There’s a particular kind of reckoning that doesn’t happen all at once.
It happens slowly.
In moments you don’t expect—
Like those mornings when you wake up with a pit in your stomach… realizing that you may not be able to sustain the way you’ve been living.
I’ve had a few of those moments in my life.
Some were about my marriage or another relationship I told myself was working just great.
But the most confronting wasn’t about a human relationship.
It was about money.
You could say it was my relationship with Money.
Or, more truthfully—
about the life I had built without really wanting to look too closely at what was underneath it.
Turned out I wasn’t the wisest of the little pigs when it came to building my foundation.
You see, for most of my life, I chose freedom. I chose following my heart above all else.
I liked having money. I wanted more money. But… more than that I wanted to help people. And I definitely didn’t want to follow the norms. I wanted to do my own thing.
At some point in my early adulthood I read a book called, Do What Love, the Money Will Follow.
No shade on those authors! They truly believed their premise. I believed it too.
Just like I believed in manifestation and the Law of Attraction.
It’s not that I don’t believe in any of those things now…. It’s just that I understand them in a much more nuanced way.
And that came from the school of hard knocks.
I sort of fell into being a small business owner when I opened up my little herb shop, Moonrise Herbs, in my early 20s.
I was a single mom with a one-year-old, I needed a way to make money, and I saw a community need and felt a burning desire to fill it.
So I just did it.
I built that little business myself, on a shoestring - and some help in the first year from my sister who was fresh out of herb school.
That store gave me a sense of independence and identity. It turned me into an herbalist and a businesswoman. It gathered community.
I got to curate offerings for healing body, mind and spirit. It was so much fun.
I loved it like another child.
But… it never really created the kind of financial stability that one can build on. I was young, I had zero business training, just a lot of passion and zeal.
When I eventually sold it in my mid-40s, I faced a choice.
I could have turned toward building more security for the future. Gone to nursing school, or gotten a teaching credential.
Found something stable. Built a foundation for the later years of my life.
Instead, I chose my heart again.
I had always wanted to be a writer—but I left that (mostly) behind when I started my business.
So, I chose the things I had always wanted more of—
writing, creativity, exploration.
At the time, it felt like choosing myself.
And in many ways, it was. I studied journalism and women’s studies. I spent 4 months in an internship in New York City. I freelanced and started my coaching business in Portland, and I moved to Mexico when synchronicity pointed me in that direction.
When I got divorced at 51 I married adventure—for a while.
But what I couldn’t see then—what I can see now—is that I didn’t yet know how to hold that kind of life.
I didn’t have the structures, internally or externally, to support it.
So over time, the gap grew—
between the life I wanted to be living, and the reality I had actually created.
I was still living with the conviction that if I followed my heart and believed enough that money couldn’t help but flow toward me.
It did… sort of. But, as bills mounted, the underlying anxiety about it all grew constant.
And eventually, I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
There’s a certain kind of humility in reaching a point where something has to change…
not because you planned it that way, but because the alternative is no longer sustainable.
I loved the solopreneur business I’d created as a life coach, I still believed I could build it into something consistent and sustainable.
But… something had to change.
And so…. Despite my misgivings I got a job.
An 8-5, Monday through Friday office job that quietly began to drain my life force.
Not because it wasn’t a ‘good job’. It just didn’t fit my biorhythms. I was in my zone of competence but far from my zone of excellence.
That was nearly three years ago.
The year of the reckoning.
When I felt the weight of all those decisions that hadn’t created the security I now needed.
And I had to face something I think many women quietly carry:
The realization that the way we’ve lived—
what we’ve chosen, what we’ve avoided—
has consequences we can’t outgrow.
Although my belief waned during that time of reckoning, I still looked for joy. I still looked for gratitude. And I still told myself that miracles DO happen.
And then towards the end of the following year, that’s exactly what showed up. Something new that I wanted, but hadn’t expected.
A relationship.
A good one. A steady one. A deeply supportive one.
The person I’d been writing about for years when I journaled about the relationship I wanted to create.
And part of what that relationship asked of me—without ever demanding it—
was to learn how to receive support in a way that didn’t collapse me.
That challenged me. A lot.
Because I had an identity—
as someone independent, capable, self-sufficient.
That identity most definitely did not include being supported by a man!
And yet, here I was, in a season where my life when that support was being offered.
I can’t lie about this…. At first, I didn’t think I could accept it.
I questioned the motivation.
I channeled my mother and my grandmother and their suffering because of financial dependence on a husband.
I cried and cried for them. And for me.
So much releasing was needed before I felt emotionally and energetically ready to accept that kind of support.
There’s a story that society tells us about what strength looks like.
That it means doing it all yourself.
That it means never needing to rely on anyone else.
There’s also a story, one that is true for many women—that relying on the support of of a man puts you in a weakened position.
I’m discovering that the first isn’t really true… and the second doesn’t have to be true.
What I’ve had to learn—am still learning—is something quieter, and in many ways, harder:
How to be honest about where I am
without turning that into a verdict about who I am.
How to take responsibility for my life and all of my choices
without using that responsibility as a weapon against myself.
How to receive support
without abandoning my own voice, my own agency, my own sense of self.
This story definitely isn’t about getting everything right.
It’s a story about seeing more clearly.
About recognizing the places where I had been out of alignment—not just emotionally, but practically, structurally.
And beginning, slowly, to live in a way that is more honest.
More sustainable.
More mine.
And the good news is - I’m back to doing what I love!
With clearer eyes.
And less fear.
I think many women reach a point—especially later in life—
where they quietly ask themselves:
How did I get here?
And is it too late to live differently?
I don’t think it is.
But I do think it requires something that most of us weren’t taught how to do.
To look at our lives without flinching.
To tell ourselves the truth—without collapsing into shame.
And to begin again, from that place.
Not perfectly.
But honestly.
That’s the work I find myself in. Again.
And it’s the work I now hold space for with other women too.
I can so relate to what you’re saying Sarah, thanks for sharing x
Thanks for giving voice to this experience…