Before you settle in, give yourself a little time for this one. “Grade Seven: I Ran Away From Home, but I Took My Money Mindset With Me” is a personal story about survival, unexpected kindness and learning to see my own worth. It’s the kind of read you might want to sit with—not rush through between notifications. So grab your coffee, find a comfortable spot and give yourself permission to take a pause whenever you need one. Estimated reading time: Fast reader: 10–12 minutes | Average reader: 13–16 minutes | Slow, reflective reader: 17–20 minutes
Whatever pace you choose, I hope you leave with something worth carrying into your own life. Thank you for spending this time with me. — QueenB.Divine
By QueenB.Divine
This story discusses childhood abuse, homelessness and past thoughts of suicide. Please take it at your own pace.
Notice this. There is a sound coming from my neighbour’s place, and once you hear it, good luck pretending you don’t. Beep. A little while later… beep. You know that sound? The one a smoke alarm makes when its battery needs changing? It’s not quite a bird. It’s not quite a squeak. It’s a tiny electronic complaint that somehow manages to travel through walls and move directly into your last remaining nerve.
And as I sat there listening to it, I started thinking about how our minds can do the same thing. A thought shows up. Beep. A worry follows it. Beep. Something from years ago suddenly appears while you’re trying to enjoy a perfectly innocent cup of coffee. Beep. Beep. Beep. And eventually you have to ask yourself: Is this thought warning me about something happening right now, or is it an old alarm asking for some attention?
I’m not a smoke alarm expert, but I do know this: that little sound is there because something needs attention. And as much as I would love to tell my neighbour to change the battery, the whole experience reminded me to check in with myself. How am I doing? What am I carrying? What needs something fresh? What thoughts have been chirping away in the background for so long that I’ve almost gotten used to hearing them?
Overthinking was a huge thing for me. My mind could take one little concern, put it in a shopping cart, roll it through every aisle of my life, and come home with twelve new worries I didn’t even know were on sale.
These days, I’m blessed to have quiet time at home. Time to sit, think, sweep away some of the mental cobwebs, forgive myself for whatever needs forgiving, and try to move forward with a little more compassion. Not everybody has a quiet house or an empty hour. I know that. Sometimes quiet is a few minutes in a parked car, a breath in the bathroom, or standing by the kettle before somebody asks you where their socks are. We take what we can get.
Before we get into my story, how are you doing? Are you taking care of your needs? What about your wants? Yes, your wants too. I know we like to talk about needs as though wanting anything automatically makes us greedy, but sometimes a want is what helps us imagine a life beyond simply getting through the day. Wanting rest, connection, a little beauty, a new experience, or a safer home can tell us something about what matters to us.
The trick, as always, is balance. Not every want needs to be purchased immediately, especially when the bills are standing at the door clearing their throats. But your wants deserve a place in the conversation. And if you enjoy astrology, welcome to Scorpio season. I think of it as a time for looking beneath the surface, including at the roots of the thoughts we carry about money, trust and ourselves. That’s a personal way of reflecting, not a prediction about what your life or bank account is going to do.
This morning, those roots took me back to Grade Seven. If you’ve been following my story, you know Grade Six was difficult. I described it as a bear market in the stock called me. Things felt as though they were falling, and I had no idea what the future might look like. By the time I reached Grade Seven, the darkness hadn’t politely packed its bags and left. It was still there. And around that year, I ran away from home. I decided to book it.
Now, when an adult says, “I need to get out of here,” perhaps they mean they need a holiday, a change of job, or five minutes alone in the grocery store without somebody calling to ask where the ketchup is. When I said I needed to get out, I was a child trying to leave a home that no longer felt safe.
My mother had married a man whose presence brought a deeply toxic energy into our lives. There was emotional abuse. There was physical abuse. And there were other forms of abuse that no child should have to experience. I don’t need to describe every detail to make that truth real. Some stories deserve to be told at the pace of the person who lived them. What matters here is that I left because I could not keep living in that environment.
And when I left home, I took very little with me. But I took my mindset. Good Lord, I wish somebody had checked that bag before I walked out. Because packed inside were beliefs I had learned about my worth, about what I deserved, about how safe the world was, and about whether a girl like me could ever build something good.
I didn’t know to call those beliefs a mindset. I was a kid. I wasn’t sitting on the street with a journal thinking, “Let me examine the long-term psychological implications of my childhood experiences.” I was trying to survive. But the beliefs were there, tucked into the corners of my life, and some of them followed me for years.
