The history of DA in Minnesota at the DA Regional Fellowship Day in Minneapolis, MN

Well, I'm Judy and I'm a debtor,

and I'm going to talk about the history of Minnesota DA in Minnesota to the best of my recollections and to the best of some other people's recollections. And if I leave out anything that anybody knows, just tell me after the meeting.

According to our literature, that program of Debtors Anonymous began in New York in 1968, but it didn't really evolve into the 12 step program that we know today until about 1970.

It seemed to go dormant for a while and then in 1976 it started to catch on again until now there are 500 or approximately 500 meetings worldwide.

But DA didn't get to Minnesota until 1990 when two people who used to live in Minnesota when were in San Francisco and they returned to Minnesota and they brought Debtors Anonymous with them and also a program

called BODA, which is which stands for Business owners DEA. So they started both these meetings in Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis in September of 1990. In June of 1991, I had a major money crisis, one of many major money crisis.

And my mother was going into a nursing home

and she had to account for all of her money and I owed her thousands of dollars and I had no way to pay it back. And I was so worried about what I was going to do. And then I had a Phoenix newspaper, which is a recovery newspaper and it had a list of,

you know, all the 12 step meetings in the city. And so I looked at that, I looked up this list of meetings and there was Debtors Anonymous. And I just,

I'm just so touched when I think about that because I found Debtors Anonymous that day and I,

I went to my first meeting the next night and, and you can see I'm still here

and, and I'm, I'm very nervous actually.

Anyway, as a result of a pressure meeting, We, we used to call them pressure meetings.

I got a job at the Salvation Army. Well, where else would I go, you know,

And then I had to work on Monday nights and,

and that was the same night as the DA meeting met. And I just thought I just can't do without Debtors Anonymous. And so I thought I've just got to start a meeting of my own, you know. So as it turned out, it wasn't actually my one meeting, but I started one in 19. Let's see, I guess it was about 1991, November 9th of 1991

and, and that was the prosperity meeting and it's,

and that was at Prince of Peace in Saint Louis Park.

And then we outgrew that space and moved to Hopkins Methodist Church in August of 2001. And then a few years later we moved again to Woodale Church in Eden Prairie. And so the Prosperity Group is still still around.

In September of 1993, I decided that Saint Paul needed ADA meeting,

so I started a group at Saint Anthony Park Methodist Church and

another woman came with me. And so we sat there for months and sometimes we had two more, two other people and sometimes we didn't. The most people we ever had was 6, which included a baby. We, we counted her

and, and then finally I gave up after about a year and my friend hung in there for a while longer and then pretty soon she gave up too. And so we just decided that Saint Paul wasn't ready for ADA meeting, you know,

but then in October of 1997 she started another meeting in Saint Paul and it was called the premises meeting. And it is just a wonderfully successful meeting, DA meeting at Saint Pauls United Church of Christ and it's still going strong. So I guess Saint Paul was ready for a DA meeting after all.

Also in 1993, a few of us started an intergroup meeting

and we met at the apartment of one of our members for us all, quite a while actually. And then we started meeting at churches and but we have met every single or intergroup has met every single month since it started. And currently I think it's meeting at Merriam Park Library. Is that right? In Saint Paul on Wednesday night and everybody is welcome to attend,

you know, if you belong to DAS. So

let's see.

And

also in the late 90s, de Intergroup sponsored several retreats at Mount Olivet Retreat Center, and they seem to be a really good way to strengthen our program. And so they were, and they were fun too. So we're looking to do those again

in 1993.

I

excuse me, I went to my first DA convention which was in Dallas, TX and

and it was and I think I paid for the whole thing myself, almost the whole thing myself. I did anyway. So we don't do that anymore because now

DA groups send at least have sent at least one person to the DA convention every year except maybe for one year when there was an airline strike or something. So that's pretty remarkable, I think.

Let's see.

And

oh, and this is pretty remarkable too. I think in 2002, our DA community volunteered to host the International DA Convention in Minnesota, in Minneapolis. And so many people worked so hard on that convention and we, it was just a wonderful success. Well, we thought it was a wonderful success

and it was a lot of fun and it was a lot of work too. So anyway, I'm just going to finish up here by mentioning the DA, while all the DA Minnesota DA meetings that I can think of, some of which have come and gone,

umm, and others that are still going strong.

