What brought me to be an advocate?

The day my baby started kindergarten, something inside me broke. I didn’t know what to call that thing that broke, or how to be with any of the emotions I was feeling in response to it. The only thing that was clear was that I was not the same person I was before that day and whether I liked it or not, there was no going back.

It felt like a sudden wave of grief or depression that wouldn’t leave me, and I was utterly confused and annoyed about feeling that way. Nothing about my daily life had really changed. He was simply going to school in the morning now instead of to his babysitter’s place. He loved school too, so it wasn’t anything like that either. I truly couldn’t wrap my mind around why I felt so bereft about him starting school.

Now I know that it was my identity, or my sense of self that broke and wouldn’t go back together that was causing that grief. My role in life changed. I was no longer a mother of two completely dependent small children. I was a mother of two school-age children who didn’t need me so much any more. That is what rocked me to my core and filled me with grief.

Now I also know that something else happened with my baby’s milestone, something that a lot of people who feel stuck in unhappy relationships like I was don’t like to admit: I was more financially independent with two children in school than I was juggling the cost and logistics of childcare for them both and trying to make my work fit around it.

This financial shifting of the scales, changed the scales of our relationship and it was becoming clear that only one of us was wanting those scales balanced. Without me biting my tongue about the inequity to ‘keep the peace’ and without me over-functioning to make up for his under-functioning, it didn’t take long for the marriage to break apart too.

I chose to leave him back in 2020, but I didn’t choose a lot of what came next – namely three years of parenting hell and six years of expensive legal bullshit, as he attempted to financially ruin me.

While the fallout of what he did is something I would never wish on anyone, it also brought me to where I am now and who I am now. This place isn’t perfect, but it is pretty fucking amazing too – and I did it. I lived through poverty, through my kid’s abuse, through stress-related health issues, and so much more. I survived it all, and now I’m learning to allow thriving to take place of all that survival.

What I learned through all that surviving is my personal power – which doesn’t come from my bank account or my productivity or any other temporary circumstance. It is me. I am the power. My ability to sit with the shit and to grow through it. My ability to decide what I want and to move towards it no matter how unlikely it may seem from where I’m sitting.

I learned how to advocate for myself and my children and how to stop asking permission for things that aren’t for anyone else to give or deny. This is what has sparked this newly adopted title of advocate.

If I could go back and tell myself one thing when I was in the pits of despair over my baby’s milestone, it would be that, You aren’t dying. You are about to be born into something new – and you do get to choose what that is. You can do anything you set your mind to, just make sure you’re heart is in on the convo. Your heart has the map, even when you don’t know where the fuck you’re going.

Being an advocate for financial justice is how I take the very unjust things that have happened to me during my long path to divorce, along with all I learned through navigating it, and make it mean something positive in the world rather than letting it turn me bitter.

My goal is to make it so that no one ever has to stay in jobs or relationships or places that are harming them, simply because of the financial barriers to leaving.

Some of this work is individual and some of it is systemic, but I believe they both feed each other. Becoming personally empowered beats the system. Enough empowered people acting together will change the systems.

I know what needs to change and I am constantly being given new avenues and platforms that are helping me sort out just how to effect that change. It all starts with being the change I wish to see in the world.

Personal Financial Empowerment

Economic Justice

“Economic justice aims to create opportunities for every person to have a dignified, productive, and creative life that extends beyond simple economics.^” – Wikipedia