I’m one of the women they were talking about. 

It was on social media. A post. No one meant anyone harm, especially the OP. 

She posted about the frequency with which she sees women like me; I didn’t feel judged, or criticized. 

Nothing but mad respect.

But when I read it, I felt a zing that pushed me to check in with myself; I knew it was more about me than about her or her post.

Then the comments came.

I felt triggered (when we are triggered, we often don’t know its about us, but it ALWAYS. IS.). 

             I knew I was triggered because I could hear my inner critic. 

                                  “See? I told you so, dumbass.”

The comments were the ones we often see. The ones where the person commenting assumes their experience must also be the experience of everyone else. 

Where they state to the OP with fake, awe-like wonder, “Wait, that REALLY happens?”

You know the ones where people want to respond to the OP just to go public and make sure we all know that they aren’t like the women the OP is posting about (and a reminder, the OP was actually doing a service, not spilling the tea).

And this was about money.

One of the big three.

Sex. Kids. Money.

Trigger city.

So you can imagine the comments.

Assumptions about how if one partner doesn’t know the deets of the family financials, it must mean the other partner is intentionally keeping secrets ~ all kind of secrets ~ and holds all the power in the relationship.

Or that her head is in the sand. “How naive!”

Or the comments on marriage and the need to protect yourself in that union because blind love and trust in a marriage is “unhealthy.”

Well, maybe. Those might be true for some people and maybe some of that is true for all people. Or maybe not? 

The truth is, I see my own experience in parts of each of these. 

At one time or another, my husband has made decisions about the money and not told me.

Sometimes, I don’t ask about the details. In fact, for years, I didn’t ask much at all.

There were times when I figured that he was earning the money and it was easier to have him hold that bag in its entirety. Why slow things down with conversation?

And yes, I do love and trust him. But my love and trust for my husband always felt separate from our decisions about money. There are a whole lot of reasons we might do things the way we do them and love and trust feel like the backdrop to all of them. 

That is all true.

And, that’s not the whole truth. 

There are other truths, as well. THERE ALWAYS ARE.

It’s also true that I had 4 kids in 6 years. I “suffered” the privilege of choice and lived for years with both feet in the world of a working mom and both feet in the world of an at-home mom. I had a total identity crisis and presented myself differently in different places. 

I don’t actually have four feet.

So my work mom worked a ton, and my at-home mom was with kids and volunteered and joined boards. 

Instead of choosing one identity, I held both. 

You would not find one friend or colleague who would describe me as disengaged. I didn’t give myself a break. It was exhausting. I learned so much from that. It ~ that part of me ~ eventually became my wake up call.

I did not know how to sit still. I had been working since I was in 6th grade; first as a babysitter, and then by 13, I found a job on a farm because farms were exempt from child labor laws. I was committed to being busy. 

Fast forward to my life as a married woman living in a home with two incomes. 

As a mother of four, I was knee deep in bedtimes that lasted for hours because I was giving 4 kids 4 baths every night and, since that was my only time with each of them alone, was reading to them each 1:1 almost every single night. 

I was going to do it all right. 

And by right, I mean perfectly. 

Bedtime lasted for hours. And then they’d get up and crawl in with us. Or want us to crawl in with them. Literally hours.

There were several years when my husband traveled. They were really little then. I spent those nights alone with the kids and it was hard for me (I then came to love those times being alone with them, but that hadn’t happened yet). 

The difference was that if I happened to be away, everyone worried about my husband. They’d invite him and the kids for dinner, offer to babysit (I was never gone more than 2 nights, I think?). 

When he traveled, it was radio silent. 

It was expected that I could manage it all. And the truth is, I gave everyone that impression. I looked like I had it all together. I have come to see this now, but I felt invisible to those people who made sure he, but not me, got help with the kids back then.

I had my girlfriends who took care of me and I, of them. We had dinners together, in and out, we never woke a sleeping child so if a play date was happening with an older child, one of us dropped off AND picked up so that the other didn’t have to risk messing up whatever semblance of a sleep schedule was possible at the time. 

We loved and cared for each other (and still do) and since we all felt like we were sort of hanging on by a thread, we wove those threads together and soon we were sharing a blanket. 

There were notes from daycare to read, hours of paperwork to do, and Italian language classes (why, yes, we were the only non-Italian family who showed up at the Italian school on Saturday mornings to learn the language and culture!) to take. Soccer, skating, skiing, music hour at the bagel place, cousin time, and yes, work. 

Remember? I still had two feet in and two feet someplace else. I was loving every bit of my life so much that I couldn’t let an experience get by me. I wanted it all.

Lice and mono and Lyme disease and nutritionists. We’ve never had braces and we’ve never seen an allergist. Throw me a parade.

So, yes, not only did he control the money, but I begged him to keep it that way. 

He tried to get me to partner with him, but I. Had. No. Bandwidth. Left. 