The First Friday speaker meeting has been meeting for about 10 years in Roseville and at Saint Christopher's Episcopal Church, and there's a speaker there every month. And there was another speaker meeting called South of the River Speaker meeting that mid and Savage, and that one lasted for almost two years. Then there's the Visions meeting that started in 1995

and excuse me, it still means that Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and people keep coming there to share their visions and see their visions come true.

There's there've been several business DA meetings that have come and gone over the years, but there's a meeting called Twin Cities Business DA and that's still meeting at Bethlehem Covenant Church in Minneapolis. And another Minneapolis meeting is the South Minneapolis team

meeting, and that's our only meeting that provides childcare. It started in about 2004 and it meets at All God's Children Community Church in Minneapolis. Some of the meetings that have come and gone are these.

The Richfield DA meeting at Saint Nicholas Church. Some of these might sound familiar to you if you attended any of them. The under earners meeting. The Serenity Solutions for solvency meeting,

the big work step study group, the totally committed business DA group in a meeting called what was called women, money and healing, but it turned out to not really be a DA group after all. So

and we've also had meetings in other parts of the state. We had one in Rochester that lasted a year in 2006 and and we had one in Ely, MN that lasted about a year.

And then there have been several in Duluth in the most recent one started in the fall of 2003 and

and it's still, it's still going and I believe two of our members, two of the members from the Duluth meeting are here today.

There they are

so welcome.

Our newest meeting started on September 23rd, 2007 at Oak Knoll Lutheran Church in Minnetonka and it's now got about only 8 to 12 members that come pretty much every week. And

so that's about it for all the meetings. And that's pretty much all I know about DA in Minnesota. And, but what I do know is that I'm so grateful that all of you are here today and that you keep coming back to DA and that you continue to work on your programs and, and you help keep DA strong for the rest of us. So thank you.

Thank you, Judy. Our next speaker is our keynote speaker and I'd like to introduce Siddiqui.

It's so humbling to go after Judy.

In 1998, I had a phone list with Judy's name on it. I'm going to cry. I called Judy. I had bounced, I think about 15 checks in my checking account. Of course, that was all the money I had in the world. I didn't know how I was going to make rent. And I called Judy on the phone list and Judy was just amazing.

She was just so kind and compassionate. And I remember at that time in 1998 that I was like really desperate. I was in some other 12 step programs

and I was driving here today thinking about that and thinking what about 15 Bounce checks and being self-employed and having no money for rent and no money for anything and no food in the refrigerator was not enough of a bottom to stay in DA.

But it wasn't

so I'm Sid and I'm really grateful. Member of Debtors Anonymous. I'm an under earner and I'm a compulsive debtor and spender

and I don't exactly know why I'm the one up here speaking today. I'm sure that any one of you qualifies as well as I do to be here and I also know that you all have inspiring stories and I look forward to hearing them.

I will tell you that the one thing that I know for sure is that I come from a family of passionate under earning

and what I mean by that is that my parents are a very talented, very passionate professionals and that they have always under earned. My father is a plastic and reconstruct, a surgeon by any rights, a profession that earns a ton of money and has for his entire life managed to be in incredible amounts of debt

and to this day has no savings, no pension plan, no money. And he's 67

and has been attempting suicide for the past five years. And a lot of it is financially based. So the question of whether this disease, as opposed to other diseases that are chemically based, whether this disease could drive you to the brink of insanity or death. For me, there is no question because I've seen it in my family.

But he's very passionate about his career and he's completely an under earner.

My mother on the other hand is an amazing minister. Was out in the community always doing beautiful amazing work, never earning enough money to support herself, always living off my dad after their divorce and living way beyond her means as a minister. Always living off the money from him and never having the reality

of what she did for a living in alignment with the lifestyle that she wanted to lead.

Again, a passionate under earner. And so I have to look at myself and my career and what got me to Debtors Anonymous. And I have to say that the humor of it is, is that it wasn't about being in debt per SE. It was about bringing my friends that were in debt that really needed a 12 step program to Debtors Anonymous

twice because I had other 12 step programs and

and I didn't have debt per se. And I will describe the debt that I did have and how many times the universe saved me from the debt and how when I came to Debtors Anonymous, I focused on the debt and didn't see the under earning and the deprivation and the entire lifestyle as a part of the disease,

which for me it absolutely is. So I was financially independent when I was 16.

