Celia Roberts Hughes
I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee as the middle child of three. My dad left when I was one, and so my formative years were in the home of a single mother. For as long as I can remember, I felt the weight of the pressure that my mom was under to be the only parent and the sole provider. While I can look back as an adult and see that my mom was making wise decisions with a long-term plan in mind, as a child I was deeply affected by how often my mom had to say no to a request because of finances. I'm an empath, so I physically felt the pressure myself. I felt the stress, anxiety, and worry that I knew she must have felt. This experience sparked something deep inside me, and I knew that I would never suffer financially. I knew I would protect myself from what she experienced.
I worked my way through college and grad school with a drive and work ethic that was as damaging as it was beneficial. I earned an MBA with an emphasis in finance, and my whole life was eventually wrapped up in money - mine, theirs, whoever’s. I worked myself to the bone. I met every goal I ever set ahead of schedule. I achieved and achieved and achieved myself right into burnout and exhaustion. I realize now that exhaustion felt like safety to me. I saw my mom be exhausted as she worked second jobs to make sure all our needs were met, and I embodied that for myself even though there was no need.
As many of you have experienced, becoming a mother changed my life. Exhaustion was no longer available to me. I had a person to guide into a life of her own, and I didn’t want her to feel the pressure that I put on myself. I wanted her to have an example of a balanced, healthy life. I began to ache for something different for my career. Something that felt meaningful. Something that brought light and life to the world. Numbers had been my safe place, but that safety no longer served me.
During my career I worked with many different people - entrepreneurs, creatives, finance professionals, investors, small business owners, middle managers, teachers, wealthy, poor, you name it - and I began to see a pattern emerge. Clients would be excited and focused on a financial plan, but with time would struggle to keep on task and would begin to make decisions that worked against their goals. I could see that the problem wasn’t the number of resources or the size of the budget. The problem was internal. And just like me, everyone has a personal story about money that affects the way they run their businesses and live their lives.
While walking one morning (which is where I do my very best processing), I was thinking about this pattern and how the plan itself isn’t the solution. I was thinking about how we as a society are failing in how we view money. We don’t educate our children about it. We don’t learn healthy money habits before being sent to college which we pay for with loans, and then we are preyed on by credit card companies. We teach our boys that their measure of worth is being a sole-provider and we teach our girls that they shouldn't worry about being financially independent. And on top of all that, we’re not allowed to talk about it! How is a person supposed to identify and heal the financial wounds and trauma that are affecting their lives when there’s no safe space to be open and honest?
This moment was an awakening for me. I realized that my work was to help people to get financial healing so that they can live a life free of financial fear, shame, and stress. My work is to talk about not just money, but about how it makes us feel - to create a space for those who are hurting, afraid, or just tired of repeating the same bad habits to find healing. In my head, I called this “financial therapy.”
It was a lovely surprise to learn that I’m not the first person to see this need, though financial therapists are few and far between. I am now a Certified Financial Therapy-I practitioner through the Financial Therapy Association, and I am here to walk with you as you do the hard work of writing (and rewriting) your money story. There is freedom in financial health, and I am honored to support you on this journey.
Consider this your invitation to begin the work.