BEYOND
BEYOND
Ep. 23 BEYOND Money and the Mother wound with Mimi
Have you ever felt like your financial life mirrors the emotional rollercoaster of a volatile relationship?
In this eye-opening episode of Beyond the Personal Growth podcast, I coach Mimi, who bravely shares her journey of navigating worth and personal growth. Mimi opens up about her tumultuous relationship with money, comparing it to a past romantic relationship filled with dramatic highs, crushing lows, and painful betrayals. She reveals how periods of financial abundance are often followed by scarcity, affecting her self-worth and emotional health. By delving into her upbringing and personal history, Mimi is able to shed light on the deep-rooted issues that perpetuate this cycle.
Next, we explore the healing process for financial trauma and feelings of unworthiness. Despite being in a supportive and communicative relationship, Mimi still grapples with fears of abandonment and inadequacy, which stem from childhood experiences.
The session takes a profound turn as we discuss growing up in scarcity and witnessing a parent's toxic approach to earning money. These experiences have shaped unconscious beliefs and barriers, especially for women who are now stepping into financial power like never before.
Mimi's session offers valuable insights into how understanding these ingrained beliefs can help unravel the fear and resistance around money, ultimately leading to a healthier and more fulfilling financial life.
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Hello, my friend, and welcome to Beyond the personal growth podcast for the people who are healing beyond their conditioning and beyond the cycles that played out before them. My name is Katie Lynn and, with 20 years of experience in the field of psychology and human behavior, I am bringing my natural curiosity, expertise and personal life experiences here for discussions that are guaranteed to be informative, inspiring and entertaining. I'm glad you're here. Let's get started. Okay, today on the podcast, we have Mimi. Mimi, thank you so much for being here. Where would you like to begin?
Speaker 2:so much for being here. Where would you like to begin? Okay, so I'm going to say money, that's like that's. That's the core of the topic that I'd really like to dive in to with you today.
Speaker 1:Money. In which way?
Speaker 2:So I would say my, my relationship to money and to my financial life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's that relationship like, as you know it to be up until now?
Speaker 2:Tumultuous difficult. Yeah, Just really difficult.
Speaker 1:Difficult in what way? Like in that it comes and it goes really fast, or it doesn't show up at all, or you have a lot of it, and then it's like feast and famine, where it's like I get a lot of it, these windfalls, and then it leaves.
Speaker 2:A little bit of everything that you just said. It's like a toxic relationship. Like that's what I've been related. Relating it to most recently is it's like an unhealthy relationship. It's like sometimes it's really good and sometimes it's like rock bottom and sometimes it's like rock bottom like messy.
Speaker 2:And I can see myself going through these cycles and like creating these just cycles where I keep ending up in the same place, and I've been doing some really deep work recently and so I'm starting to be able to see more and more of these patterns. But I heard you say something on one of your other podcasts. It was like there's like there's these knots there still there's blind spots and I just can't see. I can't see it all the way to untangle it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is there a relationship in your history that resembles your current relationship with money? Yeah, yeah, what relationship is that?
Speaker 2:Like a romantic relationship or any relationship.
Speaker 1:It could be romantic. It could be relationship with mom, it could be relationship with dad, relationship with friends, relationship with caregivers, if mom and dad weren't there.
Speaker 2:There's a romantic relationship that I could probably relate it to, that it's been very similar to yeah.
Speaker 1:And is that an older like? Is that relationship complete now? Mm-hmm. Okay, yes, and what made that relationship not now? Okay, yes, and what was what made that relationship not work?
Speaker 2:Um, so many things, um, so many things. He was a liar, a cheater, um, you know, and who I was in that relationship, like now, who I am like wouldn't even, wouldn't even look, think twice about being in that relationship, even as I'm kind of thinking about this and we're looking at it like when I first got into that relationship, it was like it was like this powerful, like oh, I'm in love with you. Like the first day that I met you and it was fun and it was new, and I was like I don't'm in love with you, like the first day that I met you and it was fun and it was new, and I was like I don't even care, like people warned me about this person and I was like I don't even care.
