When I was young in Belize, there were times we didn’t have bread or sugar. My grandmother would tell me to go ask people to borrow what we needed. She wouldn’t go herself. I had to knock on the door and ask.
I don’t think I understood everything about our situation then. I just knew how it felt to need something and have to tell somebody else.
Coming from Belize, I see things a little differently. I’m not completely different from anyone else, but some memories stay with you in ways other people might not notice.
I’ve been thinking about that while writing my book, I Should Have Been One of the Boys. My dad wanted a son, and I was a tomboy growing up. For a long time, I focused on how that shaped me.
Being that girl served me well. It helped me do what I wanted, and it served me throughout my 20 years in the Marine Corps.
But there are other layers of me, too.
One of them is the little girl my granny sent to borrow bread.
It’s crazy how trauma can lead us forward and handicap us at the same time.
I have about four degrees. I have skills. I have twenty years of experience from the Marine Corps. I’m proud of what I’ve done, even when a job or an employer doesn’t seem to see its value.
Still, I retired from the Marine Corps and felt this strong drive to keep going.
And sometimes I wonder how much of that drive comes from ambition, and how much comes from never wanting to feel that childhood feeling again.
Never wanting to need something and not have it.
Never wanting to knock on someone else’s door because I couldn’t provide it for myself.
That’s why finance has become personal to me.
Understanding my money has helped my mental well-being. There is peace in knowing what I have, what I owe, what I’m building, and what I can do next.
And the more I learn, the more I realize that money isn’t always just about numbers.
Sometimes it’s about safety.
Sometimes it’s about choices.
Sometimes it’s about the experiences we had long before we ever understood what money was.
I’m learning more now, and I’m thinking about how I might eventually use what I’ve learned—and what I’ve lived through—to help someone else feel less overwhelmed by money.
Because maybe there’s another person whose relationship with money started long before their first paycheck.
Maybe their story started with what their family didn’t have.
Maybe it started with watching adults struggle.
Maybe it started with having to grow up a little faster than they should have.
Mine started, in part, with a little girl in Belize being sent to someone else’s door to borrow bread.
And now I find myself asking:
If that little girl could see my life now, would she finally feel safe?
Or would she still think we need to keep proving that we’ll never have to ask again?
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