The Voices in My Head Had a Lot to Say
There’s a version of me that spent months sitting in something that wasn’t working, telling herself it would get better.
Not because I couldn’t see what was happening. I could.
I had a solid contract. Good company. Decent pay. All the things that look fine on paper.
But the work wasn’t aligned to who I am. It didn’t connect to my values around growth, contribution, or doing something I could feel proud of. Instead of energizing me, it drained me — quietly, steadily, and then all at once.
I knew what I needed to do.
And yet I stayed. For months longer than I should have.
Not because I was lazy. Not because I didn’t have options. But because I was running the same mental playlist on repeat:
It will change.
Stay for the people.
Tomorrow will be different.
You have it easy. Don’t rock the boat.
I wasn’t reflecting. I was ruminating.
And there’s a difference — one I wish someone had handed me a long time ago.
Reflection vs. Rumination: Here's the Line
Reflection is productive. It’s how we learn from experience, assess situations, and make better decisions. It moves forward.
Rumination looks like reflection but it isn’t. It’s the mental loop that keeps circling back to the same scenarios without ever landing anywhere new. It feels like thinking, but it’s actually a very convincing form of staying stuck.
For me, rumination showed up in the body before I named it in the mind.
I stopped sleeping well. I woke up with a low, familiar dread before I even checked my phone. Tasks that used to feel simple required enormous effort. Creativity? Gone. And worst of all — I was present in body but absent in spirit to my daughter. That one stings to admit.
The energy the role was taking from me was the exact energy I needed to find my way out of it.
That’s the cruelest part of the rumination trap: it depletes the very resource you need to act.
I had started talking to people about it. I even reached out for professional support. But insight without a decision is just more data to ruminate on.
The loop kept spinning:
The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
What I've Seen in Other Women
I am not alone in this, and neither are you.
In my coaching work, I see this pattern constantly — women staying in roles, relationships, teams, or situations well past the point where they’ve already, somewhere deep down, made the decision to leave.
The staying isn’t weakness. It’s often the opposite. It’s conscientiousness. Loyalty. Risk awareness. Responsibility.
But there’s a point where those virtues tip into self-abandonment. Where “being responsible” becomes a reason to ignore what we know. Where the mental scales — pros on one side, cons on the other — get heavier and heavier without ever tipping because we keep adding to both sides instead of acting on what we already know.
I’ve seen women ruminate their way through a bad manager, a toxic team dynamic, a business partnership that ran its course, and a friendship that had long since expired.
The content changes.
The loop is always the same.
The question I always come back to, in coaching and in my own life, is this one:
Am I still learning something new from this thinking — or am I just replaying what I already know?
If you’re still gaining new information, new perspective, new clarity — that’s reflection. Keep going.
If you’re back at the same thought you had three weeks ago, just wearing different clothes — that’s rumination.
And it’s time to move toward a decision, even an imperfect one.
The Anvil Lifts
My turning point wasn’t a dramatic moment of sudden courage.
It was a practical window.
The project I was on reached a natural transition point — a new phase where my exit would be clean, gracious, and wouldn’t leave anyone in a difficult position. I could leave on good terms, be honest that the role wasn’t the right fit (not the company — the role), and walk away with my integrity and the relationship intact.
The moment I made the decision, I thought of Wile E. Coyote.
You know the one — the anvil that’s been suspended overhead the entire cartoon, finally gone.
That’s exactly what it felt like.
Literal physical lightness.
What I know now, looking back, is that I had been in this situation before — and handled it much better. In a previous role, I had a clear reporting relationship and a boss I trusted. When the misalignment started, I told him early. We talked. He saw that I wasn’t being challenged in the right ways, and together we figured out how to shift my work. Problem surfaced, problem solved.
The difference wasn’t the situation.
It was the structure — having a clear person to go to.
But here’s the harder truth: if I had recognized the rumination sooner, I would have been more motivated to find a path forward regardless of the org chart. The clarity would have come faster. The drain would have lasted less time.
The anvil didn’t have to be up there as long as it was.
Your One Question
If you’re in something that isn’t working right now — a role, a team, a relationship, a decision you’ve been circling for weeks — try this:
Write down the three thoughts you keep coming back to.
Then ask yourself:
When did I first have these thoughts?
If the answer is “recently” — you’re probably still in reflection. Give it time.
If the answer is “months ago” — you’re ruminating.
And the next step isn’t more thinking.
It’s identifying one small action you can take this week to move toward a decision.
Not the whole plan.
Just one step.
Because rumination doesn’t end when you have all the answers. It ends when you decide that the discomfort of the unknown is preferable to the weight of the anvil.
And trust me — once it lifts, you’ll wonder why you carried it so long.
I found How Women Rise early in my coaching career and recognized myself on too many pages. I’ve pressed it into the hands of more women than I can count since then. Now, with some real miles behind me, I’m revisiting a few of those habits — this time with receipts.