I moved out of the house when my parents got divorced. It was a very nasty divorce. My mother wouldn't even let me take the comforter off my bed when I moved out because it was hers as a part of the divorce. So I literally left the house at 16 and lived at the Yoga Society of Rochester, NY with a bunch of hippies and finished high school on my own and then went off to a very prestigious art school and lasted there about two years before I had a extreme mental health

crisis which landed me on a psych ward where I explore the insanity of other diseases for two years. And when I got out I was on my own without any resources. So I lived at the Women's in New York City and was on welfare for several years and until I almost drank and drugged myself to death. At which point I ended up here in a deep mental fog in treatment in Minnesota,

thinking that I had

some kind of insurance that was going to cover it, only to find out that I had $34,000 worth of treatment bills and no way to cover it. So by the grace of God, I lived with my godparents in Roseville in their teeny little basement and started to work a very diligent 12 step program with a A. And I'm very grateful for the 12 steps of A A. And I have to say that

what I've really humbly learned

is that you can really know the 12 steps of another program and that it just absolutely doesn't translate into DA. Like you can't go to AA and like get your money together in a A and yeah, you lots of heads like yeah, we know.

And wouldn't it be so nice if you could wrap it all into one program in my. I often joke with my family and friends that I'm going to start a program called Anonymous. Anonymous for those of us that

just during so many anonymous programs that you can't keep straight what anniversary you're on. But anyway, I am my sponsor at the time said, you know, you need to not focus on your passion as an artist. You need to focus on getting rid of this treatment debt. And so irony of all ironies, I became a bill collector

when at that very time I had bill collectors calling me and hounding me. And it was interesting because even back then I was semi working one of the principals of this program, which is you only have what you have. And I would have to get on the phone with them, with my sponsor sitting there and say I can only pay you $5.00 a month. Knowing that I had no resources that they could take away from me and that that's what I would pay in the every month. I paid them what I could

and then I diligently paid them. But that I worked this job as a bill collector and I have to say that I was the most

compassionate bill collector that that company ever had. And that I was also their most successful boat bill collector. I collected 1/4 of $1,000,000 a year for this company. And they just, they finally got to the point where the management team would listen in on my calls. They couldn't figure out how I did it. And it was because I was a debtor and I knew the psychology and people would say, well, I'll send you.

You know, I would say we need you to send us $100 next week. And they'd say, OK,

and I think, oh, they're never going to do that. They're going to send us $25.00 in a month. So that's what I put in the system. And of course, that's what they would.

So my numbers went up and up.

Anyway, it took me several years working on this debt and it was so humbling because there is this ache in me to live my passion, you know, I mean bill collecting. Oh my God, it was so humbling. I hated it. I would show up every day in this corporate get up and bill collect and it was just horrible. It was just a negative atmosphere and I just to be creative.

And yet I had this debt. And that's the thing that debt does. It keeps you from living in your passion. If you're really, you know, there's this pull, this struggle. So finally one day my aunt said I think you just need to get over it and apply to art school.

I said I can't, I have this debt. Although I was about, I think I was at least 3/4 of the way through paying off the debt because I wasn't paying rent or anything.

So I was really working the 12 step program. I was doing the steps, I can't say enough for the steps and ironically I had just finished all my 9th step amends.

Steph's heard this part of the story when one day I came home from work and there's a stack of mail. And it was

all these tax returns that had been filed, and they had never been able to track me down because I'd been living at the Y and then I'd been in treatment. And it was all these checks from the state of New York. And I had worked for this. I had worked for Ralph Lauren as a graphic designer and made a lot of money. And I had all these checks

from the state. And then my sponsor, bless her heart, she since passed on, had written a letter to this foundation saying all this service work that I had done, I'd done a ton of service work. And they had made a donation

in my name to pay off part of my treatment bill. And then my mother, who had never given me one cent, sent me a check in. This one stack was the exact amount of the rest of the debt that I had left,

and so in one stack of letters I was free of debt.

So that was the first get out of jail free card I had.

So I went on and I applied to art school and I swore that I was not going to go into debt for art school. I wasn't going to do it because that debt was so oppressive. And I knew it was oppressive and I wasn't going to do it. And I applied for art school. And by the grace of God, I said, God, if this is what you want me to do, I'm not going to go into debt. I got a full scholarship to art school. I now am an adjunct professor at that art school,

and my students graduate with 60 to $120,000 worth of debt.

And my goal is to teach them how to be practicing professionals, to give them the tools that they need to go out and be successful artists. And it's a very humbling thing because I know what a battle it is. So anyway, I graduated from art school, I got an amazing job through an internship. My focus was on making money as an artist, and I did. And yet I still had this deprivation thinking. And here's what it looked like.

