On this day, a year ago, I got a call that no one ever wants to get:

“I’ve just been hit by a car. The ambulance is on its way.”

My husband had walked out of the door of our condo just 10 minutes before to ride his bike to his office, but hadn’t made it there.

The fact that he could call me and tell me what was going on assured me that things could’ve been so much worse, and I sprang into action while remaining oddly upbeat.
(When I look back on the photos, I realize I was in denial of what was really happening. I’ll be forever grateful for my tendency to minimize the magnitude of things when I’m in crisis. The feelings all come in later, but in the moment I’m remarkably calm, and even fun 🤷‍♀️.)

What I didn’t know as I cheerfully sat by my husband’s side, assuring us both that this would not be that big of a deal, was that we were about to navigate an incredibly difficult season (multiple surgeries, more ambulances and ER’s, and months and months of Mike not being able to walk.)

There was one particular crystallizing moment when I was sitting in Mike’s hospital room, trying to pull myself together to lead a call with my mastermind, when I realized:

I am not ok. We are not ok.

While I knew on a macro level we were gonna be fine, in that moment there was sweet relief in telling the truth that I didn’t have it together.

I sent a message letting the women in my program know what was going on and that I’d be in touch to reschedule soon.

Then I promptly passed out in Mike’s hospital bed for a few hours, finally able to release my grip enough to rest.

We were just weeks away from releasing the first iteration of Relaxed Money into the world for the first time, and I thought I knew what that program was about.

Instead of launching in those weeks, though, we were re-patterning ourselves around money, trust, and what it truly means to have enough.

And while I wouldn’t wish an accident like this on anyone, the work that we were meant to do deepened into what it needed to be because of the invitation the accident offered us.

When I talk about having a loving relationship with money, I sometimes get asked about greed.

If we love money, doesn’t that mean we’ll just hoard resources and get money-hungry and lose sight of what matters?

Our experience with Mike’s accident and needing to close our aperture to zero in only on what was essential solidified something important about money and what matters.

If you worry that putting your attention on your money (taking loving care of what you have and calling in even more) will make you lose sight of what’s important in life, I wanna mention 3 important things that Mike’s accident brought into focus for me:

1. Money buys us time. Time is precious.

Mike and I were both able to take time for his healing and to stabilize our family because we had money in the bank, financial systems, and some revenue streams that aren’t dependent on us trading hours for dollars.

Paying some loving attention to our money in the past had set us up to pay loving attention to our family’s physical and emotional health during a time of crisis.

2. If you don’t pay loving attention to your money, you’ll be forced to pay a lot more stressful attention to it eventually.

My friend and mentor Barbara Huson says:

“Either you deal with your money, or your money will deal with you.”

I was so grateful to not have to add tremendous financial stress to the already incredibly stressful period after Mike’s accident.

It may seem like focusing energy, especially positive energy, on money will make us overly obsessed with money and make us lose track of the truly meaningful things in life.

But actually, it’s the avoidance of, disorganization around, or negativity toward money that repels resources from us, leads to chaos, and causes instability, all of which create stress that puts focusing on money in a stressful way at the center.

And when money stress takes the center, everything that matters (our health, our relationship, our peace) suffers.

3. Money is a stand in for what we value. When we use it for that, we feel like there’s enough. When we don’t, we see and feel lack everywhere.

If we misunderstand and delude ourselves that more money alone will bring us peace and happiness, we’ll be chasing emptiness right until the end.

But when we take the time to get clear on what we value, and then align our financial lives with that, the feeling of enough finds us. Quickly.

There was no designer handbag, luxury car, fancy real estate, or sparkly ring that was gonna make it better when Mike was in a hospital bed and then a recovery recliner for weeks, unable to walk.

Healthy food, a financial cushion, and incredible support at home and in our business all made the whole ordeal way easier to navigate, however.

Here’s the deal:

Greed stems from the lie of scarcity.

Any time we’re gripping resources, we shut off our ability to be part of the flow of resources into our own life and the lives of others.

Closed palm.

Open palm.

Loving our money allows us to love our lives.

Loving our money doesn’t mean being obsessed with money.

In fact, it allows us to pay way more attention to the things that really matter, the things that money can’t buy.

One year after Mike’s accident, I’m thrilled to report that he’s running a little bit. It made me cry the first time I saw him.

And I’ve never been so present to what truly matters.

Money isn’t what matters the most, but loving it certainly makes it infinitely more possible to focus on what does.

All my love,

Kate