I'd like to tell you about a magical place 💫

It's a secret place...

And while I can't give you all of the otherworldly details this space holds, I must describe this place because, and this may sound hyperbolic, I think it holds some of community's solutions as we warily walk towards 2021.

When Tammi and I opened The Unruffled Podcast secret Facebook group in 2017, I expected it to be a space of empty seats, held spots for other women who had been beaten down by alcohol, much like a recovery meeting. But what would set our space apart would be the allowance for another kind of conversation, one informed by the re-coupling of women to their creative kindling, something they may have feared they'd lost forever. And it has been this kind of space: there is shared empathy and compassion, supportive feedback and story after story of "here's how I did it".

What I did not expect was the microeconomy that has taken root and flourished in this safe, connected space. We buy each other's stuff! We buy each other's programs, coaching, and energy services. We buy each other's art and handmade goods, like pottery and jewelry and blended oils. We read each other's published words, from blogs to books. When I help women develop their creative offerings through my program, Change Your Story, I encourage them to share their offering in the group when they're ready and they will have 900 of their ideal customers waiting. 

It only works because there are parameters, which I'll explain later, but I'd like to tell you why I think this byproduct microeconomy has been so vital:

1. It builds some self-esteem in women who lost so much of it during their drinking years because they now feel seen and supported.

2. It bolsters and validates their creative ideas.

3. They help each other build wealth and by allowing others to extend generosity, a reciprocal energy is created.

These women market their businesses outside of our group too, and I won't mention anyone because of anonymity but I bet they would all credit the Unruffleds as a big percentage of their customer base (I know I do).

In a moment in time when social media can sometimes feel like stepping into Times Square, advertisements flashing and beeping at you and if they aren't outright assaulting your senses, it's a more clever marketing strategy, like a smiling face or sincere words that leave you feeling less violated but still creeped out, this is just more real. Even though it exists in a virtual space, it seems more tangible. Monetary promotion is only allowed on Fridays, so it's the expected day for everyone to show up and say, This is me and This is what I have for sale. There are no hidden agendas, no ways to slide it under the radar any other time. It's straight-forward with integrity and the fact that I'm describing it as refreshing means that it feels like a breath of rarified air right now. I know the pandemic has meant that creative entrepreneurs have had to get more aggressive in their marketing, exhaust every angle, I get it. That I even link back to my website at all in this newsletter means I am complicit. But it's also why I love the integrity of #CreativeShareFridays and the microeconomy that Tammi and I accidentally launched there.

This secret Facebook group is so many things, but what it has also been is a place for women to proudly promote their thing while everyone else gets to hold up a high-five at the least, and monetarily support at best. Maybe these small communities of exchange are going to solve some problems going forward, perhaps, I'm no economist. But I do know that I'm going to champion our space and all of the women that get to engage in its magic.

If you are female-identifying and are on Facebook, you are welcome to join our supportive space. You don't have to have something to sell and if you do, it only happens on Fridays. Just find myself or Tammi on FB and send us a message that you'd like to join.

A Money💲tory: Part Four

This is the final chapter of a four-part newsletter series I'm sharing on money...
 

But the story I'm living is still being written.

I said in Part One that sobriety didn't fix my money problems, but it made them hard to ignore. (If you missed the first three installments, I've reposted them to my blog.) Abundance mantras and magical manifesting also don't fix money problems. Make no mistake, I love meditation and tarot cards and positive affirmations and they might put me in the right mindset, but real change only comes from intention and inspired action. No, sobriety didn't fix my money problems but because I had quit using alcohol, something I didn't think I could ever do until I did it, I knew I could approach financial recovery the same way.

Here is how I modeled my financial recovery after my recovery from alcohol addiction:

• I began the work of looking at my patterns through personal investigation. Through writing my origin stories and spending stories, I researched my own past. When I got sober, I did the same work of looking at my history of alcohol use to help me understand the patterns and unfortunate choices that I'd perpetuated for decades.

