What happens when the reason you think you should wait becomes the exact reason you decide you can’t?

In this episode, Abby sits down with Meg Dieter, founder of Whimsi Beans, to talk about the winding path from corporate marketing to motherhood to building a product that didn’t exist yet.

After her daughter Chloe received an autism diagnosis, Meg began learning about adaptive tools and sensory needs—and saw firsthand what the right tools could unlock. Eventually, an everyday struggle around feeding her young daughters sparked a simple question: Why couldn’t vitamins come in sprinkle form?

That question became Whimsi Beans.

Meg shares what happened next: finding manufacturers, seeking funding, pitching an idea people had never seen before, hearing plenty of no’s, navigating production challenges, and building a company while raising four daughters.

But this conversation is about more than entrepreneurship. It’s about what happens when life doesn’t follow the plan, why you don’t have to wait for the “right” time to begin, and how remembering your why can help you keep moving when you have no idea what comes next.

Sometimes your why is also the answer to: Why now?

To preorder, visit their website https://whimsibeans.com/

Season 2 starts with a question: What if the thing making you uncomfortable isn’t a warning sign—but information?

In this episode, Abby explores the necessity of challenge: the people willing to tell us what we don’t want to hear, the ideas that get stronger when someone pushes back, and the unexpected circumstances that force us to see our lives differently.

From the difference between boundaries and walls to the danger of mistaking comfort for safety, Abby challenges the idea that protecting our peace should mean protecting ourselves from discomfort. She also looks at the challenges we never choose—the diagnosis, the loss, the plan that suddenly changes—and why finding meaning in what happens isn’t the same as believing it happened for a reason.

Sometimes challenge tells us to keep going. Sometimes it tells us to change direction. Sometimes it exposes what we’ve been avoiding. And sometimes it shows us just how badly we want something.

The goal isn’t to seek out hardship. It’s to stop assuming that discomfort automatically means something is wrong.

So, what is the friction in your life trying to tell you?

We all have a version of “Starting Monday.”

Starting Monday, I’ll get serious. Starting Monday, I’ll make the change. Starting Monday, I’ll finally do the thing I keep saying I want to do.

But what if “Starting Monday” isn’t always a plan? What if sometimes it’s the story we tell ourselves because the truth underneath it is harder to admit?

In the Season One finale of ICMM: Living Life Unpaused, Abby explores what it really means to be honest with yourself — about what you want, what you’re afraid of, what you’re willing to change, and the choices you may have convinced yourself you don’t have.

From a high school performance of a play called Starting Monday that took nearly 30 years to fully understand, to losing a career that had become part of her identity, Abby looks at the stories we tell ourselves to stay comfortable, why fear can sound remarkably like truth, and why sometimes you need to diagnose before you demolish.

Because you can read the books, listen to the podcasts, ask for advice, and gather all the information in the world — but nobody else can decide what you do next.

Before you build the plan, make the change, or promise yourself you’ll start Monday, there’s one thing you have to do first:

Tell yourself the truth.