I had this just

amazing resources and the rules of the road at this job were that you could use the resources to kind of build your portfolio. Well, I not only did that, but I used it on outside jobs. So I would use the camera equipment. I'm a photographer. I would use the studio. I would use all the resources for paying jobs.

So rather than renting the equipment, rather than renting the gear, rather than keeping it clean, I was using it to make money, right? Not to say other people weren't doing it, but I was doing it a lot. So I was making a lot of money off the side. And I continued to do that. And that ended up in DA as my hugest amendment I had to make. And I cannot tell you how

terrified I was when I had to go to the manager of the studio and make the amends for really abusing that system.

It was like the no way in hell amend. You know, it was on that column of Oh my God, how am I ever going to tell this person that I like stole essentially all this stuff? But anyway,

underlying that was this belief that I don't have the resources I need to make it in the world and I need to steal it.

And you know, when you're in that spot of deprivation thinking, the sad thing about it is that you don't allow the universe the opportunity

to show you

that there really is abundance. You know, you don't allow the abundance to come to you if you're always pre empting it with deprivation. That's my point on that. Well, of course, there's always the healthcare issue, right? We talk about that in the the signpost to becoming a compulsive debtor and not paying healthcare. Well, how about just not having healthcare?

Forget not paying the premium, just not having it.

And I ended up leaving this company and starting a very, very, very extremely successful studio on my own in doing just outrageously well for a couple years until I had a huge health crisis, at which point I went from tons of money to, Oh my God, I'm in the emergency room five times.

And there's those bills

which I can probably manage to pay, but now I have to have surgery and I'm going to be out of work for about 3 months. So I went to Ruth Hayden and I had been doing Ruth Hayden's women and money classes and I, I find Ruth Hayden to be an amazing inspiration and I know that she really believes in this program. And Ruth Hayden was my doorway to eventually. And I love Ruth Hayden and she makes all the sense in the world

to a certain point. And then there's just the disease, you know? Then you just need to get your butt to DA.

You can do her workshops and then you just need to go to weekly meetings and work the 12 steps

and that was really the point I was at. But

it was humbling because I had done really well. I had stayed out of debt. I had a beautiful car, I had a beautiful studio, I had an amazing apartment. And Ruth looked at the scenario and she said your health has to come first. And it's really too bad that you didn't have a prudent reserve. And it's really too bad that you didn't save because where would I have learned that?

Where where would I have learned that? In the passionate under earning family, they didn't save. They always live beyond their means because they were passionate about everything, about a beautiful lifestyle, about, you know, how you looked out in the world. And they were not passionate about taking care of themselves. Other people, yes, themselves, no. And so I had no savings

except for that when I worked for that company, I had built up

a pension plan in, Ruth said. There's two options. One is cash in your pension plan and live off that. And two is declare bankruptcy

and get rid of the credit card debt you have, get rid of the car and you'll be OK for a little bit while you recover. And I was like to clear bankruptcy. Are you kidding? That's for people that are losers. I am not a loser. I have a plus credit. I was a bill collector. I mean, I have like a hugely great credit score. And she was like, well, I'm just saying, you know, it's your life, it's your health.

And I really thought about it. And I thought, OK, I don't want to touch my pension plan.

And I went through the steps of declaring bankruptcy, which is so humbling, as many of you probably know. And that was 1998. And I, you know, you've seen the Wizard of Oz. Do you remember the scene where the lion is going to meet the wizard for the first time? And he's like, with trembling knees, walking down the hallway, And he grabs his tail. And then he, like, the wizard says, what do you want? And he, like, runs. And he jumps through the stained glass

that was that just kept going through my head as I walked towards the judge of bankruptcy. I was like, where?

And you know, it's so hard. It was just so hard to give it all up, to have the car repossessed, the beautiful new car repossessed.

You know, I still didn't get it. I still thought I had control

because I thought it was choosing

and I still didn't get the under earning part. So I did three months and I thought OK, I'm over this. I can go back to my life. And as I'm recovering, riding my bike through Uptown and this van hits me.

And it was amazing because when that van hit me, it was like this final wake up call. I was really depressed at the time. Let me mention that I've always suffered from some major amounts of depression which have really added to my under earning. I think that the depression has not helped the lack of motivation, especially when you're self-employed and you have to get motivated and you're depressed.

Those two things together are not a great combination at all. And that's a huge understatement. So I got hit by a van, and the

driver of the van did not have any insurance. And for whatever reason, I didn't call the cops, which was not good self-care.