I use the image of a stock market to talk about my life because it helps me understand the way my sense of value rose and fell. I’m not saying a human being is a financial product. I’m saying that when I started learning about investing, I began noticing how many of the questions I asked about money sounded familiar. Is this worth anything? Will it grow? Should I hold on? What if I lose everything? And perhaps the most personal question of all: Am I worth investing in?
I know I’m gifted. I’m creative. I love to talk. I love to write. I can look at something ordinary—a phone, a cup of coffee, a squeaking alarm—and before you know it I’m having a full conversation about life. That’s a gift. It’s also a warning if you ever sit beside me on a long bus ride.
But knowing I had gifts and believing I could build something with them were not always the same thing. As I started learning about money and investing, I noticed a block. I wanted to grow. I wanted to create. I wanted to put time and energy into something that might eventually support me. Yet sometimes it felt as though an old voice was sitting in the background asking who I thought I was. Who are you to try? Who are you to expect more? Who are you to believe something good could belong to you? And that’s when I began looking at the roots.
Can childhood experiences affect your relationship with money as an adult? They can be part of it. Researchers have studied connections between adverse childhood experiences, financial stress and beliefs about money. That doesn’t mean everybody with a difficult childhood will handle money the same way, or that every money problem begins there. Wages, housing costs, discrimination, debt and access to opportunity are real factors too.
But in my own life, I began to see how my feelings about money were tangled up with my feelings about safety and self-worth. Sometimes I wasn’t only asking whether I could afford to invest in an idea. I was asking whether I was the sort of person an idea was worth investing in. That’s a different question. And it’s one I’m still learning to answer with more kindness.
Around Grade Seven, I was living on the streets in the Scarborough area of Toronto and finding places to stay in buildings. I would go to grocery stores, including A&P. Does anybody remember A&P? I can still picture going into the fruit section and stealing grapes. Grapes. While some kids were worrying about what was in their lunchbox, I was figuring out where I could get something to eat.
I’m not telling you this because I’m proud that I stole. I’m telling you because a hungry child trying to get through the day has a very different relationship with rules, shame and survival than someone who can go home, open a fridge and ask what’s for dinner. I washed my clothes in laundry rooms. I hid them in places where I hoped I could come back and find them. I tried to manage the ordinary business of being a person without the ordinary safety of having a home to return to.
And I went to school. I kept going as though things were normal. No one knew what was happening. That part still sits with me. How many people do we pass every day without knowing what it took for them to get there? How many children walk into a classroom looking like students, while privately carrying the responsibilities and fears of somebody trying to stay alive?
Can a child experience homelessness and still attend school? Yes. A young person may still go to class while lacking a stable, safe place to live. Homelessness doesn’t always look the way people imagine it. It can include moving between places, staying temporarily with others or trying to find somewhere safe night after night.
I wasn’t standing at the front of the classroom announcing, “Good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I’d like you to know I washed my clothes in a building laundry room and hid them so I could find them later.” I was just trying to make it through another day. And inside my mind, things were dark.
Around that time, I thought about leaving the stock market of life entirely. I mean that plainly. I thought about ending my life. It was not the first time I had experienced thoughts that dark, and I was barely into Grade Seven. Even now, when I look back, I wonder: How can a child be carrying that much pain and still be expected to sit down, open a workbook and get on with the day?
I was sad. I was frightened. I wasn’t impressed with what life had shown me so far, and I couldn’t see a clear picture of what came next. Yet something in me was also trying to survive. That was the confusing part. My mind could be telling me I didn’t want to be here, while my body kept finding ways to get through the next hour. I searched for food. I washed my clothes. I went to school. I looked for places where I could stay.
I don’t pretend that survival is always neat or inspiring while you’re living it. Sometimes it’s contradictory. Sometimes it’s exhausting. Sometimes it’s a child holding on without knowing she’s holding on. And if you have ever felt trapped between wanting the pain to stop and trying to keep going, I want to say this carefully: you deserve support with that pain. You don’t have to solve it by yourself, and asking a trusted person, a counsellor or a health professional for help is not a failure of self-love.
I believe in taking care of our minds. I also know that no child should be expected to think their way out of abuse, hunger or homelessness. Safety and support matter. When I say self-love and self-care will get you there, I’m not saying you should smile through danger or pretend a situation is fine. Sometimes self-care means recognizing that something is wrong. Sometimes it means accepting help. Sometimes it means getting through today and allowing someone else to help you find a safer tomorrow.
