How do we heal our relationship with money?

I’m not just talking about making more money or acquiring more possessions? I’m talking about healing our integrity with money. I’m talking about healing our relationship with the earth.

In my most recently released fourth novel, WATER, I wrote a scene about a woman in a pub burning money. She does this as a joke, as an experiment to see how others will react. And react they do — no one is left unaffected. From the waitress to the drunk at the bar, each person is traumatized by watching a $20 bill burn.

We are addicted to money, obsessed with money, desperate for money, clinging to money. We marry for it, divorce for it, kill for it, steal for it.

While the world goes down with a global pandemic, while the forests go up in flames, while we poison our waters, we’re still obsessed with money and possessions. Or we’re desperate to make our rent or mortgage, to buy food, and pay the bills because our very existence depends on the existence or lack of small rectangular pieces of paper.

Why is that? What is going on? Is there another way to approach this?

About a decade ago, I decided to heal my relationship with money. For a few years, I read books and listened to podcasts but nothing stuck. As an indie novelist and visual artist, I’ve always struggled with money. Year after year I’d start and not finish a money journal where I’d look at my relationship with money through the history of my poverty-riddled family. Nothing seemed to change for me.

It was in my mid-50s that I decided to take it seriously. A friend leant me Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover CDs. I was also working with a therapist. I took the whole healing my money situation on as a project, I:

• looked my debt in the face, every debt, every interest charge. I cried.
• created a budget and began to stick to it.
• started paying down my credit card debts and it started to work.
• Explored how money was fitting into my core values.
• began to heal lessons I learned about money from poverty-stricken ancestors
• decluttered my house.
• made a massive mistake, and with the fear surrounding the pandemic and loss of income went into debt again, but caught myself sort of in time.
• Read woo woo books on money, Love Money, Money Loves You and The Soul of Money.

As my path to healing around money continues, I’ve learned a few basic things.

First, the healing is a mixture of spiritual (woo woo) healing, emotional healing, and very practical action steps. None of these things will work without the others.

Secondly, It’s actually not really about money at all. It’s about abundance. What do you really want and need for a good life? For me, it’s been more about what I don’t need. It’s been about getting rid of, letting go of, living with much much less. Which leads to the final and most important thing that I learned.

It’s not about money at all. It’s about the abundance we feel in our spirits, and it’s about the healing of the earth.

No amount of money can make up for a starving spirit. I know it’s a pandemic and we’ve just come out of a tough political situation, but even with that, do you feel joy every day? Do you feel a love for yourself and the earth? Are you excited to be alive?

No amount of money can fill you up. You have to fill the spirit. This is true abundance. What profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?

Then there’s the healing of the earth. What difference does cash make if we can’t breathe clean air, eat clean food, drink clean water?

I was looking for images to illustrate this blog, and found many like this one — a plant growing from a pile of money. The message, I’m sure, is “You can make your money grow.” For me, I’d like to flip that message, “Let’s invest in making the earth grow, in healing our planet, or at the very least, leaving it alone to heal itself.”

What do I mean when I say healing around money is all about the earth?

You see all these social media ads for coaches: Make Six Figures Overnight. What good is it if all of our food is poisoned because we’re poisoning the earth? These are supposed to be caring coaches. Why are they just trying to manifest more money? Why aren’t we trying to manifest what’s so much more valuable, the healing of the soul, the healing of the planet?

I’ve seen so many people, even spiritual people, use visualizations to try to manifest “things”. Why aren’t we using our visualization to manifest spiritual healing for all sentient beings?

When we talk about healing our relationship with money, I believe it does begin with very practical steps surrounding our cash and debt. I also believe to truly heal around money, it has to involve understanding the fundamentals about the abundance of our spirits and the health of the planet. Or, truly, what the hell is it all for?

I’m a metaphysical coach and a book coach, contact me at info@carolineallen.com.