. Sometimes I get angry with myself for being sad or for being anxious because I feel like I shouldn't feel that way. Right? Everything is going great. You still have a head a roof over your head. Why are you mad? And and that's not the right way to think either. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to have a down day.

It's okay that not every opportunity you seek becomes yours. It's okay that not every job you go for is yours. It's okay that you don't get every promotion, promotion that you apply for. It's okay that when you buy a dress, it doesn't fit exactly right. It's okay when you buy a shade of lipstick and it doesn't look exactly perfect on you. Yes, this is for the men too.

I kid I kid. But it's okay if things are a little off. It's okay if things are a little off. It's okay if you have an off day or a down day or a downtime. And believe me, I I have had many, many down times. I've lost jobs, been fired from jobs where if I had had if I still had that job, I'd probably be making over $300,000 a year.

I have applied for many promotions and been denied them. I have gone for this opportunity and not gotten it. I have gone for other opportunities and gotten them. I have been given opportunities I didn't even ask for. Alhamdulillah. Things come and sometimes they don't. Sometimes things come, sometimes they don't. And you don't always know the reason why, but there is a reason why.

There are no coincidences in life. There aren't. Sometimes God is withholding something from you because it's not the right thing for you, or it would take you from your responsibilities to maybe your family, or if you're religious like me, your religion from praying. I wouldn't want to have a job that's going to keep me from being able to pray at all. I would want something that's flexible. I would want something that, hey.

If I need to go pray, I'm gonna go in this office over here and pray.

I would want an opportunity that allows me to be to continue to serve my community and to be honest and to be open and not be someone who takes advantage of people. So you you don't, you may never know the reason why these opportunities are withheld, or why God delays things, or why I'm 48 and I'm not a millionaire yet.

Maybe now is my time. Now is my time. I'm I have more opportunities to learn things. I want to learn, you know, about the stock markets and trading and and I just want to dedicate more time to this. I want to be able to make more money. I'm going to make more money, inshallah. But there's a time for everything. And some of us, we we we want that time to be right now when we ask for it.

Because we feel ready, we think we're ready, we feel ready, but God always knows more than what we know, even about ourselves. And that's that's the that on that. So

Getting the refrigerator, alhamdulillah, it was the right time. Whatever I delayed is because I I didn't have the the the courage or the guts to just finally do it. Because I had been comfortable just doing the the broke bitch thing. And for the furnace, the same thing. I had been comfortable with doing the broke bitch thing.

And why? Because I had never had anybody talk to me in a way that was, well, you could be you girl, just do this. Go ahead and just do this. You could be, you could do this. I had never had anybody talk to me like that, in that you can just do this. It has often been the case in my entire life that when I tell my ideas to people, they go, Why do you want to do this? Why? Why would you do that?

Not saying you can do it, but why would you do it? Is it the right time? Why, why, why, why?

We never know why. We never know why. And if you're surrounding yourself with people who are not encouraging you in your ideas, who are not building you up when you have an idea, then maybe you want to kind of not spend so much time with those people. You ain't got to cut them off, but you don't have to spend all of your time with people who are not going to be encouraging of you and your ideas.

I want to make millionaire decisions. I want to make millionaire decisions. I'm making millionaire decisions from now on. I'm not doing broke bitch decisions anymore. I'm not having broke bitch boundaries with people. I'm not having broke boundaries with people. I'm not giving my time to people when I don't have it.

I'm not allowing my boundaries to be violated. And I'm not making broke bitch decisions any longer. The next thing on my list is this mattress. I have needed a new mattress for a minute. My mattress is 15, 15 years old. And I mean, some mattress, some people have mattresses for 20 years, but.

This mattress probably should have been replaced after 10 years. I have sciatica. I have, well, I had, I don't know. I have L5S1 degenerative dys disease from carrying large babies. Had two large babies, two very big-headed babies. I love my babies. but I had with my first

I was pushing and pushing for days and days. No. With my first pregnancy, I had a hard labor, had a lot of back pain, a lot of leg pain. turns out it was sciatica. And even after I was delivered of child, I continued to have the same pain, the same discomfort. And I did not always have the best mattress. I didn't have a new mattress.

After my son was born, I did not get a new mattress until he was seven years old. So I had been sleeping on old mattresses that were aggravating this pain, that were making the pain worse. I was living with daily, awful, terrible pain that would radiate from my lower back into my legs. Working out helped a lot. It helped a lot. And I was a

An avid walker. I was an avid runner. Then I started lifting weights, and that helped. Losing weight and becoming stronger absolutely helped.