One day, a girl who lived directly above my mother’s apartment noticed something. She noticed I was wearing the same clothes repeatedly. That was it. A detail that might have looked small to somebody else caught her attention. Children notice things. Sometimes they notice what we’re trying so hard to hide. Sometimes they ask the question adults haven’t asked because they’re busy, distracted, uncomfortable or simply unaware.
She asked me why I was wearing the same clothes. And I told her my simple child’s version of the truth. “My mommy doesn’t love me anymore. There’s a bad man in our house, and I can’t live there anymore. I live in the building.” That is how I understood it then. I’m an adult now, and I know life and families can be complicated. But that little girl wasn’t delivering a court report. She was telling someone how her world felt.
And my friend listened. She ran upstairs, told her mother, and brought me with her. In the way a child can be wonderfully direct, she made it clear that I couldn’t stay outside. For a while, I stayed with them. Think about that. A child noticed another child, asked a question, and then went to an adult for help.
She didn’t have a grand strategy. She didn’t make a motivational video. She didn’t tell me to repeat an affirmation three times and visualize a better apartment. She noticed. She listened. She told her mother. Sometimes that is where a change begins. If a young person tells you they don’t feel safe, listen seriously and help them connect with appropriate support. You don’t need to investigate their story yourself to care. The Canadian Child Welfare Research Portal notes that a child sharing information that indicates abuse is one possible sign that support is needed.
I’m grateful she saw me. I didn’t stay with her family for long. Every family has its own circumstances, and that situation had its challenges too. My path moved on, and eventually I found myself involved with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society. A whole different world opened up.
☕ Notice This: A Midway Check-In
I don't want to crypto on your mental health so Before we go any further, let’s pause for a moment. You’ve been reading about some heavy experiences, and sometimes a story can knock on a door inside us that we didn’t realize was still closed.
How are you feeling right now? Are your shoulders tense? Has a memory, emotion or thought shown up while you’ve been reading? Take a look around you, too. Notice where you are, feel your feet on the floor and take a breath.
You don’t have to push through just to reach the end. If something feels triggering or overwhelming, it’s okay to put this story down, move somewhere you feel comfortable, or reach out to someone you trust. The rest of the story will be here when you’re ready.
And if you’d like a moment to reflect, ask yourself: “What has this story brought up for me—and what do I need right now?”
Your feelings deserve a seat at the table, even if all they came to say is, “I need a break.” 💛
— QueenB.Divine
When people hear “group home,” they may have an immediate picture in their minds. Some imagine only the worst. Others might imagine that being removed from one difficult situation automatically means everything afterward is perfect. My experience was more complicated—and it was meaningful. Living in group homes gave me opportunities I don’t believe I would have had if I’d stayed where I was. I met people who helped me see possibilities for myself that I hadn’t been able to see before.
I learned skills. I had experiences. I began discovering that the beliefs I had absorbed about myself were not necessarily true. That mattered to me as a girl, as a young woman, and as a woman of colour trying to understand my place in a world that hadn’t always felt welcoming.
I had some unlearning to do. Plenty of it. There were ideas about what I deserved, what I could become, what people like me were supposed to expect, and what kind of future was available to me. Some of those ideas had been planted in painful soil. And slowly, through people, opportunities and experiences, I began pulling at the roots. Not all at once. Not in one inspirational afternoon. It takes time to question a belief that has been sitting inside you for years. Especially when you didn’t choose it consciously in the first place.
How does childhood trauma affect self-worth? For some people, experiences of abuse, neglect or chronic fear can affect their sense of safety and how they see themselves. People respond differently, and those effects are not a sentence for the rest of someone’s life. Support, safe relationships and time can help.
For me, part of healing was meeting people who didn’t treat my past as the whole story of who I could be. They helped me learn to invest in deeper things: skills, confidence, relationships, curiosity and the possibility that my life could become more than what I had already survived. Those are the stocks I’m talking about. Not a ticker symbol. Not a guaranteed return. The things inside a life that can be nurtured over time.
Now, if you’re familiar with investing, you might be waiting for me to say that every bear market is a wonderful opportunity. Hold on, fancy pants. In financial markets, prices going down don’t guarantee that an investment will recover. Something can be cheap and still be a poor investment. People have different financial circumstances, and investing money always involves risk. When I talk about my life as a bear market, I’m using a metaphor. I’m learning about investing; I’m not giving you financial advice.
What I can say is that when my life felt as though everything had dropped, I eventually found opportunities to invest in myself in ways I hadn’t imagined. I had access to experiences. I learned things. I met people who helped shape my character. I began recognizing talents that had been there even when I didn’t know what to do with them.