• From the pattern work, I started to understand my motivations. The Enneagram has been an essential tool in this step. As a Type 7, one of my basic motivations is to have my needs fulfilled. With this knowledge, I've cultivated compassion for myself as I could see how I'd fumbled over and over towards that desire, using the inadequate tools I had at the time. And just like in addiction recovery, healthier tools lead to healthier financial sobriety.

• The practice of extending compassion to myself has grown into loving myself, and my recovery from alcohol has been the same. I forgive myself for the mistakes I made using the tools I had at that time and because I value myself, I desire to do better, to clean up the destruction and be the healthiest version of myself I can be.

• I practice gratitude for how far I've come: I no longer use the pawn shop, I have a bank account and money in savings, I charge what I'm worth, I'm paying off my debts, I've paid off my student loan, I can be relied on for groceries and gas and I no longer take money from my kids. I no longer use alcohol to cut myself off from my reality and I no longer use spending to cut myself off from my financial reality.

• And finally, I practice generosity, either through service or philanthropy. I know that generosity is really reciprocity, because that's how energy works. Abundance is really satiation. It doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement, but it's the feeling of being satisfied by enough.

In both recoveries, it is daily and often uncomfortable work. I have to stay diligent and intentional and while I've not had a sip of alcohol in 6.5 years, I can still occasionally numb out with spending, feel disembodied or powerless over my finances. And when I do, I just re-enter. Like with alcohol use, it was decades of destruction, so it's going to take some time to rebuild my foundation. I'm going to love myself through it.

In 2018, I had a natal chart reading from Natha Campanella, a friend, astrologer and life coach. She mentioned several times that she could see patterns in my chart that could be about helping women build wealth. Every time she said it, I'd almost laugh out loud. But the truth is, while I'm not an expert in financial recovery, I know how to disrupt patterns. I feel like I was subversive straight out of the womb, but if I was a rule-follower, I would have only continued the generations of patterns that had been established for me. As it is, I'm the first in my family to take care of my physical health through exercise and nutrition--heart disease and type 2 diabetes run rampant in my family. I'm the first to address addiction and mental health through real work and support. I'm the first to have a more fluid and less dogmatic spirituality and I'm the first to have a bachelor's degree. What if YOU are the one THEY have been waiting for?

I know how to change stories. If you have a story that should have ended long ago and yet you are stuck on how to end it and begin a new one, I know something about that. If you're tired of doing the same thing and expecting to get different results, I can help you with that. Invest in yourself now, and we can start when you're ready. Offer is good only until the end of the month. Just enter STORY2020 for 25% off at checkout.  And thank you for sticking with me through this series. Thank you for holding my vulnerability tenderly and if you caught a glimpse of your own reflection in my story, I hope that it bolsters some possibility to change your own money story. 

A Money💲tory: Part Three

This is a four-part newsletter series I'm releasing about money...

If you missed Part One and Two, you can read them here.

I ended the last part about the darkness before the dawn and I just want to interject that while this feels very vulnerable for me, it's not just an exercise in bleeding on the page. If you have struggled with your own financial recovery, I hope my transparency helps you and provides you with some hope for your own financial recovery.

I got married in my late twenties and I was the bill-payer in that relationship. We lived paycheck to paycheck but I did a decent job at managing our finances. We even paid for a cesarean birth of my son out of pocket and put a down payment on a house. But when our marriage fell apart seven years later, I had no savings, a two-year old and a drinking problem, so barely-getting-by was not a  structure that was going to support me. 

Those first few years after our separation were hard and because it felt unmanageable, I disassociated more and more from the severity of my debt. When I finally sold the house, I took my half of the equity and just repeated the pattern I'd mentioned in Part Two: depravity was always followed by spending as a reward. I bought myself a digital camera and enrolled myself back in school to learn digital editing and while that may seem like a smart investment, I never paid down my school loan and other bills I'd abandoned after the divorce. Oh, and I was drinking more than ever. 

I won't make you suffer through every detail of this slow and excruciating death of my finances, but I will tell you what it looked like when I finally quit drinking in 2014: I lost that camera to a pawn shop as well as many family heirlooms, I lost my bank account after losing thousands of dollars in overdraft fees, I borrowed money from people that I couldn't pay back, I stopped paying my student loan and credit card bills, I took money from my children to buy alcohol. I'm sure I left some things out but I think you get the picture.