Speaker 2:I was pretty newly out of my divorce and I was like I'm just going to have fun and I'm just going to go along for the ride, no matter what, no matter where it takes me, I'm going to, I'm gonna go for it and I'm gonna be here for the lessons and, um, and I got I learned a lot from that relationship, like what works for me, what doesn't work for me, like what I'm willing to tolerate, not tolerate.
Speaker 2:But it was very like very up and then very down and I found out, you know, the lying and the cheating and all that stuff. And so it was like a crazy roller coaster in two years. Um, and that's kind of what money is like for me, like when I have it, it's really good and it's fun, and I kind of slips through my fingers kind of easily and, um, you know, because I come from, uh, a background of scarcity and so that's what I know my foundation is like kind of rooted in. Is that scarcity? That's what I'm used to, uncomfortable with, and that's what I keep like, creating these situations that bring myself back to that Um, so like when it's there, it's good and it's fun, and then when it's gone, it's like habit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm curious when it's gone, what does your internal dialogue sound like when money is gone?
Speaker 2:So this is where it's. This is where it's at, um, because it's like the worth that I have, that tied to within myself, is like, when it's gone, I like it's going to make me cry, because I like, suddenly, I'm not worth anything anymore. I'm not worth anything anymore. My value as a woman goes way down, you know, and I feel like when I lose the money, I'm going to lose everything.
Speaker 1:There's like this fear about that. Yeah, yeah, and I heard you say something so powerful when the money is gone, the worth goes way down.
Speaker 2:And the worth goes way down according to who me yeah and in my like, in my perspective, it's like also to other people like I create this world where my worth, my value to other people also goes down.
Speaker 1:And that may not be true for them. No like.
Speaker 2:that's probably not true for them, but to me it's like yeah, yeah, oh, I get it, I get it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for bringing this forward.
Speaker 1:This is such a great, great topic, mimi, like this is the stuff that many, many people hide behind. You know, self-included, I hid behind it for so long, oh my gosh. You know so much of it has to do with the environment that we were brought up in, and you know whether our whether our parents knew or not is rather irrelevant now, because we're here now working through it. You know, it's that idea that, like, maybe, maybe the trauma wasn't your fault and yet and still, you're alive and it's our responsibility to to navigate it and to either choose to work through it or not, and so I'm grateful that you're here to work through it. Either choose to work through it or not, and so I'm grateful that you're here to work through it.
Speaker 1:And what comes through is that the worth got tied to what you can create and do for others. Does that feel accurate to you? Yeah, yes, yeah. So it's like the standards that are running in your mind for yourself. It's almost like I am only worthy of being here and I'm only worthy of being loved if I can make sure that I'm able to give people what they want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely. This definitely touches on something, because so this financial journey of mine has really taken its own flight over the last 10 years, which 10 years ago I went through a divorce. I was a stay-at-home mom for 20 years.
Speaker 2:I had little jobs here and there, but mostly my role was to my five kids. No-transcript, without my kids and without you know, without being mom and wife, I never had to think about that. My entire identity and worth was wrapped in that. And so since then, my kids have grown up my youngest is now 19 and it's been this journey of figuring out who I am in the world and what I want to do with my life, which is ever changing, and so like so much was wrapped up in our financial life and our marriage. And then, as that fell apart, it was like, all of a sudden, you know, now you have to provide for yourself. A sudden, you know, now you have to provide for yourself.
Speaker 2:And there was just there was a lot of things that kind of unraveled during that time, just things that made me feel less than because I didn't have a financial foundation. Yeah, it's just been a really messy journey for myself and I'm also a woman in recovery. So I, over the last several years, I have been unraveling that, and as I've unraveled the, the alcohol piece of my recovery, it's like, oh, we have this other thing which was relationships, and I resolved a lot of that, and now it's like it's the money and that's the thing that just keeps presenting itself. It's the financial stuff. I went on a little tangent there with your question, but I love this.
