Yesterday, August 15, marked the first time in a long while that I woke with a light heart and a quiet mind. For once, there was no heaviness in my chest, no dread that a simple misstep at work might unravel the day.

I resigned last Thursday. The decision didn’t come easily—it was, after all, the work that kept food on the table, the car mortgage paid, and my children’s tuition secured. Yet the choice felt inevitable.

The road ahead will no doubt test us. Bills and responsibilities don’t simply pause, and reality has a way of knocking at the door uninvited. But my husband and I have always been a team, and I trust that together we’ll find our way through.

It isn’t that I disliked the work. In fact, there was a time when I relished each morning, eager to take on the tasks before me. But gradually, enthusiasm gave way to anxiety. Even the smallest tasks began to feel loaded with pressure, as though a tiny slip could tip everything over.

I understand the demand for precision in business—mistakes must teach us so they are not repeated. But life, and work, rarely fit into neat boxes. There are nuances in every action. If a minor error can be resolved quickly, must it provoke such outsized reactions?

What I rarely felt was motivation born from encouragement. A simple pat on the back, a word of acknowledgment for the things I did right, might have made a difference. But it often felt like whatever I accomplished in an entire day didn’t matter at all. Instead, only the mistakes were magnified, as if the good quietly vanished in their shadow. Over time, that absence of recognition left me running on empty.

At Starbucks, I learned the value of empowerment. Even baristas were trusted to make judgment calls and correct mistakes—even costly ones—because errors were understood as part of growth. True learning, after all, is born not from perfection but from the willingness to try, fail, and try again.

We are human, not machines. Ironically, I really thought I was doing well—quietly proud of the small decisions I made independently, without leaning on others. How wrong I was to believe that effort alone would be enough.

Still, stepping away feels like a gift I have given myself. For months, I had lived with near-constant migraines. But yesterday, my head was clear. I enjoyed my lessons with students, even teaching twice the usual number, and ended the day smiling.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: anything that steadily erodes your mental and emotional health is too costly, no matter how stable it looks on paper. There comes a point when you must choose yourself.

Better things lie ahead—I believe that. As my sister reminded me, when one door closes, another will surely open.