A Money 💲tory: Part One

This a four-part series I'm sharing on Money...

And in particular, my money story. The story will be part origin, part legacy, part intention and ALL RECOVERY. Because maybe like you, my relationship to money has been one of the interlocking pieces to be uncovered in my recovery work and it's because I'm sober that I'm able to address this piece. If you are new to sobriety, I have to tell you this and not to bring up fear and resistance but what I hope you'll see as an invitation: getting sober won't fix your money problems. But it will make them very hard to ignore. 

2020 has been so many things and the tragedies are apparent, I don't need to spell them out. Anything I've suffered is minor in comparison but I need to highlight a few of those to set the stage. When Tammi and I knew that our Italy retreat wasn't going to happen, I knew that many of (read: all) the jobs that required any in-person contact were going to be cancelled as well. I'm a photographer and while that job isn't responsible for all of my income, it counts for a good chunk. Forced to creatively pivot and focus on my other income streams also made me acutely aware of the recovery work that I still needed to do around money. I got angry. I've talked about it before but the anger I felt for my lack of agency, urgency and attention around building wealth was eye-opening for me. I consulted a healer. I revisited some work that I started when I first got sober, which had me revisiting my personal money story, the story I inherited and the story I perpetuated.

For brevity's sake, the short history is that growing up, money was scarce, spending was almost always done in secrecy and it was always accompanied with regret and shame. My first significant money memory is from when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I had participated in one of those school sponsored fundraising campaigns where you collected money for a cause like cancer research and if you met certain goals, you'd get prizes. You probably remember those. Well, I participated in the fundraiser, went door to door down my street, collected money at my church, but when it was time to turn in the money, I just never turned it in. It's not like I had any intentions to keep it, I didn't have any agenda, but for whatever reason, the date to turn it in came and went and I still had the donations. At first, I kept it out in my closet by my shoes. It was in a spot where I could see it but wasn't obvious to say parents or anyone else who would happen to be in my room. Every day, I'd open my closet and say to myself, I'm going to turn this in today. And then the fear of what I would say and the shame around why I still had it was too much that I couldn't do it. Eventually, I shoved it in the back of my closet so I wouldn't have the daily reminder of my failure. I'm not sure how much time passed but I remember that the day finally came that I needed some money for a candy bar and my allowance had come up short. I "borrowed" some of the cancer money with the intention to pay it back as soon as I could. I'm sure you can probably already guess how this part of the story ends, but eventually I spent every cent and destroyed the paperwork and any evidence that would reveal my deceit.

Like an actor in a Broadway play, I've reenacted this exact scene over and over and over throughout my life. I'll tell you about a few of those in the next coming weeks, but Part Two of this money story will focus on obsession and the drivers behind my spending style.

My hope is that in being transparent through this newsletter series about this particular piece of my recovery (that is also still very much in the process of being healed), you may see something you relate to, that you may be invited to also release some shame.  Until next time.