Speaker 1:No, I love this, and congratulations on your recovery. Thank you, that's, that's huge. I have such a special place in my heart for us and when I say us, I mean like addicts, those of us that were wired in this way of like whether it be alcohol, whether it be food, whether it be drug, whatever it is like, I am in such honor for every person who is in recovery, myself included, you included. It's the most incredible journey of self-development, and you touch on something that's really important. And what's really important is the theme of the quote.
Speaker 1:Unquote addict is that we had no self, and so when we bump up against these things right, like, whether it be alcohol, whether it be relationships, whether it be food, whether it be money, whatever it is this is how I frame it these things are working to help us build a self that we didn't get to build when we were little because we were surviving, and a lot of times we were raised by people who didn't get to have a self either, so there's no way they could have taught us how to have a self. You know what that looks like, and if everything in our world is only showing us what we believe to be true about ourselves if the circumstances in our lives are only ever reflecting back to us our beliefs. What do you think money's showing you?
Speaker 2:Can you say that again?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. Here we are. Their brain is like I'm not letting her go there. Your brain is so. Can you say that again, money is showing you? Yeah, it's funny. My brain really doesn't want to get this.
Speaker 2:The first thing that's coming to mind is my relationship, because I'm in a relationship that I only dreamed about for a long time.
Speaker 2:Like I didn't think it was possible, um, where we don't fight. We communicate when we need to communicate. We work through things. We have difficult moments and he has stood by my side through the last year of me leaving my corporate job and starting my own business and going through bankruptcy and, just like this whole, the last year has been wild and he has to fill in the gaps and support me in ways that have made me feel worthy. And I still have these moments where I swear to God he's going to leave.
Speaker 1:I swear to God he's going to leave and like, yeah, my brain will create these realities where, like I know, he's breaking up with me, you know, and why. Why would he leave, According to your?
Speaker 2:thoughts it goes back to like she's too messy and she's got too much baggage and she's got too much going on that I don't want to carry and um yeah, yeah, so can.
Speaker 1:Are you able to phrase it Like he would leave? Because I, because I am he would leave because I am not worthy. Because I am not worthy. Yeah, he was not worthy of what Of a relationship this? Beautiful, yeah, and what? What would if we flip? If we flip the coin, what's missing? That would make you worthy of this love lasting.
Speaker 2:Literally just money. So okay.
Speaker 1:So your brain is amazing. The healthier the brain, the harder it is to access the, the like lock and key, as I like to call it for, for you and for everybody listening. Here's the thing about money. Money is a. Money is an inanimate object. So one of the things that my husband says that I absolutely love is he says you know, money never stood up and punched you in the face, meaning that money never really hurt or harmed or endangered you. However, the way people used money and what you heard about money and what you were taught or not taught about money may have hurt, harmed or endangered you. And so what I'm hearing in your story, mimi, is I'm hearing I'm a capable woman. I mean, the most talented, gifted, amazing women are the women who have raised multiple children, because you know firsthand how dynamic you have to be as a human being to navigate raising small humans and growing them into full grown humans, and we're not talking just one or we're talking about a handful of humans, literally. So what I hear is like, wow, she's qualified and very probably overqualified. And she's capable because, at the root of it, when we get really, really honest, money is addition, subtraction and multiplication. From where I sit.
