Healing Financial Wounds
Posted by John | Filed under Uncategorized
This year has been particularly difficult in life for me, but I know that I just need to read a post, or success story here, or watch an episode or two to remind myself that I have control over some aspects of life and I can make it to debt free.
I began the year with $25,000 of debt. I’m currently sitting at just about $13,700 of debt, and I’ve got three months left in this year.
I wanted to let you know, as someone I consider a mentor, that my Big Why for wanting to be debt free is because I want to heal the wounds and scars of past financial indiscretions on myself and change the behaviour that got me into debt in the first place.
I want to heal financially. This is the unconscious, semi-conscious or definitely conscious process of forgiving oneself of transgressions against oneself using finances. In order to right the wrong, I must heal the hurt. Through forgiveness, through reality, through someone being harsh and blunt with me, I need to heal what I broke. Some use jars. Some use budgets. I have recognized something that needs to be healed with my finances and I want to set about healing it. I want to take the time and give the energy to heal.
When I’m ill, I take time away from work or school to give my body the rest it needs to concentrate on making me better. I feel awful. I vomit, or worse. I can feel that something is wrong. I have to shift out of auto pilot to get better and become aware of what I feel like and when I feel better.
If I get a cut I wash the wound, and apply ointment to help promote healing, cover it with a band-aid or larger bandage and let it heal for a few days. But I have a habit of picking the scab to check for healing, breaking the wound open and prolonging the process. The reason I do this is because I am impatient at allowing the time to heal. Secondarily, I pick because I am afraid to be healed. Lots of times it’s a combination of these two things that cause the behaviour of picking scabs. Picking a scab reopens a wound, prolongs the healing process and almost guarantees I’ll carry a scar from the event that caused the cut in the first place. A scar becomes a battle wound of life, giving me pause to explain my “hard fight” with something, or re-tell a story about how I came by the wound that caused it in the first place. It gives me a chance to relive something I’m not ready to let go of yet.
I came to a place during a visit to my team of healing professionals (I have a chiropractor, physiotherapist, kinesiologist, occupational therapist, acupuncturist, massage therapist, general physician, life coach and I’m adding a psychologist to the mix), that I have been harming myself financially, the way I am harmed by grief and by car accident. The difference is, I’ve done one myself, the others are the results of actions I’ve been involved in. Debt feels like self-depreciating speak to me.
It feels like I don’t value myself enough to properly manage my money. It feels like retail-therapy gone wrong. It feels like I continued to go back to that boyfriend that told me I was ugly and useless and made me feel so horrible about myself. It feels like I’m back in high school trying to figure out who I am, and in the meantime trying to be what everyone wanted me to be instead of what I wanted to be.
While I want to be financially free, debt free, I want to be able to heal myself too. I want to heal the parts of me that feel broken enough to let myself off the hook with my goals and tell myself its ok to not reach them.
So, I want to tell you, my mentor, that I’m striving for debt free so I can heal a part of me that has been wounded for a while. My original goal was to be debt free this year. I won’t quite make it – life handed me a marriage, a surgery, an 80th birthday, the return of cancer and sudden loss of my grandfather and father figure, my engagement, and a car accident in the last 8 months. September, I began picking up all the pieces of the broken parts of me, gained a huge team of doctors and professionals to help me heal my body and mind, and start his You vs Debt program to help me heal my finances.
Thank you for being the person you are, and providing so many of us with the tools we need to heal our finances. Your ability to mentor even when you don’t realize you are has been comforting, purposeful, and helping provide some healing for me.
I just wanted you to know why I was striving for financial freedom from debt. I just wanted you to know that while I may not reach my original goal this year, I’m making a darn good effort to get this thing down to 4 digits, so I can polish it off for my birthday in April 2012. I wrote a success post a while ago that was more about a work in progress. I am so excited to be able to write one that says I’ve healed my financial wounds with the help and guidance of Gail, my family, peers and fiance and know that I’ve done the hard work to maintain the life change after I’ve healed my financial wounds.
January 30, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Very sorry to hear about all the hardships you have experienced in such a short period of time. Also, good for you for seeking the professional help that you needed.
Even a really good EF would take a beating from – surgery, dealing with a death, cancer, and a car accident.
Your post shows us the mega-importance of building up a good EF because if the ONLY kind of emergency a person had to face was a missed paycheque they would have to consider themselves VERY lucky.
I think it’s good to have several short-term goals that contribute to the accomplishment of a long-term goal. There are so many variables in life that can knock you off track. Plus, it feels good to accomplish those little goals.
To use your example of an 80th Birthday party. This expense would be in people’s budget for “gifts and clothing”. If a person went overboard (i.e. over budget) they would have needed to do some damage control. Cut back in other areas, cheapen other people’s gifts that year, or make some more money. Gail gives great advice!
Best of luck in polishing off your debt by the time your birthday comes around in April!
February 2, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Thank you for your very heartfelt story, you are an inspiration to all of us who follow Gail.
Good luck in 2012!