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.

Different In All The Ways

I go to church on Sundays now. I go because I feel God there and I promise I mean it when I tell you that it’s the last place I thought I’d find God. I’ve looked there before and came back pretty empty. I’m not sure what’s different now except that I’m sure I am. I’m all the way different.

Last Sunday, I was sitting at the same spot on the same pew I’ve been sitting the dozen or so times I’ve been there. There was a young Daddy sitting at the front by the aisle, next to his little boy. The boy was probably around five but very small, glasses, toe-headed. He had this little ball in his left hand, it seemed to be a light ball like maybe a wiffle ball, and when he wasn’t rocking back and forth in his seat, he was ever so slightly bouncing that ball in the cup of his hand. The ball seemed to just hover there. And because a ball can’t defy gravity for too long, every few minutes, it would miss its landing and roll out into the aisle. In the length of the Sunday sermon, that ball rolled out into aisle no less than twenty times. Every single time it did, I watched the Dad get up, gently pass through the small space between his boy’s little legs and the back of the next pew, pick up that ball and place it back in his son’s hand. No impatient body language, no visible release of air from his lungs that would indicate a sigh, no head hanging in defeat, he just retrieved that ball, all twenty times. This scene destroyed me.

I flashed back to the years my son was that age, as he exhibited much the same behaviors as that little boy, and how slim my patience was with him. I thought of how many times he’d drop a ball but it would always end with him screaming in frustration because he was most likely reflecting my frustration. I know we’ve all done the best we could with what we knew, but as I sat there unable to stop the tears, I wished I could go back. I wanted a do-over.

So I’m back in church to remember that I’m already forgiven. I am given grace, even when I didn’t ask for it, even when I don’t expect to receive it, especially when I don’t think I deserve it. I’ve heard the term ‘unconditional love’ so many times but how many times have I stopped to think what that really means: love with no conditions, no strings, not a transactional exchange but like a one-way street, like water bursting from a hose. I am hosed down with so much grace that I get to love on my boy today. I get to gently guide him, help him retrieve the balls he continues to drop and despite my frustrations that still surface because I am far from perfect, grace has given me another chance.

Like I said, I’m all the way different now.

Model the Solution

Moms that are also alcoholics carry around an extra piece of baggage in the overhead compartment. We are bombarded with media, social and alike, telling us that we need booze to cope. The memes, the Facebook groups, the Mommy and wine playdates, the wines directly marketed to Moms all validate any reason to drink. And then if you have a night off from the kids? No problem. Book clubs with wine, painting with twists (spoiler: twist = wine), movie dates with bars are all encouraged because obviously Moms need to drink. And there is no inherent problem with any of these things, unless of course, you're an alcoholic.

So here's the rub. What happens to the Mom that wakes up one day with a nasty little addiction? What happens to the Mom that has crossed lines, any line, that society and your integrity determined should never be crossed? I know that my decision making skills became poor to downright terrible after the first glass, even when my kids were present. There is no shame, either internal or societal, that is comparable to the shame showered on an alcoholic Mother who has crossed the line. None. So what do we do? Enjoy all the wine, Mommies, but not too much. It's very confusing and no wonder I see so many Moms everyday that have no idea how they got to where they are or how to back out.

The good news is, there is a solution. But in spite of all of the recovery, including putting down the drink, that shame can still linger. The best thing I ever heard around the topic of all the shame and regret that we Moms feel over what damage we may have done to our children, what precious time has been lost, was this: model the solution. Show our kids how to cope with stress, how to relax, how to wind down, how to decompress, how to show up without booze. We can show them how we are okay, just the way we are, without having to change our physical, mental and emotional states with booze. We're good and we're enough. I don't know about you, but it never occurred to me that I was modeling the opposite of that to my kids. And even though I really want to make up for lost time, I believe it happened the way it was supposed to and now I just keep moving into the right way everyday.

So this is what we now do with downtime.

Besides, how cute is a boy that sews?