And I just remember making a decision at that moment that something in my life really needed to change and that I just really needed to make some different decision about what I was going to do. And I just clearly couldn't go back to the big studio and I just needed to

pull a geographic, as we say in a A and and I did because at that point I really had nothing except for my pension plan.

So I cash in my pension plan. And at that point, Ruth Hayden ended up on my eight step list. When I got back in DA Ruth Hayden definitely ended up back on my eight step list. And I cashed in my pension plan and I took my camera, which was the only thing I had in my life. And I got on a plane with an open-ended ticket to India,

which was the only place that I had ever wanted to go in my life. I had no idea why. And I'll make this part of the story really short, But,

and it sounds really crazy, but when you're crazy, it makes sense to just

why not go to a country where everybody is starving and poor and in deprivation? I'll fit right in.

And indeed I did. And so ironically enough, I ended up living with a group of Tibetan Buddhist nuns for a year. And that's the story in and of itself. But what I have to say is that these women had suffered brutal torture in China, and they were the most illuminated, beautiful women I had ever met. And I'm like, how can people who have suffered so much and live such a humble lifestyle

be so at peace?

I want to live. I want what they have. And so I did. I lived with them. I ate white rice three times a day. I drank rancid yak butter tea. And I documented their daily life. And I had never done journalism before. I had no idea what would come of the whole thing. But I knew that I needed to be there in that humble circumstance and learn something about myself

and learn something about transforming suffering

into meaning. And I did. And umm,

and that's again, it's a whole story in and of itself. But I ended up becoming a journalist on that trip and through just the most bizarre set of circumstances photographing the Dalai Lama for Time magazine. And when I came back, I knew that I had a different career and a different calling. But again, passionate under earning. I earned $100 for a 10 day assignment for Time magazine. And although it was like the opportunity,

career opportunity of a lifetime, $100 was not enough

to live on. So I came back and I moved in with my mom in her little condo in San Francisco and we pulled her king size bed apart and I had my twin bed and she had hers. And I was so depressed. One day we went to Sam's Club and I did not have culture shock in India, I think because I felt like I fit in with the deprivation there. But when we went to Sam's Club, there was these people

and they had like these jumbo boxes of Cheerios

in these like 20-4 packs of steaks. And I just realized what a country of abundance we live in and how deprived I felt. And I started crying and I couldn't stop because I just thought I'll never get to a place of abundance. And I live in this place of just deprivation constant

and I started crying insecurity had to like literally carry to me to my car and to my momma's car. And we still laugh about it this day that the Sam's Club nervous breakdown.

It's just part of my story anyway. I ended up having many, many more amazing under earning passionate opportunities that included doing

diving for the Navy Seals, underwater photography and going to South Africa and photographing Nelson Mandela. Mandela

and all of these were amazing opportunities, none of which I earned money at, you know, and so I'm just thinking about my career as a freelancer as passionate under earning. And when I came back, I had nothing and I was still living on a friend's couch and, you know, kind of getting jobs piece meal. And then again, I brought my friend in 2000 to the promises meeting of debtors anonymous to what I call the Poopy Diapers room.

If you have ever been there at that time, it smelled. It was in

the nurse free or something and it smelled and we were like, Oh my God, it's going to any lengths

to just stay there for a whole hour. And

and what I remember was thinking that I was there for my friend and thinking I don't have any debt. I don't have any bills. I don't even have a checking account because when you click declare bankruptcy, like you can't have any of that. And I was just taking the money that I was earning and bank walking, like taking the person's check, going to their bank, cashing it, and just living that way.

Well, when it came time to do taxes, my tax person freaked out because I had created debt to myself in my business. So my numbers were actually in the negative. Like, OK, how can you spend all this money on equipment when you don't have any money coming in? So for several years my numbers just kept going in the red, in the red, in the red. And in 1998, I had a negative $25,000 in my business.

And, and she said, you know, the IRS actually considers your business a hobby

at this point. You're not a professional, your hobbyist. The person shooting the Dalai Lama for Time magazine? Hobbyist.

