🔥 At The Hearth: Money Stories and the Grace to Heal
🔥 At the Hearth | Come as you are. Stay as long as you need.
Hi Friend,
I’m so glad you’re here. 🫶
Let’s talk about money — deep breaths, we’ll do this together.
I used to think financial wellness was all about numbers — budgets, bills, loan repayment plans, paychecks, and savings. And while those things do matter, I’ve learned — through some humbling life lessons — that our relationship with money runs much deeper than a spreadsheet.
Money touches our fears, our habits, our childhood memories, and the stories we’ve been told — or never told — about what it means.
After Henry was born, our expenses grew and my work hours shifted so I could be home more. We realized our old system of splitting everything down the middle no longer worked.
We made the choice to fully combine our finances — something we’d avoided since getting married. Honestly, I think we both thought it would be easier to just manage our own money and meet in the middle when it came to bills but adding kids into the mix made it clear: we needed a team approach.
It wasn’t easy.
We spent nearly a year adjusting our budget, reviewing our spending, and figuring out where our money was actually going. Every month, we’d sit down, pull up our statements, categorize what we’d spent and have some honest, often hard conversations about what mattered most to us.
For me, these talks stirred up a lot of fear and anxiety. Would we have enough? Were we behind? Was I failing our family by not earning more?
For Colt, it brought up feelings of guilt like he wasn’t doing enough, or like I was carrying too much of the mental load.
But slowly, through those conversations, we started to rewrite our money story. Instead of seeing it as “yours” and “mine”, we started asking, what’s ours? What do we want our money to do for our family? How can we steward it together?
It’s still a work in progress and it always will be but we’ve learned that regular communication — even when it’s uncomfortable — builds trust and helps us face the future as partners, not just co-parents or roommates splitting bills.
Like so many of us, I carry childhood money stories that shaped how I think about spending and saving:
→ I still remember the Kool-Aid and cookie stand I set up during our garage sale. I thought I’d get to keep all the money but my mom gently reminded me that if I used our kitchen supplies, I should pay her back from my earnings. At 8 years old, I was disappointed — but it taught me about the costs of doing business.
→ And when I saw something at the store that I “had to have”, my mom would tell me to wait a week and see if I still wanted it. I hated the waiting but over time, it taught me to pause, reflect, and recognize the difference between an impulse and something I truly valued. Nine times out of ten, I forgot about the thing I couldn’t live without. On the rare occasion that I still wanted it a week later, I got to experience something even better than instant gratification which is the satisfaction of saving up and buying it with my own hard-earned money.
These lessons stick with me as well as some harder ones like the fear of never having enough, or the idea that security comes from never spending a dime rather than making a plan and trusting myself to make smart decisions.
On the latest episode of Better Together, Teana Sykes reminded us that money isn’t just about math. It’s about meaning and that we all carry financial stories.
Stories of shame.
Stories of scarcity.
Stories of power, control, freedom, and fear.
And here’s the beautiful thing — we can rewrite them.
For me, I’ve been working on rewriting the story that says, “I’ll never have enough.” One of my first money memories was saving up until I finally had a $20 bill. I was so proud. I hid it away in my wallet and didn’t spend it because just knowing it was there made me feel a little safer. Now, I want to live with the belief that security doesn’t only come from saving, but from trusting that I’ll figure it out when life throws its curveballs. I want to build financial freedom with a plan, not just fear.
Teana shared that talking about money — really talking about it — is an act of self-respect as well as community care. When we open up in trusted spaces, we normalize what so many of us carry in silence. We give language to our fears, our shame, our hopes and in doing so, we create room for others to feel less alone and more free.
Money conversations break down walls. They remind us that financial freedom isn’t just about the numbers on spreadsheets, it’s about naming the emotions underneath them.
And when we do that? We don’t just get better at budgeting. We begin to heal.
Maybe your financial story is one of survival.
Maybe it’s one of rebuilding.
Maybe it’s one of dreaming for something more.
Wherever you are, be gentle with yourself. Money is complicated. Life is complicated. You’re doing the best you can with what you have right now.
And that? That’s enough for today.
✨ A Moment to Reflect
I’d love to hear what this stirred in you.
Here is a prompt to sit with — or share with me if you feel inspired:
What’s one money story you inherited that you’re ready to rewrite?
You can reply directly to this post or email me anytime.
I read every message and hold your words with care.
This space was made for you, too.
With Warmth,
Maddie
Creator of At The Hearth 🔥
Co-Host of Better Together Podcast 🎙️