Speaker 1:One of the ways that I worked through this money stuff for me is I got to create a bit of a distinction, and what I mean by that is I, like you, used to tie my worthiness to how much money I was generating, and I would tell myself these really fantastical stories about like you're not generating enough, even at six and multiple six. Like you're not generating enough, even at six and multiple six figures, you're not generating enough, you're irresponsible, you're impulsive. But what I was really telling myself and what money was really showing me was that there was a belief that was running so quietly of I'm not capable, I can't, and the mastery of money is so basic in that you learn it. So I'm wondering if, as growing up, through these experiences, these life experiences, if your brain decided that you can't, when really the truth is, nobody ever taught you Absolutely, maybe nobody ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like this is and I'm going to go on a little bit of a rant here as women, we've never had more access to money than we do now. We've never had more access to power. We've never had more access to our ability to generate and create wealth for ourselves and our families and our children and our children's children and most of us were never, ever ever taught this. We just learned from what we saw and felt from our caregivers. And I heard you say earlier you know I grew up in scarcity, so part of what happens in these environments with scarcity is that it's like gosh, mom is the queen of the universe or dad is the king of the universe, like when we're little. Our caregivers are like the best people on the planet and if they can't figure it out, how am I going to figure it out? Does that resonate?
Speaker 2:for you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's interesting because my environment was scarcity. But my mom, I think this is where I got, like my, my very driven kind of entrepreneurial, my very driven kind of entrepreneurial my mom has a very powerful spirit that she's a drug addict, and so, as during while I was growing up, she was a drug dealer and but she was quite successful in it for a short period of time, yeah, and on welfare at the same time.
Speaker 2:So it was like this, really distorted you know view of, and then before that, like my grandma, was a stay at home mom her entire life Um, she just that was. Her role in the family was to care for the family, to care for the children and to keep the family together. Um, so you know, just a lot of mixed messages, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, let me ask you this Um, what are your thoughts about the way your mom made money? Um that it was wrong.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was um dangerous dangerous. It wasn't sustainable. It was rooted in her addiction. It was very toxic.
Speaker 1:There it is. Yeah, there it is. It's possible that there could be some. Well, now it's conscious because we brought it forward right, but previously there could have been some resistance or fear. And even when we grow up in our environments and we experience something that's really heartbreaking or even traumatic with someone or a situation or circumstance, we can take these unconscious vows of like I'm never going to do that or I'm never going to be like that, and we carry those with us, and the idea here is that you now, in this moment, get to write a different story for yourself and who you are and how you be with money.
Speaker 2:This is really good. I've never seen this before.
Speaker 1:Hmm, what's coming up for you as you see it.
Speaker 2:Like I can feel it in my entire being. You know, there's just been, there's been, so many layers of healing around my mother and I feel like this is like. This is a really deep one that I've never gotten to before, because I really have my main mission in life and everything that I do has been to not be like my mom, to not be the kind of mom that my mom was, and I know so many of us have that. Yes, I mean that has driven everything that I do. Yeah, and yeah, I can really see how this is connected to my financial struggles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what's the truth? What's the truth for you?
Speaker 2:The truth is that I am not my mother. I do have some of her good qualities, like I've done enough work now that I can see that she was a powerful you know. She had a lot of power within her and she was very determined and I got some of that very strong. I got those things and I got to turn them into healthy things and I got to be a completely different mom for my kids and I, you know, I broke a lot of chains, um, and changed the trajectory for my, for my family and my kids, and that's the truth. And um, and I really see that like the next thing for me is to change the financial trajectory of my family. Yeah, yeah, and I'm completely, like you said, capable.
Speaker 1:Heck, yeah, yeah, heck yeah. Fully capable, overqualified, yeah, and, and there's something here, mimi, you have, uh, experienced incredible things and you are here talking to me today, which tells me that you've survived them all. What do you think contributed to that? How did you navigate all that?
Speaker 2:Um, there's always just been this thing inside of me that and I'm going to say it's God because I'm that's. Another thing that I'm working on right now is my relationship with God, because it's like what else could it be? Cause I couldn't do it on my own, like there's always just been this thing inside of me that knows I'm here to do it differently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and with God, you have always figured it out. Yeah, like everything that has come knocking at your door hasn't really stood a chance when you open that door. Yeah, and that's really the invitation that I'm going to put on the table for you is to consider that this money stuff is now knocking at your door because previously you were sort of in denial of who you were and who you are, and so money, this money thing has kind of been like bullying you in some way. Right, like when we asked about the inner dialogue that comes up when you don't have money. That's the voice of a bully. Yeah, and in this moment it's like I invite you to open that door and be like listen, you stand as good of a chance as everything else.
