(Feast Day photo © by Jen Tucker 2021)
Happy Feast Day. It used to be Thanksgiving and then COVID hit. Last year was the first year I did not spend Thanksgiving with people I was related to. I learned things. Lots of things. About myself, about holidays, about happiness and freedom and about boundaries. You could say I was incredible thankful for the time to myself. To think. This year was the same. Maybe less insightful, but incredibly relaxing. Happy. Joyous, even.
My lovely lady made us a 10lb. organic free range turkey. It was perfect. Delicious. More food than two people could possibly need, but that's okay. No guilt, no shame. We ate, we laughed, we loved. We ate turkey for 4 days. All of it. None wasted. Even if we hadn't been able to eat it all, it's okay. For the first time in our 25 years, we have room to breathe financially. It could change any second. So, we celebrated. But without that fear that we could lose it all any second. We just relaxed.
We talk openly in my house about "poverty mentality" these days. It has caused us so much stress & harm, but we are learning to leave it behind. What is "Poverty Mentality"? It's a complicated way of thinking and living due to living or being raised in poverty. It was passed down to me and due to the lack of preparation before, during and after college, as well as how I was raised, it continued into my adult life for far too long. You keep everything. Cluttering your spaces. You keep repairing things rather than replacing them, even if the repairs aren't really fixing it. More like just sticking a band-aid on it. You find the best "deal", even if quality is lacking. a $200 mattress as opposed to a $800 mattress. Sure, you saved some $$$ but your in constant pain & never get a good night's rest.
You hoard food. Canned food. High salt food. Sugary food. Full of preservatives. Good food spoils too fast.
You don't go to the doctor or dentist unless it is 100% necessary. Basically, unless you think you are dying. You scrimp & save. You fear losing everything, constantly. That fear drives your choices. Not just at the grocery store, but with life decisions. Risking changing jobs, even if the job is what you want & better for you. Traveling is a no go. You can't trust that your vehicle will make it more than across town. So, you miss out on friend time almost all the time. your relationships suffer. You also carry so much guilt when you find yourself with more.
You find yourself hanging onto clothes that don't fit anymore, or furniture that doesn't work for you anymore because gods forbid, you might need it again someday. I promise, 99.8% of the time, you won't.
We slept on a mattress on the floor for most of our adult lives because why spend money on a bed? This works.
No, no it didn't.
There's nothing wrong with fixing things or looking for bargains, but if you keep repairing a 20 year old vehicle and spend a couple grand a year or buy a bunch of bargain things to try and match the quality of one nice thing, well, you've probably got some "poverty mentality" and you're not really saving anything, but spending more & struggling & stressing while you're at it.
Just buy the nice thing. Trust me. It'll allow you to breathe.
COVID helped us with this. Well, not the virus itself, but the break & the COVID relief money as well as therapy and reading & learning about poverty mentality and how it was really screwing us up.
It started with the bed, then the hot water heater, then the plumbing getting fixed and the kitchen sink being replaced and we just went from there. Now we have a new HVAC system and the foundation guy is coming out this week. With each new repair, there's a breath of fresh air and stress disappears. Learning how to spend & breaking that mentality has really helped. I finally took a chance at changing my job (thanks for the inspiration Lena Luthor) and that also helped.
We still have work to do.
I hope you all had a stress-free holiday as well. If not, ask yourself why? Take steps to change it. Life is short. Let's really live it.
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