12. Part 2: Heal Scarcity And Let Money Flow With Purpose

Money can bring up shame fast, but what if the problem isn’t money, it’s the story your body learned about it? 

We open with a reframe that cuts through the guilt: money is neutral. 

When it moves through grounded, healed people, it doesn’t corrupt them, it amplifies them. That single shift changes how we think about income, integrity, and the kind of impact we can actually sustain. 

I share how a childhood shaped by trauma, addiction, and instability can wire a scarcity mindset straight into the nervous system. 

Even when we do “everything right” on paper, budgeting, paying off debt, saving aggressively, we can still feel unsafe receiving. 

We talk through the difference between financial discipline and fear-based control, plus what it looked like to pay off over $100K in debt, buy a first home, build significant emergency savings, and begin learning investing while still having to heal the deeper wound underneath the numbers. 

Then, we connect embodied wealth to practical change: rewiring the nervous system so money no longer triggers anxiety, hustle, or self-sabotage.

If you’ve ever felt stuck between doing good and doing well, this conversation gives you a new way forward with personal finance, wealth, and nervous system support working together. 

Join us for Rewiring Wealth coming up LIVE! Doors close July 26, 2026.

Connect with Sara on Instagram here.

Transcript

Welcome And Series Context

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Your Money Matters series on the Modern Retreat podcast. If you haven't listened to it yet, go back and listen to the previous episode, which tells my story on why I'm doing this series. At the time of recording the episode, I didn't know what I was going to call the series, but now I do. So welcome. Today's topic is a really important one about money, shocker. And it's not a kind the kind of conversation to make you feel guilty, anxious, or small. It's a conversation around money to help liberate you. To ask the question, what if money isn't the enemy? What if money isn't dirty or corrupting or something that we have to sacrifice our souls for? What if money is simply energy? A means of exchange. And what if when money flows through good people, people who are grounded, healed, living their life consciously? What if it could change everything? I see so many of us, moms who are in business, who are healers, holding on to a belief that we have to choose between our integrity and our income. This like old paradigm belief of making money is bad. And I'm

Money As Energy Not Evil

SPEAKER_00 2:20

here to tell you it's not true. It's an old way of living that keeps us in scarcity, keeps us poor financially, spiritually. Because money is actually neutral. More money makes us more of who we inherently are. It's a tool, it's a current. The current can't move in the way that it's meant to. But when the channel is clear when it's filled with love and purpose and service, the flow becomes so powerful. So purposeful. Now I touched on this a little bit

A Childhood Shaped By Survival

SPEAKER_00 4:45

in the last episode, but I want to dive deeper. So my journey in this lifetime did not start with abundance. It started with survival. I've shared this before, and I'm gonna say I don't like quote-unquote trigger warnings. I think triggers are just activations within our nervous system. Um and if you have to pause this at any time or stop it, no worries, you can also fast forward, do what feels right for you and your body. I come from a long lineage of trauma, addiction, instability. My biological parents lost custody of me at six weeks old. They were alcoholics and addicts. Sorry, my little chipmunk came out on my porch to say hi, and my dog Dottie lost her mind. I call this little chipmunk that's around our porch Chippy. And so I'm like, where's Chippy? To bring a little bit of levity into the conversation right now as we talk about a topic that's so heavy. And um, unfortunately, my biological parents passed away when they both passed away within a couple years of each other when I was a teenager. And my biological mom was adopted under a closed adoption, so I don't think she ever knew her biological family. The family that she was adopted to and raised in, there was lots of trauma, lots of alcoholism, lots of abuse. And then my biological father, I believe his father was a veteran, and so there was lots of trauma there, and lots of alcoholism addiction on my the paternal side of my family, a lots of mental health instability from my understanding. Um many of my uncles dealt with alcoholism, passed away as a result of it. I've had cousins hospitalized due to struggles with their mental health and with the trauma that they've endured. So inherently, there's just has been a lot, and then being raised by a single mom that brings a lot of stress and trauma in and of itself, and so growing up, money was always a source of stress, not security. There was a lot of scarcity mindset, and I learned early on that if I wanted safety, I had to create it myself, had to be hyper, hyper independent and to never rely on a man for anything. And in high school, I studied personal finances. I didn't want to become rich for the sake of luxury. It actually drove me crazy when I had friends that would work jobs and then would just go out and spend all their money on new clothes, and that just felt irresponsible and frivolous to me. But that's because I was in such a state of survival. I was like, I need to learn how to provide for myself, I need to learn how to manage my money in a way that is going to provide me security and stability. And going out and spending on clothes is not going

Learning Money Skills For Safety

SPEAKER_00 9:05

to do that. I wanted to use money as a tool to become free. I wanted to know that I could meet my own needs financially, and I wanted to break a cycle of dependency and fear. And that all led me to paying off all of my student loans after all the interest accumulated over the years. Um, it was well over $87,000. Plus, I paid off, actually bought out my first car, which was a lease, which was like $18,000, um, and then paid off my credit cards. So I had experience of paying off over $100,000 in debt, and then that led me to buying my first house at the age of 24 once my debt was paid off, saving up the money to have a little bit of a down payment for a house. And then I learned how to save $100,000 from there to have money in an emergency savings and to have money to fall back on, and now begin investing in the stock market to grow my wealth exponentially. And why I'm telling you all of this is because none of it happened because I worked harder than everyone. Yeah, I worked a lot. I I did work overtime, I took on extra nannying jobs, and I knew that I was making a short-term sacrifice for a long-term reward. I knew that paying off my student loans, paying off my debt, was gonna allow money to flow so freely in my life and give me options like I've never had before.

