From Fear, From Grounded Knowing
decisions, decisions and money, money
Hi Friends! Please take a look at Sanctuary, which is happening on July 31st via Zoom. I’d love to have you there and I think it will be wonderful. Also, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to this newsletter and supporting my writing. (CW: this week’s newsletter discusses suicide).
Decisions used to be no problem. When I was younger I’d move, try things out, make drastic changes in my life without agonizing or worrying. I had so much time, you know? But as I near my forty-first year decisions have gotten more difficult. In less than twenty years I will be sixty. Does it sound absurd to put it that way, as if twenty years is a blip of time that will pass like a minute? I would have thought so at twenty. Now, not so much. I never thought I would so viscerally understand what a hair stylist once said to me: that time passes so quickly. I feel deeply connected to my younger self, and yet people no longer see my younger self when they look at me. I am a different person to them simply because I am older. How strange.
A month ago I impulsively (but also with consideration) decided not to renew my contract with the family I’ve been nannying for the past year. There were so many reasons for that decision: despite being vocal and asking for what I needed, I continued to feel unappreciated and taken advantage of. This is a theme in nannying, where burnout is common. Unless you work for a naturally considerate and thoughtful family, you’re going to get burned out. In the past year I’ve traveled to Montana and switched to a (much longer, involving a ferry) commute for the family I work for. Never mind that I am caring for twin boys under the age of five, cooking dinners, and managing their household. Nannying is one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done, and yet there’s a pay ceiling one hits no matter their qualifications, and I hit it. I was offered less than I wanted in contract negotiations and quickly typed out my resignation.
But really, there’s another reason. My writing has been beckoning me, begging me to honor its power and presence.
I imagined, what would it be like if I let myself step fully into being a writer? If I put all my eggs in that basket (deeply uncharacteristic of me), with a little yoga on the side? What if I jumped in, as I’d been longing to do my entire life?
But how will I pay for it?
Oh, money. Money has always been this anxiety surrounding me and weighing on me, ever since I had to field calls from credit collectors while my single mom waved her arms at me indicating her pretend absence. I was an expert at telling the voice on the other line that she wasn’t available, would they like me to take a message? I prided myself on sounding like an adult, but of course I wasn’t an adult, I was a child who learned at a very young age to lie. I learned that spending money resulted in hiding and lying. I learned to fear money.
When my mother married my stepdad he paid off all her debts. When she divorced him fourteen years later, when I was in my late twenties, it took her only two years to spend her 500k settlement, and less than a full year to accrue more credit card debt than she’d had when she married him. Then she killed herself. In her suicide note she wrote “I’ve run out of money.”
Money was everything to my mom. Without it, she didn’t want to be alive.
In many ways I have groomed myself to be my mom’s opposite. Painfully honest and forthcoming, ruthlessly vulnerable, and anti-capitalist. Whereas my mom saw a Coach wallet as elevating her status, I saw the same object as a shameful display of greed. After she died I inherited her Lexus and I practically cringed driving it around. Who buys nice cars? Why would someone spend more on a car when they could just get the cheaper version which was, well, just as nice? I see Porsches and Teslas and imagined that their driver could have paid for a year of someone’s college.
I have shame around money, to say the least.
So as I jump off this cliff I am reexamining money (this course has helped a lot) and my relationship to it. Can I ask for the money I need? Can I stop spending money like I want to get rid of it because it makes me feel ashamed to have any significant amount of it? Can I begin to reshape my perception around the accrual of money and start considering mutual aid as part of my goals so I can redistribute rather than accrue?
Can I be a writer, with less money than a nanny, but also with the goal of having enough? Can I see myself as worthy of having enough money? Can I value my voice and what I have to offer the world?
These past couple weeks have been searching. I sift around inside myself and ask: what do I want? I am grateful to be in the position where I can seek the answer to that question. Do I stay in Seattle and continue paying high rent? Seattle is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, and there’s not too much keeping me here. My lease is up in a month. I have the option to sign on for another year or move into a different apartment, but I also have the option to house-sit, which is lucrative but less stable. House-sitting is much, much cheaper, though. It’s also isolating.
I will reach conclusions and I will make my way, all the while examining my patterns and choosing from a grounded place. What I know is this: I can’t let fear dictate my decisions. My past experiences are my past experiences. My present is separate from those experiences except for the baggage I carry with me.
My book is due in a week so this week’s newsletter is shorter. Sending all of you love.