True Confession: As a money coach, I’ve struggled with my own issues around money. (Gasp!) Never was it more painful for me than after my divorce. In the end, I was able to learn from that experience and create a lot of amazing help for you to step into your own earning potential. But I’ve never shared my story. I think that until now, five years later, it was simply too hard of a story for me to tell.

As I was working through the process of putting together my new unlock your earning power program (which I am very excited about!) I had to revisit this time in my life. And, after some thoughtful reflection, I decided it was time to finally share the real story of where I was just a few short years ago. I offer it here so you know that you are not alone. And if I can survive and thrive, you can too.

Up from the Ashes – My Divorce and Rebirth 

I awoke with a start, temporarily forgetting where I was. Then it all flooded back to me.  With divorce papers not yet dry, I had taken my 9 year old son and found refuge in my mother’s home.

Everything was gone – everything. I was 39 years old, suddenly a single mother, and I had nothing. I possessed no house, decimated retirement accounts, no savings, and I was seven thousand dollars in debt. And, no divorce settlement was coming my way.

I felt like a refugee, still in shock, with my belongings in boxes on the floor of the room I had last inhabited in high school. The shadows of my old teenage music posters seemed to taunt me from the walls. Sadness washed over me, mixed with anger at a future that felt suddenly ripped away.  And I felt a cold, stomach clenching fear at the daunting prospect of rebuilding my financial life from almost nothing, at almost forty.

I thought of my young son. Down the hall he slept in a small, hastily cleaned out room. He needed a stable home, a yard to play in, and a mom who wasn’t overwhelmed. This was all like a bad time warp, or just a very bad dream that I would surely awaken from soon.

I laid back and cried.

Later, when my mind calmed, I assessed the situation and thought about what I did have. I was a money coach, and beyond the shame of a money coach who currently had no money and a negative net worth (I kept my story and situation quiet, as the emotional upheaval was so great that I could not speak about it), I did have skills that I could use. Though divorce had robbed me of so much, I knew I was good with managing my money – if I had any. And while my emotions felt out of control in this tsunami of change, I was equipped to avoid overspending, and plan where I needed my money to go.

But…I needed more money.

And the thought of being a paid boarder living with her mother for the rest of her adult life depressed me…so I needed to move quickly.

In my professional life, I had written about “underearning” and how women undersold themselves.  And now that it was all up to me, it was time to put my teachings to the ultimate test. No longer was this an academic subject.

Forget “underearning”- I was literally living in a bedroom. I had to step into financial success in a big way.

So I set out to bring my income up. Over the next year, I used every skill I possessed and I developed new tools and tricks along the way to unlock my own earning power.

From tapping into how I had undersold myself in the past so I could avoid it, to learning the skills to ask for what I needed, I learned how to attract more of what I deserved. I improved my negotiation skills. I assessed my private practice fees and marketing.  And I dove deep into the metaphysics of money. I realized I was operating under a whole host of beliefs that had kept me from taking my income to the next level.

In one year I had paid off the debt left from the divorce. I built up my savings that had been wiped out. And I saved up for a down payment on my very own home—and then found and bought a house! I even restarted my retirement accounts.  Yes, I did this in one year.

It was also the year I crossed the threshold of becoming a six-figure woman.

Exactly twelve months after waking up in my old high school bedroom, my son and I rode in the front of a moving truck, leading the crew to this new home that I bought on my own – with no husband and no money from anyone else.

I will never forget the day we moved in. My son ran around the rooms in delight, loudly proclaiming that his bedroom was his new castle. I lay on the floor of my empty living room and looked up at the trees that grew on the property I now owned. I felt like I had a personal, beautiful forest. I lay there for a long time watching the wind move through the branches.  I felt in control of my life and my future and a deep sense of peace and calm spread through me.

Today, it is five years later. I have rebuilt my retirement to where it was before my divorce. And I love my home as only a woman can – a nest that heals and provides me a retreat from the world. Next month I am breaking ground on a major remodel. And next year I have plans to build a second home for rental income.  Life is very good.

After working through this journey, I created a course that captured all the years I had been teaching women how to earn more, that also incorporated all of the new techniques I had learned and practiced. And it is time I shared these powerful thoughts about how I unlocked my earning power – with you.