Very humbling but true

today. I just want to talk about today because I came to DA in 2000

and of course all I heard again was the debt part and I did not have any credit cards. I did not have any credit card debt. I didn't have a checking account to balance checks like I had had two years previous when I called Judy. Problem solved right now

took me two more years of research opportunities in my life of earning money and and justice misery till I came back with another friend that needed DA so bad. She needed it so bad and so I got so sick of her bouncing checks and I said you have got to go to Dai will take you to the promises meaning of DA and I came with her and for the first time I heard the word

under earner. Oh man, I was like, Oh my God,

have they changed the program for me? I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach. I did. I just felt like someone had knocked the wind out of me when I heard the word under earner because I instantly realized that that was my issue, that it was really about debtting to myself,

studying to myself

and that that was that was it that in 9th state ever since. And

you know, the pressure relief groups to get me on track have been the most amazing things, especially since I own my own business and the money is like this. And then it's like this and then it's like this. And

owning your own business is, it's scary, it's rewarding,

it's amazing. But I don't know how people do it without. I don't know how people do it without

My sponsor has been probably the most critical part of my debtor's anonymous program. My sponsor, the meetings, the steps. I could not do it without my sponsor. I talked to my sponsor just about every day. She knows every detail of my life. She knows about my money. She knows about the emotional stuff going on. She knows all the nitty gritty details. She's met my entire family. So when we talk about,

you know, what's going on over here, she totally gets it and and she's just so non judgmental. She has never once judged me. Now every once in a while she'll give me a kick in the butt like, OK, this is the third PRG we've had and your numbers are still not on the table. What's going on? You know, and she will, she will hold the line of truth for me, but she has never once judged me

and she has always been there for me. And she is an amazing sponsor.

And then that promises meeting has grown. I mean, when we were in the poopy diapers room the first time I went, it was like 3 people in 1998. And now it's like 30 to 40 people and we're in a beautiful room with nice couches and a chandelier and a fireplace. If you haven't been there, it's definitely worth going and it's an upgrade

and it's and it's an amazing group of people. It's an amazing it's amazing meeting. And I just want to say that

I went,

I, I may, I went through the steps and again, doesn't matter how many other programs you've done that when you like come to this program, you do the steps in this program. And I got to that eight step and the manager at that studio that I was at that I used all those resources that was on my no way and hell list. And yet I I realized a couple years into DA.

That I was never going to have abundance. I was never going to be set free until I made that amend. I just knew it. Something in me was like, you are never going to make it in this program until you really, really, really own what you did. Oh, God.

So I looked him up. I drove down to Rochester. He was working at the Mayo Clinic. And I just, I cannot tell you, I don't think that I have ever dreaded anything in my life more than I dreaded sitting in front of that man who had helped me get my internship, who had helped me get a staff job, who had believed in me so much

and telling him that I had stolen. I was just like, there was just nothing,

nothing I've ever done in my life that I dreaded more than telling him that I abused

everything that he had stood for. And I had gone over it again and again with my sponsor. And she said, put it in a positive light. Thank him for how he supported you. Show him the work that you've done. Show him how far you've come in your career. Show him how he has his investment and you has brought you to that place, which is true.

Give him some of your best work. So I had this big beautiful print made of the Dalai Lama

and and I did all that. And then I, of course, started crying like a blithering idiot. And I said, I have something I need to tell you. This is really hard. And I told him. And the hardest part was that she had made me add up what it would have cost to rent all that equipment. It's about $24,000. And then she said, And you need to ask him if there's any way

that you could ever make it up to him

like God. And you know, that's the most sincere amount that you can make is to be really clear about the numbers and then to ask, is there any way? And he said, he said, well, first of all, everybody did that. And second of all,

you know, if you would take a really nice portrait of my son when he graduates from college, because I had known his son when he was a little kid. And so last year I drove down to Chicago

and did an amazing picture of his son with the Chicago skyline in the background and made some amazing prints for him. And today I am a staff photographer at Mayo Clinic

for him.

And last week I photographed the Dalai Lama at Mayo Clinic as a staff photographer for him.

And I now call this

compassionate earning

when you earn compassionately for yourself, when you are in your passion, but when you are compassionate for yourself. Because see, as a freelancer, I was earning about $150,000 a year. As staff, I'm running about 60. But for me, it's compassionate to have a steady income. For me, it's compassionate to have medical benefits. For me, it's compassionate to have paid time off.

For me, it's compassionate to know where I'm going to show up every day, nine to five, even when I'm really depressed. For me, that's compassionate earning and the fact that that job came from an amend

is the most miraculous thing ever. So I just want to say that when I first came to Dai was in the whole $25,000 and this year on my taxes it was $150,000 that I earned. That's $175,000 difference since I came to DA

and that's a result of working this program. That's not about me.

That's about this program, and it's not even about the numbers. It's about living in abundance

and so I would wish that you would all have these miraculous experiences for yourself because they make such an amazing difference. To walk out in the world and be passionate about what you do, but to be a compassionate earner rather than a passionate under earner. Thank you.