Why It Makes So Much Sense for Adopted People to Struggle with Money — Part 1

There’s an underlying belief in the adoptee community that if you create an event, you need to take into account that many people will say they can’t afford it even if you make it what you feel is “affordable”. I know this is also true for the world as a whole, but just as statistics for mental health issues and suicide are elevated for adoptees, I feel confident saying it’s a good bet that money issues are, too.

Money issues can mean not having enough. It can mean that as fast as it comes in, you spend it--maybe it and a little more. Money issues can also mean having enough but not enjoying it. In other words, if you have lots of money in the bank, but still don’t feel safe financially, you have money issues, right?

I have questions.

Why did I work so hard not to have money in my pocket or in the bank for most of my life? Why did I choose to spend instead of to save? Why did I choose to worry about not having enough instead of changing my habits so I could feel I did? Why did I think the idea of saving was stupid?

What exactly was my problem with having money?

When my father died over a year ago, suddenly my debt was gone and so were my money worries. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had enough. It turned out that a lifetime of worrying about money on my parents’ part was so they would have enough saved to leave their three children money when they died.

This past year or so of money in the bank has been surprisingly thick. Worrying about money had used up a lot of brain power so I didn’t have to think about or feel other things, such as a feeling of hopelessness—who am I? am I living my life or some adopted version of it? what do I even like or want? Worrying about money was, perhaps, a form of control. If I don’t know how I’m going to pay my rent, at least I can hold onto my worry. At least my worry won’t abandon me or disappear.

One convenient thing about having money worries is that it lets me live in a place of longing or wanting, a place of not safe, a place of despair. It lets me go back to the initial trauma of being separated from source energy; it lets me feel at home in the panic of she (and therefore I since I have not yet learned we aren’t one body) is not here.  

Money worries, if you could bottle the emotional and physical effects on the body and mind, are a lot like the siren that goes off in a baby’s body when the mother is not in sight.

If you can’t have the mother, at least you can keep the siren.

Know what I mean?