If anyone can turn this turd sandwich into something positive, it's me. And it may only seem like I'm bypassing that horror show by moving onto the gifts, but know that I came back from that, one painful, hard day at a time. It took every second of five years. I'll never forget the day I walked out of the credit union with my new bank account. It took me most of the day to convince myself that the bank didn't make a mistake. And the positive byproduct of this experience is that it really transformed my spending habits. I had no money to spend and because I was sober and working on my overall health, I really got to examine my patterns, as I spoke about earlier.

In Part Four, the last chapter of this Money Story, I'm going to tell you how I did that and how I modeled my financial recovery after my recovery from alcohol. I'm going to end by telling you about my big dreams for the future, because it wouldn't be a letter from me if I didn't talk about the future.  

And I can't talk about the future without mentioning the 25% discount I'm offering to newsletter subscribers to work with me one-on-one through Change Your Story. If you're tired of doing the same thing and expecting to get different results, I can help you with that. Invest in yourself now, and we can start when you're ready. Offer is good only until the end of the month. Just enter STORY2020 for 25% off at checkout. See you there.

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.

Do You Tarot?

Do you tarot? I'm a just beginner and that could be obvious as I may have errantly used that word as a verb. I'd wanted a deck for a long time but I couldn't find one that I vibed with until a friend showed me her deck from The Wild Unknown. Lordy, it is so beautiful, you just have to hold it to see what I'm talking about. So over the last five months that I've had it, I pull a card a day in my attempt to get to know the deck. It's become part of my morning routine, where I get in a quiet place, say a prayer and meditate on something. Usually that is on my gratitudes for the day, sometimes though, it is about my concerns for the day and then I usually ask the question, "What do I need to know about today?". It's like a non-affiliated Daily Reflections for your inner realm.

This week I pulled the SAME card two mornings in a row. So strange, right? After you get over that part, my next thought is, "Okay, I'm listening!" The card was the Four of Cups. It's a yucky card about greed and discontentment.

I've had money on the brain the last few weeks. I don't like to be here, I really don't. But Summer is almost here and so will be two years of sobriety for me. With that comes the questions, "Am I where I am supposed to be or should I be farther along...in life, in business, in success, in money?" 

The card goes on to warn against taking things for granted and my knee-jerk reaction would be, "Wait a minute! I practice gratitude and mindfulness daily. I don't take anything for granted!" But the truth is, it is SO EASY for me to forget how shitty things were just a few short years ago. Am I swimming in abundance? My instinct would be to say, NO, because I'm not out of debt and I don't have a surplus in my bank account. But just a relatively short trip down memory lane shows me just how far I've come. I'm not selling my things at pawn shops, for instance. I'm not stealing my kids' money. I'm trusted with the credit card again. I'm not borrowing from friends knowing I'll never pay them back. I'm not taking money for services or goods and not delivering. I'm not making promises I can't keep. That's how far I've come. To not acknowledge that as abundance is doing myself a giant disservice. The cards reminded me.

The reading ends by asking, "What are you truly longing for? Name it." I didn't have to think about that for too long. Integrity. 

in.teg.ri.ty - 1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness 2. the state of being whole and undivided

Funny, it doesn't mention money.

So yes, I want all of my integrity back and that is happening, slowly and surely. But it is only surely if I stay sober. It is surely if I stay sober and keep walking forward, one foot in front of the other. And when I stop and look back and see just how far I have come, I can see that integrity builds this way. Am I swimming in abundance? I'd say yes, yes I am.

Here is a peek at my morning set up.

And by the way, did you know that amethyst is a sobriety stone? Get out, right? It guards against drunkeness and instills a sober mind. I shuffle with my non-dominant hand, divide in three's, restack and pull the top card. Invariably, the card I pull reflects some thoughts I've had in my mediation. It's pretty magical, if you like magic and all.

Do you tarot?