down to my last coffers

There are two primary things I have a struggle with. One is money. And the other has been fully trusting the Universe, believing that the Universe always has my back.

The former is still a struggle. The latter, thanks to a hard-hitting experience, is not so much of a struggle anymore... which hughely helped with what I'm about to share with you here.

My struggle with money is something I have lived with, pretty much, my whole life. It wasn't because I came from a poor family where my parents struggled; my father had a good job and my sister and I, well, we didn't need for anything (which is subtley and yet very different to not wanting for anything).

I believe my struggle with money began when I was young and my parents were (from a place of love) trying to teach me about money and the importance of saving. However, being a highly sensitive child, much of the advice they gave me I turned around and interpreted in a negative manner because I had created the belief that, no matter what (money or otherwise), I wasn't good enough. For example, a phrase that my parents have said to me (not my sister) all my life when they have given me money gifts is, "Spend it wisely" which, for me, translates into "You've never done anything responsible with your money" or to coin (pun intended) a commonly known phrase "A fool and their money are easily parted".

So my relationship with money has never been very positive. It's a relationship I have been working to improve for years now, however my limiting beliefs about myself (and money), my self sabotaging behaviour around money... it's so ingrained and powerful that I have struggled to make any headway and improvement. And that means that, running my own business where I can't just show up at an office, put the hours in, and get paid for it, well, that has been far from plain sailing.

More often than not, I have been faced with a very sad-looking bank balance (and a very panicked me).

Now... the strange fact (that I only recently realised) is that somehow, as bad as my bank balance has been, the money has always arrived so I could pay my monthly bills. Don't get me wrong, there have been more than a few sqeaky-bum moments when I didn't think it would happen. However, everytime, the money has come. Unfortunately, the money has often appeared as a money gift from my father. It's who he is. He enjoys giving spontaneous little gifts of money to his children and grandchildren.

On the flip side, however, it's been recently that I've realised that that money comes to me with a lot of negative emotion and negative thoughts. There's the emotion of shame attached to it because of the constant "spend it wisely" remark that tends to accompany it. There's the emotion of guilt connected to it that, whilst it's lovely to receive a money gift and it would be lovely to pop it into a growing savings account, it tends to always come when I'm grappling to desperately pay my bills and seeing that the money in my account just isn't there. In other words, without it, I'd be sunk... not how you think life should be when you're an adult.

Money (or anything for that matter) that carries such heavy emotions will only create heavy emotions in your life and lower your vibration. And when your vibe is low, you simply cannot attract the things you want (or need) in your life, such as money.

For a number of months now, I have been really working on my relationship with money. I've been devoting time to energy healing work so that I can change my energy around money and re-programme my subconscious that money is something good, fun and wonderful, not something that brings pain, hurt, and shame.

And slowly, very slowly, things feel like they're moving in the right direction.

However, that doesn't mean to say that everything is fine and dandy in my bank account. Recently, I had a surprise necessary expenditure outside of my normal monthly bills. For me it was a large expenditure and it sucked a chunk of money out of my account, leaving me struggling and getting dangerously low, so low that I felt that, for the first time in my life, I was actually going to have to ask my father for money (usually his gifts come spontaneously and I've never asked him for money... though I do know it's the Universe giving him a nudge at a very serendipitous moment).

Pride was the initial emotion that stepped in, stopping me turning for help from my father.

Then my desire to disconnect from the negative relationship I had created between shame and money encouraged me not to re-light that fire (I had previously asked the Universe to support me in creating a more positive relationship with money and I had wanted to cut cords and ties with any streams of money which I linked to low or negative emotions).

So, I held back. And I forced myself to trust the Universe, to really whole-heartedly let myself fall into the arms of the Universe, to fully, completely and utterly embrace what I consciously believe to be true (but struggle subconsciously with), that the Universe always does and always will have my back and will carry me through.

I'm not going to lie... it  has been far from easy. It seems that money is the one thing that really hits deep with me, that really fightens me. It truly is my achilles heel. So, there have been a few times during this challenging period when I've plucked up the courage to look at my bank account (hoping for a miracle) only to see that it has only grown smaller and smaller, dangerously small in fact, and the panic I felt in those moments tempted me to give up on the Universe and pluck up the courage to ask my father for help. However, each time, something stopped me.

And then, when I'd almost given up hope (and yet was fighting with myself not to give up hope and to stay true to my trust in the Universe), something started to happen. Bit by bit small amounts of money started to come. A client bought a card reading. Another purchased something else. A new client contacted me about an offering. Little by little the Universe was saying, "Here you go. I told you I've got your back". Granted, not everything came to fruition, however the signs have been there that the Universe is supporting me, signs that it is willing to co-create with me.

It's taken me a very long time to get to this stage of trusting the Universe. Indeed it's been years of working on my demons and addressing so many things that I have created, be they limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging behaviour, or whatever, to be able to stand up and face something personally terrifying and say "I trust you Universe" and not cave in. I think my recent experience of where my hard disk crashed and I failed to fully trust the Universe only for the Universe to prove that I shouldn't have given up hope, that experience was such an impactful lesson for me because, completely against the odds, the Universe shone through for me. Somehow that experience changed something in me at a very deep level and if it hadn't been for that, I don't think I would have been able to remain so resolute in this latest money challenge.

My lack of (subconscious) faith in the Universe is not something that has served me. Even though, for many years, the Universe has swept in and saved me when I had money problems through serendipitously nudging my father, those moments clearly didn't hit me at my core enough to change my beliefs and attitude. Because all through my life my father has given my sister, me, and his grandchildren (and no doubt others as well) little money gifts. It took something to really hit me at my core, an experience where I thought I had forever lost work that was deeply important to me, for me to change and truly, fully, completely begin to trust the Universe.

Lessons don't always come easily or quickly to me which probably explains why I struggle with the same struggles for years and decades. It takes something major, something personally catastrophic for me to fully embrace new beliefs and let go of things that are not serving me.

I hope you are not the same.