Debt Freedom And Receiving More

SPEAKER_00 12:08

And that's exactly what happened is I was healing my relationship with money, and I realized my nervous system had been wired for scarcity. I thought there was never enough, and so after I paid off my debt, bought my first heart home, and started saving, I was hoarding money, I was stressed, and once I began to heal the wound of scarcity in my nervous system, I began to trust that I was worthy of receiving, that I was safe, that I was enough, that money could flow differently. And it did. Oh my gosh, my mind was blown. The promotions that I received in my career, the bonuses, the raises, the unexpected paychecks that I would get because my car insurance had to refund me a hundred couple dollars because they made a mistake, or the bank noticing that they underpaid me in my high yield savings, and so they corrected it and gave me even more. It's incredible how my vessel, my channel, my body has changed to be more clear for receiving money. I've stopped blocking it with fear and have started allowing it with so much gratitude, and have been able to release the grip, open my hands to giving more money, generously donating to local causes I believe in, beginning to release the grip and learn about investing not only in my 401k that I have been investing in my entire career, but I'm beginning to learn to invest in the stock market and releasing the grip and the fear and the control and having faith and trusting that money is a tool. It's a current. If you've ever seen the wizard of Oz, you can follow me. If you haven't, I'm gonna.

Ruby Slippers And Resource Stewardship

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Uh, what's that called?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Not ruin the ending. Spoiler alert. I'm gonna give you a spoiler if you haven't seen it. And if you haven't seen the one, Wizard of Oz, totally worth watching. Dorothy doesn't need to go to Oz to find magic. She already has it. The ruby slippers aren't evil, they're tools. They give her power, but she only uses them when she understands their purpose. And money is like those slippers, it's a tool for manifestation, it allows us to bring our dreams into reality. And lately, I've been reflecting on all of the evidence and all that I keep seeing out there with coaches who coach, they're not personal finance coaches, they're money coaches, they are embodied wealth coaches. There is the manifestation babe who has multimillion dollar or billion-dollar brand where she teaches you how to manifest and she does teach on money, and so I keep seeing all this evidence that now is the time to heal our relationship with money to embody our worthiness and our wealth. There's a biblical reference that, and I'm I grew up Catholic, I read sections of the Bible, but I think it's helpful having another example, and so um I'm gonna say, don't quote me on this one. I can find the exact verse, but story of Joseph, and he was sold into slavery, imprisoned, and rose to become second in command in Egypt. And it was because he understood stewardship, he understanded how to manage resources during times of abundance, so that um there would be enough during times of famine. And he embraced his role as a steward of resources as a steward of money, of wealth. And because he did, he saved millions of lives. And the thread of this entire episode is that money flowing through good people changes everything, changes everything because it amplifies who you already are, and it gives you a means to amplify your impact, to donate time, money, resources to nonprofits, to charities that you actually care about, that you believe make the world a better place. When you have those resources, you get to serve more people. You provide stability for your family, you model a new way of being for your children, and if we reject money out of shame, we limit our ability to do good. We keep ourselves small, we starve our potential. So I want to wrap this up by speaking to how do you become a

Nervous System Work For Wealth

SPEAKER_00 20:47

good person who allows money to flow? Well, it starts with the nervous system. This is a body-led approach podcast, after all. And if your body associates money with danger, maybe you grew up saying money caused conflict or felt unsafe asking for what you needed. Your nervous system will resist abundance and prosperity. It'll trigger anxiety when you receive money, when you receive a check. It'll keep you stuck in the grind and hustling because it feels familiar, feels like survival. And to change this, we have to rewire that response. We have to show our bodies that receiving money is safe, that having money is safe, being wealthy is safe. And this is where the somatic work comes in. Breath work, meditation, inner child healing, they all play a role. Going back to early moments of scarcity and the energy and beliefs that have been trapped in our body to release and rewire those parts of ourselves, those younger selves, to say, you are safe now, you are provided for, you are loved. And when we do this deep internal work, we actually stop leaking energy. We stop self-sabotaging. We stop attracting situations that drain our resources. And instead we attract opportunities that align with our values. We become magnets for prosperity. Not because we're greedy, but because we've tapped into our innate essence, to the part of ourself that is interconnected with everything on earth in this reality.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

We access our whole being.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Changes the world. It has a ripple effect. And now more than ever, this is the work we need to be doing. Thinking about the women in your life, the mothers who are struggling. When you show up and heal your nervous system, heal your body, heal your self-worth, heal your relationship to wealth. You model something. You model everything. That you're able to teach your children that their worth is not tied to their productivity. And that when you use your resources to support others, you create a ripple effect of generosity and of making the world a better place. And that is the true meaning of prosperity. It's not just about having more stuff, it's about having more capacity to love, to heal, to serve, to create. Do this now. Don't wait.

Reflection Questions And How To Reach Out

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Don't skip over it. Don't say, I'll get back to it later. Because most likely you will not. Pause it and reflect on it now. How is money flowing through me right now? Is it stagnant? Is it fearful? Is it moving freely? Is it supporting my highest good?

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Go reflect.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

And after you reflect on this question, I would love to hear from you. Reach out to me via email, Sarah at remoteymamas.com or on social media. Introduce yourself. Tell me what landed for you in this episode. Did you resonate with the idea of the money as a tool? Is it the first time you're hearing this? Did it stand out? Maybe you've heard it before. Did you recognize your own resistance with money? Let's start a conversation about how we can all become more clear vessels for abundance. Because together we can rewrite the story. We can show that money flowing through good people really does change everything. Thank you for being here. And I'll see you on the next episode of the series.