Why It Makes So Much Sense for Many Adopted People to Struggle with Money — Part 2

Here's one reason I think it makes perfect sense for many adopted people to have money issues: money can represent safety, security, power, love, joy, identity, self-worth, and status. Money allows us to pursue our goals.

If you don’t have a secure sense of self, why would you want money to support a self you don’t fully identify with or even, possibly, like? If you didn’t come into the world saying YES to it when there was no mother to receive you, if part of you said NO to life when you were faced with loss before you had any tools to help regulate your nervous system by yourself, why would having money to support a life built on NO make any sense? Why would you want to have the money to support your goals when the goals were made by your coping mechanisms, not your soul’s desires?

All of this can go on subconsciously, so there you are thinking you are trying to support your best life, when your deeper brain knows this is bullshit and it’s trying to help you fail by getting you in debt or refusing to let you think saving is a good idea so you can stop living a life you do not agree with—so you will be forced to hit bottom and start again, maybe this time in the direction of YES.

For the relinquished body, the future is often not a promise of something better—it’s the promise there is more confusion, more to bear. When a body comes into the world without the regulating presence of the mother, the present moment becomes a place where the body feels like a trap—so much dysregulation, so much discomfort, so much pain, so much not knowing how to manage skin and organs and nerves in a world that does not have the regulating presence of the mother’s heartbeat the young body is so used to hearing and feeling.

When if I’d had language and agency when I was born? What if as soon as I’d seen what was happening, my mother going one direction, me going another, I’d strapped on my diaper, stood up, and said, I DON’T LIKE WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE! What if I’d gotten a bullhorn and walked around the hospital saying things like WHERE IS MY MOTHER? IF YOU LEAVE ME ALONE LIKE THIS MY LIFE IS GOING TO BE MUCH HARDER THAN IT NEEDS TO BE. I’LL GET DIVORCED TWICE. I’LL HAVE A HARD TIME MAKING FRIENDS. I’LL WORRY ABOUT MONEY ALL THE TIME BECAUSE WORRY WILL BE HOME FOR ME!

That would have been so fun. Being pissed off with no agency is not fun. Being pissed off and having a goal is more fun: GET ME SOME HELP. I’M GOING TO MAKE A LOT OF NOISE UNTIL SOMEONE FIGURES OUT HOW TO GIVE ME THE SUPPORT I NEED.

That support, that understanding of what a body goes through when it loses its mother is money in the bank.

I didn’t have the bullhorn when I was a child, but I have one now.

And there’s money in the bank.