Yes, he made decisions and didn’t include me because I was making decisions in every other area of our lives so for him to own this, the money, just increased my gratitude. I still can’t imagine it any other way. 

Decision-Fatigue is a thing, friends. For reals. 

I was earning money and had no idea how much I was earning; I didn’t care.

I loved my work and was just grateful to be using my mind in a place where people thanked me for working my ass off.

They thanked me. I need to say it again. I felt appreciated and useful.

(Yes, it is a little weird that keeping 4 children alive didn’t make me feel useful and it is absolutely not their job to thank me so I ate it up at work).

Did having my “head-in-the-sand-naive-love-and-trust” mindset cost me something (pun intended)?

You betcha’. 

The four kids are grown and we are facing, literally, one million dollars in tuition costs within a 10 year period. 

Wrap your brain around that for me, will you? 

Do I wish I paid more attention? Yup.

Do I think I could have done better?

Absolutely not. 

Like most other things, I might have approached it differently, but I am absolutely sure my mistakes would have been equally as impactful. 

Regardless, we were doing the best we could to keep our family functioning.

True story: I once dropped my youngest off at school, in my PJs, and, as the principal held the door for her and she rolled out of the car, the only words I could muster were, “Don’t get lice today.” 

Parenting at its finest, folks. 

And there is something I’d like to say to all those women commenting on the post. 

I am blind to issues of self-preservation. 

If it even occurs to me at all, I procrastinate it. Food, money, time, order in the home….it’s not my thing. Really, none of it. 

Instead of knowing and accepting this (I learned this was actually a thing as I was approaching 50 and once we see it, it will actually start to shift), I judged myself, felt less-than, and felt like there was something really wrong with me. 

I didn’t know that my instincts were different from those of you who are on top of your self-preservation needs. But before you get all excited, know that most of us  ~ maybe all of us ~ are blind in one arena. 

My instincts lead with social organization. 

I lean in to groups, am comfortable with navigating the complexities of relationships, I can intuit social hierarchies, and who is likely to move towards, away, and against, others. 

I spent my time focusing on the social development of my children and keeping my own social needs met through heavy volunteering and community engagement. 

In fact, I can’t help it. It’s instinctive. It runs me. Maybe in the same way knowing the details of the money runs you. 

Look around. You’ll see. We are all running on something and forgetting something else. We put one instinct on top and will sacrifice everything else to get that need met. 

And we have no idea we are doing it. 

I sacrificed my self-preservation needs for the social needs of my children and myself. 

Ironically, I did this to self-preserve. It kept me alive. 

So before you judge that mom for not understanding the money, know that she has different instincts and different ways she’s leaning into her life. And, unless she is doing some inner work, is probably unaware. But somehow you presume to know all about her in your social media comments. You know about her partner and her marriage and you know all the places she is failing.

How about trying something else? Get curious about her.

Ask what she is honoring in her life. It may actually be more important to her. 

I guarantee you: if she is a mother, she’s not doing nothing.

Be gentle with her. She’s likely hard enough on herself for only being on top of 99.9% of her household and not that additional 1/10 of a percent. 

She holds herself to a standard to which no one else could hold her. 

While she is beating herself up for not meeting that standard, she is also beating herself up for not being more loving to herself.

Self-judgment is a place of familiarity for her. She knows things are hard and instead of just knowing that, acknowledging it, being with it, she is attaching herself to all kinds of stories about how it “should” be different. 

How SHE “should” be different. 

Is it important for her to know more about her personal finances? 

Is it important for her to partner with her partner and share the burden?

Which might not even be a burden? Couldn’t it just be information? 

See how we create these stories? I just did, writing this. Caught myself.

The answer is, “Maybe.”

Probably. 

But something would have to give, and imaging what that would be, what thing she’d leave to chance, is as daunting as having to think about her financial survival. 

Giving up an experience she wants to have or changing a habit might be terrifying to her. If she lets go of something, the whole blanket might fray and come unraveled.

She might come unraveled.

So stay curious about her.

She’s probably busy being grateful for a husband who holds the bag for that ONE. THING.

Because it’s one thing she doesn’t have to hold the bag for.

So thank you for the comments. 

Yes, they triggered me, but they also forced me to look at those triggers and get curious about myself. 

They helped me to see that I was doing the best I could. That I had other things going on and I just didn’t know any better. And writing this helped me to see that there is not only one way to do things.

But there are better ways to do things. I trust that that that mom, like me, will do better when she knows better. 

There will be a day when she is ready. When she is willing. When she is desperate. And despite your comments, she’ll ask for help. Like me. 

And she’ll be met with a kind, empathic, firm, yet gentle accountant who will know exactly what to say and how to help her. 

And she’ll learn. 

And she’ll do better. 

Because it will be the right time. 

The Universe is benevolent that way.