Remembering Herself Home

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she said goodbye to her son, closed the door and walked to her car. The sky it lit up with a cotton candy pink sunset. Birds sing an evening story and children play in the street, moving to let her car pass. She drives slowly, wiping the tears from her face. Saying goodbye to her son on the days he’s with Dad is the hardest part of being a single mama.

She is running out of options for money and this means they could take her child away. Any fierce mama knows that she can’t let this happen. “I’m so sick of this story,” she thinks. The same patterns of scarcity from her Grandmother’s generation, playing out in real time for her to see. It’s time to become financially free.

The truth is, she’s always believed in fate. Her life has been like that of a book, with each new chapter bringing exactly what they needed in the moment that they needed it. Monetarily, they have always had just enough. Separated for four years from the father of her child, she’s been working a variety of jobs that come straight from her heart. She’s worked for causes that have captured her heart: food security in Central America, women’s empowerment in Nepal, wildlife conservation in Africa. She has held fundraisers that fill rooms and raise thousands of money for others, but ironically, she’s been starving the whole time.

Her son is five. He’s getting to the age where he notices money. Telling her the night before, as they ate at their tiny kitchen table, “Daddy is rich!” She calmly replies, “Some people believe money to be more interesting than others. Isn’t that interesting?” and makes a face as William looks back down at his food. “If I sold my soul and hurt the earth as he does, I could be rich too.” She thinks. Why is that the case these days?

People are rewarded for working long hours, being away from their family, exploiting the earth and the people that work for them. She, very consciously, took the last four years to be with her son. Always taking jobs where she could, she worked during naps and bedtimes, staying up until midnight more times than she could count. But when her son needed her, as the only child of a split family, she was there for him creating emotional stability. While this is not financially rewarded, she wants to change that story. But she definitely doesn’t want to do it through some sort of MLM scheme or by promoting herself tirelessly to her small network of contacts. There’s pride there that’s blocking those options. Her mind swirls. How will she ever create the abundance they need?

When she arrives home to their small one bedroom apartment, she throws her keys up on the hook and takes off her boots. She greets every one of the plants growing in the apartment, tending to their leaves, watering them with both moisture and love. She sits in front of her ancestor altar and lights a candle. Looking at the images of her grandparents, she asks them one question. “How? How do I change this story?”

She laughs at her son’s work desk. There are papers haphazardly stuffed into the organizers she bought him. There are all sorts of gadgets held together by elastics. He’s been building a robot. He wants to be an inventor. She never wants him to lose his spark of imagination.

Out of the corner of her eye, she notices a little black book that’s sitting perched on top of her altar. Their home is full of books and journals and musical instruments and half painted canvases, a truly artistic home. But she doesn’t remember this journal. It reminds her of the black journals she travelled to Africa and India with. She wonders, “Well how did my travel journals get out on the altar?” Thinking William may have found and put it there, she picks it up and heads to her room to put it back. But as she casually flips open the page, she sees her own handwriting, but it’s a message that she couldn’t have written herself.

It’s dated twenty years in the future.

She starts to read and becomes absorbed in fascination, awe and wander. It’s a message from her future self.

My dear sweet Charisma,

How much work you have put into being alive over these years. You have never taken the easy route and yet you’ve always landed on your feet. I know it’s been a challenge to work on yourself in a culture that wants you to work on everyone else. I know you’ve spent more emotional investments in William and his future than you have building a bank account for his college future. Our society champions one path, but you’ve taken another.

I know this, because I am you. As I write this, William’s off in Egypt, uncovering some of the biggest mysteries of our time. He’s a grown man, a beautiful, confident, kind soul. You should be very proud of how you raised him.

Tears fill her eyes as she sits in the middle of the floor, as if time slows down to a halt.

Every mother wants to know that the way they raise their child is ‘right’. And yet we’ll never know, will we? This is as close as you’ll come, but just continue to follow your heart. No matter what Google or Facebook or Instagram tries to pull you to do, turn it off. Play with him. Connect with him. If there’s time for that, abundance will come into your life because this is what the children of the world need right now. They need stewards for their souls. Otherwise, the soul wanders this technological, profit-focused world and they’ll get lost. Stay true to the way you are parenting him Charisma. You won’t regret it.

