Money Story
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Our basement is a problem. I have worked hard over the years on being able to let go. This includes the letting go of stuff, it's my genetic baggage. I now am able to part with clutter, but there is some major work to be done clearing out the years when saying good-bye to anything couldn't happen. Eli went down to get something the other day and came up with a workbook about money, a rather spiritual book. It was old, dusty and used. It was written in, with notes and scribbles and breakthroughs of someone else's life. I think it may have belonged to someone Patrick and I used to rent a room from.
As I opened it and started reading the responses that were written on the pages to tough questions, about plans and dreams and energetic pay out, I realized that this story was so like my own. When Patrick and I lost our first pregnancy at 16 weeks we had no insurance. We had been planning a home birth and had no jobs. We became pregnant after moving from Seattle to the East Coast and had saved up money to rent an apartment for a few months while we found work. My miscarriage was discovered to have happened at 12 weeks and for 4 weeks nothing was happening. The risk of waiting longer seemed a bit scary from what we were hearing, mostly it seemed my body did not want to say good-bye to this baby. We decided to have a D&C. We were immediately $15,000 in debt after that one decision.
Not working for 7 years while staying home with the kids did not help our money situation. We often used credit to pay for groceries. Those years of struggle in our hearts, our marriage and our finances looked like depressing debt for me. I saw our debt as a link to our loss and sadness, as an extension of bad decisions and luck. Patrick and I both would become more and more depressed as each month the bills seemed to suffocate us. This is not our story alone. This is the story of so many. It is a scary story to speak out loud.
Patrick and I did not make the connection of our loss, our debt and our disconnect with each other for years. It took moving further and further apart for us to finally start to see the energetic connection. Our debt was not our tragedy, how we were moving through the world was the problem. We started to do small things to shift our energy around money. Language is important, no longer saying we were broke made an enormous shift. Believing that abundance comes in so many forms, not just monetary creates more abundance. Each time we paid a bill we would write thank you on it.
I started to do work that I loved and slowly the money started to become an energetic exchange.
I write this now after looking through that dusty notebook knowing that so many people are in a money story that is painful. It was not long ago that Patrick and I would sit and feel enormous pain. The pain echoed in our lives, our relationships. We are writing a new story. One of hope, of consciousness that we believe we have enough. We posses enough of all we need each day. Enough love, enough power, enough beauty, enough hope, enough gratitude, enough abundance.
This past year has been an explosion for me of learning and growth. I became a mother before I ever really felt I was a women. Now as I step into this gorgeous role as woman I often feel the sadness of the past years. We think of the first baby we lost. We think about the scary times we've had in our marriage. We think of the debt as we work to pay it off each month, while still living with abundance as our soft echo.
Had we paid off the debt and never allowed ourselves to make the connection of our losses and struggles as part of our money story, we would have simply repeated the process. Choosing to live fully and with joy while carrying debt is the key to our new money story. The one that believes we have worth and power and choice.
The beauty inside of the debt for us is that we woke up inside of it and started dreaming and living in the energetic exchange of purpose, joy and money.
If you are in an old money story, I'd love for you to look deeper and see where the drain is coming from. Identify the hurt or the loss. It is never fun to stare down fear, but when the gift is moving into abundance, it may be worth the look.