When I partnered with Annie Book to put on the first women and wealth retreat, I knew in my bones that this was going to be something special. I knew that women of all income and wealth scenarios carry deep shame, fear, avoidance, guilt, and pain around money. I knew that in therapy, people will tell me where the bodies are buried but they do not talk about money. I knew that our relationships with our partners, our parents, our friends, our children, our careers, birthing and dying, moving and putting down roots all circle and intertwine with our money so deeply we can barely tease it apart. And yet this thing that touches every part of our life, that is bathed in secrecy and shame is so taboo that we don't.won't.can't. talk about it. And so we go on trying to heal all these other areas of our hearts and souls and relationships, while our relationship with money keeps us shackled to the very emotions we are so urgently trying to avoid. And then we wonder why our money doesn’t work for us. We wonder about that a lot. But what we have failed to wonder about is how our broken relationship with money is keeping us in painful relationships with the haunts from our past, and how it’s keeping us stuck and stagnant in not only our careers and financial situation, but in our relationships as well.
Annie Book is a financial wizard who has devoted her life’s work to specializing in women and their money. She works with women in all phases of their financial evolution and sees time and time again how the undercurrents of emotional baggage continue to keep women from reaching their full financial potential. She saw over and over again how women weren’t comfortable holding space at the table and how it wasn't necessarily the numbers, but the feelings that were holding them back. And again, she saw how talking about it felt impossible.
Annie and I decided to break this taboo and start to build a nest, a movement…A WORLD in which women can heal their relationships with money and start to claim their wealth.
When money is in the hands of women who empower themselves amazing things happen.
Businesses grow. Relationships get cared for. Hearts mend.
When money is in the hands of women who empower themselves, those women can be more authentic in their relationships with their loved ones.
When money is in the hands of women who empower themselves, businesses come to life.
When money is in the hands of women who empower themselves, creativity prospers and the world changes.
When money is in the hands of women who empower themselves, future generations get to inherit a healthy relationship with money.
It is time, in each of our lives, to put an end to the long-held beliefs that women are not capable, that they are at the whim of men. That they should be shamefully grateful (I’m not worthy) and be quiet and believe deeply in their unworthiness. I know what you are thinking. “Of course Darci, no one believes these things anymore, Feminism prospered.” And I agree, on paper we don’t believe these things. But it’s in our bones. It’s in our legacy. It’s in the still dominant “first-born sons inherit everything” fabric of our subconscious. And there it will lie, festering and seeping out in our tears and painful self-recriminating, I’m-not-worthy-of attitudes that impact our day-to-day experiences. And it keeps us hostage. Until we heal it.
Because that’s what we do. We heal. And we grow. And we empower.
And when we do that, when we heal and grow and empower we get:
Freedom: from old doubts, shame, fear
Power: to be the authors of our own stories
Abundance: in our lives in ways we have only yearned for but never felt possible
Security: the deep knowledge we can financially thrive
Purpose: the ability to turn out money into our passion. And then into our life’s purpose.
It is time for us to climb on up, heal ourselves, and take our rightful place as equals in our relationship with money.
We are worthy. We are worthy of being wholly invested in ourselves. We are worthy of healing our relationships with our pasts. We are worthy of an empowered relationship with money that lets us truly thrive.
And the magic that I have witnessed is that when that happens, all those therapy issues we came into therapy for in the first place start to change. The partners and the parents and the kids, the careers and the rooting, the birthing and the dying, it all gets touched. It changes. It becomes clearer. Because it’s all connected. Money touches everything. And instead of thinking of money as dirty…this dirty poison that we need to wash our hands of…we get to claim it as a tool. And one that we are not “shame-grateful” of but that we can have actual gratitude for. Because we ARE WORTHY. It is a part of life as we know it that can enhance and allow and create and foster. It is here for us. And we deserve it.
And so Annie and I set out to create Women and Wealth: The Journey. Interested? Check out the Women and Wealth retreat link and reach out for more information. There is SO much more to tell!
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