Now, I know you have only stale bread on the counter and half a gallon of that oat milk left in your fridge. I know that you feed him fresh, organic raspberries and you only feed yourself what’s leftover. Stop that. Treat yourself right or else you won’t be here to help your future ancestors – his children – your grandchildren. You need to take care of you and trust me, the world needs you. Stop playing martyr mother and start focusing on your needs too. I know I know you’re shaking your head saying, “How can I do this when I’m barely able to pay my bills?” This is the problem. Scarcity mind is creating scarcity reality. I’m here to help you with this.

What would you do if you had $20,000? You would secure that home you’ve had your eye on so that he can live in a stable house from now until high school right? You would finally get your engine flushed so that your car doesn’t smell like exhaust everytime you pull up to a PTA meeting. You would buy him four pairs of pants, one in each size since he’s growing like a weed, and you should buy yourself a pair of real pants too. Not just those legging things you live in day in and day out. You would buy an extra case of raspberries that you would eat too. You would buy a djembe drum and paints and create a magical environment where he can follow his passions freely. You would splurge on organic cotton sheets so that you can lay your head alongside his blonde curls at the end of a long day and know that your both breathing safe.

I know you would do this, because I am you. And you do all of those things, because I’m here to give you $20,000.

You see, your future self is abundant. She’s cried and healed and screamed and shaked and went to therapy and went to the woods and talked to Elders and mentors. She has lit candles and prayed and washed away the stress by dancing in the rain. She is whole and lifts everyone up around her. She circulates money into the locally owned businesses and mentors other young single moms on how to live in their truth. And she makes money doing it. You do not have to be scared of money Charisma. You know that thing you fight for for everyone else to have? You’re allowed to have it too. People just like you should have the money to be free because in the process, you’ll free so many others.

But here’s the catch. The money that I’m leaving for you, it comes with a challenge. You have to believe you deserve it. In order to believe that, you have to love yourself. I want you to spend the next 30 days doing everything you can to truly love and lift yourself up. Treat yourself like you would the dearest friend you have, the one whom you would do anything for. Buy yourself flowers. Turn on the music and dance. Pleasure yourself. Look in the mirror and say 100 times, I am here for you. I am here for you. I am here for you.

By the end of the 30 days, if you are able to find this love within you, for you, the money will show up at your door.

Charisma sat dumbfounded. While it seemed to good to be true, she felt this inner knowing that it didn’t matter. The message was clear. She needed to stop putting everyone else first all the time, thinking that this led her on some enlightened path…to what? To martyrdom?

For the next 30 days, the earth heaved and the sky moved as one woman came home to herself. She painted beautiful pictures just to paint. She wrote stories just to see herself write. She danced in their tiny one bedroom, bumping into her son’s bunkbed as she went. She cried and ached and gave herself space to feel all of the sorrow that had been calling her for years. She bought herself flowers and raspberries and ate all of them herself. She applied for grants to go to school and entered writing contests, finally allowing people to read her words. She was done hiding in the shadows. And when 29 days was up, she looked at herself in the mirror and said, “It doesn’t matter if anyone else is here for you. It doesn’t matter if money shows up at the door. What matters is that I remember how much I love you. I am here for you. I am here for you. I am here for you.” And she went to sleep that night, with her little boy at her side, with peace in her heart. She knew that life was going to be okay.

In the morning, William woke before she did. He raced out to the living room to announce the time, his morning ritual. “It’s 7….1….8…mama” he spoke and then silence. “Mom! There’s an envelope at the door in this little black book!”

Groggy, Charisma rose slowly, remembering that today was Day 30. Could it really be true? She went to the door and opened the envelope.

A cheque for $20,000 fell onto the floor. She picked it up and read it again. It was from a writing contest she had entered a month before she found the little black book.

All along, it was her.