Speaker 1:I've survived and overcome when it comes to money. You know, I imagine you saying that to money, like look you, you think you got me, but I got something for you, you know, and like that fiery, playful like you versus me, there's no way. You know there's no way. And so when these things come up in our lives and I love that you brought up God, cause I'm such a God girl I feel like it's easy for us as humans, from our human mind and our insecurities, a God girl.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's easy for us as humans, from our human mind and our insecurities and our wounding, to feel like, oh, this take on, like this victim narrative or this sort of self-loathing narrative, when really I feel like God is bringing us these circumstances to remind us remember who I created you to be. You've been running from this mystical kind of dragon you created in your brain and I just want you to be. You've been running from this mystical kind of dragon you created in your brain and I just want you to see that it's paper. It's a paper dragon and you've been letting it govern you and you've been hiding from it and you've been, like you know, acting like it's bigger than you, when in your truth, mimi, you know, you know you could figure out money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so funny because it's not even a paper thing anymore, it's like it's just numbers on a screen that we move around.
Speaker 1:Exactly, Exactly, and I'm going to give you a little cheat code with money. The cheat code with money that was the hardest for me to learn is really you got to go claim it. You got to go claim it. You got to really claim it. If there is $100 on the table, the money asks us for the conviction to say that's mine in our integrity and to be in ownership of that. That's mine, that's for me. Of course I will take it. I will steward it according to my principles and my values.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I I've been really working on that self-talk around it all lately and like trying to catch myself quicker when I when I hear that old stuff coming in and, um, like I had a situation yesterday where I had some unexpected money show up and you know I've been praying about it and I'm like, oh okay, thank you, you know.
Speaker 2:And um and and automatically my brain is like well, be careful, you know. And then I'm like no, like there's plenty more where that came from. Yes, so I'm trying, I'm really working to switch the conversation around it. So I love what you're saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and my invitation, another invitation, is, as you transition out of this call with me, that you take some time in the next week or two and you write out your principles with money. What are my principles? And I would encourage you to include at least one principle that says I pay myself at least X amount percent out of every dollar first. So before anybody else touches it, whatever comes in, for anybody else touches it, this much is mine, this is me. And then then we can talk about bills, then we can talk about debt, then we can talk about business, but for every dollar whether it's 50%, 20%, 10%, I don't care the percentage, but repattern your brain so that it's making sure that Mimi takes care of Mimi, and start to build that as a principle of like Mimi's never left out, mimi's never forgotten, mimi is always cared for and considered by Mimi first.
Speaker 2:That's so good yeah. I'm going to do that for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, amazing. How do you feel?
Speaker 2:Like relief.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2:How do you feel? Like relief? Yeah, yeah, cause I mean, even just in the last couple months I've been really doing a lot of prayer, meditation and just different, having a lot of conversations with people who I know are, you know, at the level that I I'm trying to get to and just really peeling back all these layers and like I feel like we got to the center today with the mom piece and that feels like holy crap yeah.
Speaker 1:Feels really huge yeah, yeah, and, and this is a process, and we opened up something today and I am, I encourage you to be with you, you know, be with the truth of you. So thank you for this, thank you for this dialogue. Is there anything else?
Speaker 2:No, just thank you so much. This was my pleasure beyond my expectations, beyond.
Speaker 1:As we complete this episode, I would love to know your insights, takeaways and feedback. You can message me on Instagram at Katie Lynn Rohano or send them via email to Katie at katielinrohanocom. Any products or digital downloads I mentioned can be found via the link in my Instagram bio. If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to share it with at least one friend and leave a five-star review so we can get these impactful dialogues into the lives of even more people. I would also like to thank my guests for their vulnerability and generosity in allowing us to learn from them and grow alongside them. Until next time, friends, let's go beyond.