Hello, Dear Reader,
First, let’s be honest: It’s been an embarrassing amount of time since I last posted. Really embarrasing. Truly. Embarrassing. And I’m sorry about that. The issue is the finite nature of time, and the fact that I’ve not found a magic spell that will allow me to use the same set of hours for childcare, billable work, and blogging.
Now, let’s dive in at the deep end of the pool. The topic of this post–and, I’d predict, many to come–is talking about money.
My plea is that we talk thoughtfully about money. Or, at least, that we commit to making the attempt even if it feels a bit awkward. We need this, as the mainstream discourse about money addresses either how to save a dollar or how to use all those dollars you’ve saved to buy a house. The cultural conversation about money touches too rarely on how to work with money on a human level.
Unfortunately, shame is a very common component of folks’ relationship with money. We consider our own circumstances, and compare them to others’, and we feel that we’ve fallen short. This feeling of shame is unpleasant, certainly. Worse, it has a stickiness, feeding a vicious cycle where we feel bad about what we have to show for our efforts, keeping us from talking about our circumstances or asking for help, and making it all that much harder to get where we’re hoping to go.
I found some great pieces from late last year that offer complementary approaches for starting to dissolve shame around money, including one that profiles financial therapist Bari Tessler Linden and offers practical steps for helping to heal a money shame. If you feel you’re dealing with money shame, I encourage you to read up on the subject and find someone you trust to talk about money. (If you’re wondering, my answer to this question of whether you should hire a money coach is almost always yes!)