"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." ~Joseph Campbell
What frightens you? What thoughts keep you awake at night? If the earth is our schoolroom, and mastering love and banishing fear is the curriculum, what grade would you give yourself?
Over the last decade, I have done the hard work on myself. I have excavated buried trauma and come to terms with my part in the painful memories. In short, I have become the best version of myself thus far, but make no mistake, I still have a cave to enter, explore, to make peace with. For me that cave represents financial insecurity, but why? I own my own mortgage-free home, drive a car without monthly payments, live debt-free, and have safe, long-term investments and holdings. Those family-of-origin tapes are difficult to silence, to mute. I was born into a lower middle-class Connecticut family. My father, a roofer all his life, went off to work every day, but at quitting time could be found throwing beers back at my uncle's bar across town. My mom often worked a factory night job to fill the gap left by my father's alcoholism. While we always had clean clothes and food on the table, I recall an ever-present sense of lack, an undulating fear.
When I left home for a state college (financed by my own student loans because my parents failed to plan for my higher education), my head and heart were filled with a fierce determination to do better than my parents, and I did. I got great jobs, married, bought luxury property, and I often sent money and gifts home to my mom. When my marriage ended, I made the decision to navigate life solo, and I have remained single-by-choice. It's just me, and I am wholly responsible for my own financial health and well-being. I long ago rejected a 9-5 existence, choosing instead the life and path of a solopreneur.
That cave of financial insecurity is an illusion. Financially, I have nothing to fear. It's when those demons come knocking in the middle of the night, whispering that I will run out of money before I run out of time on this planet, that my tender heart wants to seize. Instead of hiding, I can look those demons squarely in the eye, throw my head back, laugh, and say, "not today, fear!"
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