What to Do When the PRICE of Your Future Dreams is TOO HIGH

I am living PROOF of a person who had EXPENSIVE dreams, and I found a way to pay for them ANYWAY. Becoming a therapist ain't cheap! I graduated with nearly $90k in debt due to student loans. I knew I couldn't be a therapist without a degree, so getting that degree was a NO BRAINER. 

That said, I was still pretty nervous about repaying all that debt. On top of basic nerves about pulling out student loans, I graduated in 2008, right when the stock market crashed and the Great Recession occurred.  Before 2020 and the Coronavirus Pandemic, it was the worst financial collapse to have occurred in U.S. history since the Great Depression. That led to significant job loss and hiring freezes EVERYWHERE in the United States. I couldn’t even find a job bagging groceries, let alone find a job as a therapist. There were simply NO JOBS to speak of out there.  It was a very scary and trying time, not just for me, but for so many Americans.

Compromising the dream of working as a therapist, however, was never an option for me.  I would become a working therapist, and find a way to repay those loans, no matter what it took. 

I am here to tell you, I DID find a way. Eventually I found a job. Eventually I found a way to open a private practice. My husband and I even were able to buy a house, find a way to have two kids, and even go on family vacations. I continue to find ways to pay down that debt. In the early days I worked whenever I could in college. My husband and I have gotten very creative about how we live. We have a tenant who lives over our garage to help share in our expenses. We do a lot of home renovations and repairs ourselves.  

The one thing we don't compromise on, IS DREAMS! I am lucky to have such an amazingly supportive partner. I can tell you, however, that even if he wasn't in my life, I would find a way. Of that, I am certain.

Repaying those loans has not always been fun, I will admit, it has felt like a stress in my life from time to time. It was one of the reasons my husband and I struggled to decide to have a second child for so long......those loans were eating up a significant amount of money to pay for that child! That said, we eventually figured out a way to pay for a new baby too!

Whenever I have been frustrated by those student loans, I have moved myself to "an attitude of gratitude" too. I always try to remember how unbelievably fortunate I am to live in a country where I had the OPPORTUNITY to do WHATEVER I WANT, and all I had to do was work for it.  I don't live in a place where rights are limited for women to get an education. I live here, in the United States of America, where opportunity is abundant. I had the good fortune to be able to GET student loans to finance my dreams.  Think of debt as the opportunity to fund you, not the headache to repay. There are people in other places who would do ANYTHING to have opportunities like that. 

Besides feelings of gratitude, being outrageously persistent is a gift for me in funding the things I want in my life too. I am one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet. If I want something, I put my head down and go out and get it. When someone tells me I can’t, I say—WATCH ME.

I want you to do the same with whatever it is that your heart desires. Don't allow circumstance to dictate how you live. Become RELENTLESS in the pursuit of your dreams, whatever they may be. There are people out there who somehow, some way, accomplish extraordinary things with unimaginable odds stacked against them. Let me be an inspiration to you. You go out and find stories of other people who have gone before you, accomplished the impossible, and let them be your inspiration to keep going. 

You will get there, AND you will find a way to pay for it. Don’t make paying for the life you want, be the thing that gets in your way of obtaining it. Get creative, think outside the box people try to put you in. You will find a way where others don’t know how. BE THE INSPIRATION for others to follow YOU. You will be SO GLAD you did. You will look behind you and say, “WOW, I did that.”