My sleep crisis, a money reckoning, and two free workshops

⏱️ Reading time: 5 minutes

Welcome to Fearless — my weekly-ish newsletter where I share leadership insights and honest advice for women of color in social impact navigating power, career, and change.

What's inside today's newsletter:

1. The argument that awakened something 💤
2. What I'm unlearning about health and wealth 💰
3. Two free workshops this month 🌱
4. Win a free coaching session and support trans justice 🏳️‍⚧️

I set five priorities for myself at the start of this year.

Five. Written down. Committed to. The whole thing.

And then I spent the first half of the year in a quiet, low-grade war between the first two.

Priority 1: Health. Physical, mental, spiritual. Movement, diet, rest, nervous system regulation, social connection. The full picture.

Priority 2: Wealth. Building a sustainable business. Finally getting serious about money — my relationship to it, my beliefs about it, building toward it, my ability to receive it.

Here's the thing about the stories we carry: we don't always know we're carrying them.

I didn't think I believed that rest was something you earn. I didn't think I believed I had to sacrifice my body to build something. I would have pushed back if you'd said I believed those things.

But my actions told a different story. The late nights I didn't question. The sleep I kept deprioritizing without quite deciding to. The way I kept adding to the health list — better food, more movement, all the right things — while quietly letting the most foundational thing slip...

We don't reveal our beliefs by what we say. We reveal them by what we keep doing.

💤 The argument that awakened something

A couple of months ago, my partner and I had a heated argument. About taking out the trash. Something so banal, so silly. The kind of thing that, in a regulated moment, I would have handled gracefully or let go entirely.

Instead I felt it in my entire body. Uff. So irritated. Hot. Tight. Disproportionately upset.

And then something shifted. I caught myself and thought: Maya, why are you so upset? What is honestly up with you?

I knew intellectually that this little thing did not matter. But my nervous system hadn't gotten the memo.

What was off? I was barely sleeping...no consistent bedtime. Frequent wakeups. Working late. Working early.

I was waking up exhausted every morning. I was running on fumes and calling it discipline.

That argument wasn't about the chores. It was a message from my body saying Maya, get your sh*t together.

As much as I'd been listening to all the other signals, I'd been ignoring the foundation...again.

So I made some changes.

I set a hard bedtime and waketime. I started monitoring my nighttime wakings on my smartwatch. I started sleeping in a darker, quieter room with no disruptions. I implemented the 3-2-1 rule: no food 3 hours before bed, no working 2 hours before, no screens 1 hour before. I also started pelvic floor therapy to address chronic pain and inflammation that had been quietly dysregulating my nervous system for much longer than I realized. (More on that another time.)

In just a couple of months the results have surprised me. I'm dropping weight and body fat again after a looong plateau. I'm more pleasant to be around — my partner has agreed :) And the thing I'm most grateful for: I'm more relaxed and can let the little things that bother me go. The low hum of overwhelm that I had normalized? Gone.

I still have work to do. My sleep is better but not great. Pelvic floor therapy runs another three weeks, and then I'll have exercises to continue at home for months. This isn't a before-and-after. It's a road I'm still on.

But a different story is in sight. And it's a happier one.

💰 What I'm unlearning about health and wealth

Here's what I now know: the tension between health and wealth was never real. It was a story. One I inherited. One I kept choosing — without knowing I was choosing it.

The belief that I had to deplete myself to build something. That rest was a reward, not a requirement. That taking care of my body was somehow separate from — maybe even in competition with — building my business.

It isn't. It never was. A dysregulated nervous system doesn't negotiate well. A sleep-deprived founder doesn't think clearly. A body in chronic pain is not a body that can lead effectively.

Health is the wealth strategy. They were never in tension. I just hadn't let them be in harmony yet.

And on the wealth side — the same pattern showed up, wearing different clothes.

Last year was the first time in 23 years that I became financially dependent on someone else. My partner supported us while I pivoted Fearless into a peer membership community and formally announced my coaching practice.

I didn't think I had a problem receiving. I would have told you I was grateful, open, lucky to have that support.

But my body knew differently. The discomfort that showed up when money came from someone who loved me instead of from my own hustle was a belief I hadn't met yet. It most definitely was not gratitude. It was not acceptance.

Because for most of my life, my most foundational money belief has been this: money is freedom. And buried inside that belief was a hidden assumption I had never examined — that I had to earn it alone for it to be liberatory, for it to really count. That receiving was somehow a different — lesser — thing than achieving.

I've been doing the work to dismantle that. Reading books. Learning from webinars and summits. Immersing myself in women of color talking openly, honestly, and powerfully about money — because that conversation is one of the first things that can unlock it. For me. And for the people I work with.

And something has shifted. Not just internally — behaviorally. I'm now happily asking for donations for Fearless. I'm embarking on a more formal fundraising journey this year. I'm putting myself out there in ways that would have made my old self deeply uncomfortable.

I want to be clear about what this is and what it isn't. This isn't manifest and it will come. That's not a money strategy. That's a wish.

This is: manifest, do the work, put yourself out there — and receive what comes. The belief and the action together. Neither one without the other. And crucially: not at the expense of yourself. The goal isn't to grind your way to abundance. It's to build toward it from a place of wholeness.

Here's what I keep coming back to: we call it selfish when women and non-binary people take care of ourselves. We call it selfish when we want more — more money, more rest, more. But what if selfish is just the word we use for things we aren't supposed to want?

Taking care of ourselves is not selfish. It is the work. It is the strategy. It is the point.

That's the harmony I'm after. Health and wealth. Belief and action. Receiving without shrinking. Giving without depleting.

Not in tension. In harmony. That's what I'm building toward — and what I want for you too.

Come do this work with me

If any of this landed — the sleep piece, the money piece, the stories we carry without knowing — I'd love to be in the room with you this summer. I have two free workshops coming up, and they go exactly here.

📅 Workshop 1: From Reactive to Strategic: Summer Leadership Reset​
​Tuesday, June 30 · Zoom · Free (Donations accepted)

Half the year is behind you. The second half is still yours to shape — but not by sprinting harder. We'll do a nervous system check-in, audit where you are right now, and you'll leave with a 30-day grounding plan: one boundary, one priority. This is the reset.

📅 Workshop 2: Money, Love, and Power: A Financial Reality Workshop​
​Wednesday, July 15 · Zoom · Free (Donations accepted)

This is the conversation they never give us. We go inward and outward — where your relationship with money came from, where you want it to go, and what it actually takes to change the numbers. Worth and rate are not the same thing. We'll name your money story, examine it, and leave with one concrete next move.

Both workshops are free and open to all. Workbook sent in advance. Recording available for 7 days. Share with a friend!

Sleep well. Receive well. See you next week.

Warmly,
Maya 🧡

P.S. 🌈 One more thing — my friend and fellow coach Julia Firestone has organized a coaching raffle in honor of Pride Month to raise funds for the Trans Justice Funding Project. A group of us are each offering a FREE 60-minute coaching session as a raffle prize. Donate $20+, get a raffle entry, and all proceeds go directly to trans-led organizations. If you win and don't need coaching — you can gift it. Deadline is June 30th.→ Read the overview · Donate · Submit tickets 🏳️‍⚧️

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