That doesn’t make the abuse a gift. It doesn’t mean I needed to suffer to deserve a future. It means that after painful things happened, there were people and opportunities that helped me find a way forward. I can be grateful for them without pretending the pain was fair. And let me be honest: life didn’t suddenly become rainbows and roses. Oh no. Anybody who has ever tried to grow roses knows they need gardening, patience, attention and, at some point, a fair amount of manure. My life has had plenty of that last ingredient.
There were still difficult days. There were still beliefs I had to challenge. There were nights when I couldn’t sleep and moments when being positive felt about as natural as smiling at a bill I had forgotten to pay. Healing has taken time, consistency, tears, setbacks and people willing to see something in me while I was still learning to see it myself.
And the story didn’t stop in Grade Seven. There was Grade Eight. There was high school. There was a whole world ahead of me, with experiences I never would have imagined while I was hiding my clothes and looking for grapes. Some of that world surprised me in beautiful ways. Some of it brought new lessons. And yes, I’ll tell you about those too.
Let’s come back to that smoke alarm. Because while I’ve been sitting here writing, I can still hear it. Beep. I’m starting to feel as though my neighbour and I are writing this blog together.
How do you stop overthinking about the past? I don’t know if there is one magic switch that works for everybody. What has helped me is making room to notice what my mind is doing instead of treating every thought like an emergency that demands an immediate response. Sometimes I ask: What am I thinking about? Is this something I can act on now? Is there a practical step I need to take, or am I replaying an old fear because it feels familiar?
Sometimes the next step is a conversation. Sometimes it is writing. Sometimes it is putting down the phone, taking a breath, having something to eat, or giving myself permission to rest before I make a decision. And sometimes a thought keeps coming back because there’s something painful underneath it that deserves more support than I can give myself alone.
I don’t think the goal is to become a person who never thinks. Good grief, I’d be out of business. The goal is to notice when thinking has stopped helping and started keeping me stuck. There is a difference between reflecting on your past and allowing it to sit in the driver’s seat forever. And there is a difference between learning from a painful memory and blaming yourself for what somebody else did.
I still have memories. I still have thoughts. I still have days when my mind tries to hold a board meeting at a ridiculous hour. But I am learning that I don’t have to sign every document it puts in front of me.
For a long time, I thought investing was something people with plenty of money did. Fancy people. People who understood charts, spoke a financial language I hadn’t learned, and possibly owned a chair that cost more than my groceries. I’m discovering that there are many ways to invest in a life.
Some involve money, when you have it and when it makes sense for your circumstances. Some involve learning a skill, asking a question, caring for your health, setting a boundary, or accepting an opportunity you once thought wasn’t meant for you. Some involve looking at an old belief and saying, “Where did you come from, and why have I been paying you rent all these years?”
Others involve recognizing that the belief made sense when you were young. Perhaps it helped you understand a confusing world. Perhaps it kept you alert. Perhaps it was the best explanation a child could make with the information she had. But just because a belief once helped you survive doesn’t mean it has to make every decision for you now.
I had to learn that my childhood circumstances were not a complete description of my value. Being alone did not mean I was unlovable. Being hungry did not mean I deserved less. Running away from an unsafe home did not mean I was a bad investment. And needing help did not mean I had failed.
Those are lessons I wish that little girl could have heard. More than that, I wish she had been safe enough to believe them. I’m grateful for the people who helped her begin.
So, what beliefs about yourself have you been carrying since childhood? Which ones have helped you grow, and which ones might be ready for a little questioning? You don’t have to answer everything today. This is not an exam, and there will be no surprise quiz after your coffee. Perhaps begin by noticing one thought. One old sentence. One little beep. Then ask yourself whether it still belongs in the life you’re trying to build.
For me, Grade Seven was a year when I left home, struggled to survive, and met people who helped me find new possibilities. It was a chapter of deep pain and unexpected kindness. It was not the end of my story.
I’m still learning. I’m still creating. I’m still talking—obviously—and I’m still investing time in the person I see in the mirror. And that person is worth getting to know.
Thank you for reading and for spending part of your day with me. If this story connected with you, share it with someone who might need a reminder that their past is not the only place their story can go.
Follow Self-Love & Self-Care Will Get You There and join me for the next chapter. I don't want to crypto on your mental health because the is more at risk than losing money
Take care of you, and remember to invest in you.
— QueenB.Divine
thanks you for reading
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