But it doesn't always work. You know, you gotta have the right shoes. You gotta have, and and somewhere along the way I developed plantar fasciitis. You gotta have the right everything. You gotta have the right seat when you're working, you gotta have the right kind of couch and the pillows to prop up your back so that you don't aggravate these things. And I have been noticing over the last year or so.

I don't have the right chair to sit in when I'm working in my office. I don't I definitely do not have the right kind of pillows. I don't have the right kind of mattress. Now, I could have just dropped everything and bought myself a mattress. But my kids needed new mattresses too. My kids needed new beds. And here I am. I'm gonna put my kids first. I do. That's what I do. That's what I do.

I'm not gonna buy myself a mattress first and then my kids are sleeping on the floor. Not gonna do it. But I certainly put more energy into getting them the things that they need than getting me the thing that I need. Broke bitch decisions.

I should have prioritized myself as well as I prioritize their needs. I should have done that. I did not do that. So here I am living with a mattress that I it it doesn't support anything, really. It as soon as you lay down on it, even sitting on it, you immediately sink. And I need support because of my lower back. It came to a head the other day when I

know if I slept wrong or something. All it takes is for me to sleep wrong even slightly. And there it is. I hadn't I hadn't had back pain in a while, but I slept wrong for some reason. And when I woke up, I could not bend over. Couldn't bend over, couldn't bend down. I had to to pray in the in in a chair, seated in a chair because I couldn't get down on the floor.

And I was rubbing, you know, the the Volteran cream on my back and I was taking Advil and after a few days it was gone. But I'm like, no, my next purchase, new mattress, period. I'm not even gonna wait. I'm gonna pick one out and I'm gonna buy it and I'm gonna be done with it. Because I am not dealing with back pain from the mattress that I sleep on any longer. I'm not going to go into another year dealing with this.

I'm not. And I shouldn't have to. Why am I dealing with something that's causing me pain potentially when I could just buy another one, be done, and not have the pain?

Period.

Why am I making broke bitch decisions? Because I'm content with allowing others to have comfort and joy and happiness while I just, you know, deal with have the have the not the minimum because I'm still comfortable. I still have a bed. I still have a couch. I still have a house. But I'm not enjoying the same level of comfort that I see other that I would provide to other people. I'm not enjoying the same level of.

pain free living that I work so that other people can have.

I pour into I pour into people more than I pour into myself. And that is something that I'm having to reroute my brain from doing because I have been doing that my entire life. It's not that I'm going to neglect the people around me in favor of myself. It's that if I don't have it to give, I'm not going to give it. I'm not going to find it and I'm not going to give it. I'm going to give it to myself first so that if I

If somebody comes to me and they need it and I have it, I'm gonna give it to them.

But I'm not gonna live with the back pain from the mattress anymore. I'm not gonna live with the anxiety of the furnace not working anymore. I'm not going to live with the inconvenience of having to clean up water from the floor from the leaking refrigerator anymore. And I'm no longer going to feel unsafe going to a gas station.

My goodness, I'm going to make millionaire decisions. And sure, I didn't think they were called millionaire decisions when I when I made this conclusion, but that's what they're called. Rachel Rogers helped me helped me verbalize it. We should all be millionaires.

We should. We should all be millionaires. But especially women like me. Women like me who have been single parents for a long time, who have worked forty to sixty hours plus per week to make sure our families are taken care of, to make sure the lights are on, the gas is on, to make sure that the car turns on, to make sure the kids get to all of their activities.

To make sure they have clothes and shoes and food.

Women like me should be doing much better than how we are doing.

Women like me should be doing much better. We should be.

But it starts with us. It starts with us. For me, it starts with me. It starts with me making better choices for myself, better decisions. Whether you call them broke bitch decisions or millionaire decisions or sensible decisions or whatever you want to call them. They are proactive decisions that see you getting to rest and joy and happiness.

Quicker than if you had just continued to live with the inconveniences and the broke down mattresses of life. You don't have to live that way. You don't have to. Sure, these things take money. They absolutely do. If you have the money or you can find the resources to pay for this, do it. If there is something that you have needed to do, needed to do.

That would make your life even slightly better. Do it.

Don't wait. Put thought into it absolutely. But don't take years of thought. It does it shouldn't take years of thought. Like, why did I take years of thinking to do this? Do it. Don't be afraid to do it. Don't be scared. Don't belittle yourself. Don't think of yourself as making poor decisions. I can't do this because I don't know what I'm doing.

Talk to people if you need to. Find somebody who's an expert who you can talk to about it. Like I've talked to people who own guns and they've given me advice on what to get and how to train and places I need to go. Now all I need to do is is do it.

That's it. We're on our way.

And this has been Ayana Explains It All, brought to you by facts, figures, and enlightenment. Take care.