3 Truths I’m Learning About Generosity, Receiving, and Abundance.
I have always been especially fond of Christmas. The joy, the decorations, the music… the giving. I genuinely love to give — it brings me such joy to select, purchase, wrap, and present a special something to the people I care most about.
But if I’m honest, my desire to give has often outweighed my wisdom. I have historically overspent, sometimes over-given, and ignored my own limits when it comes to money, energy, and even emotional capacity. I rarely say it out loud, but December seems to arrive with a quiet list of expectations.
Although it’s a season of joy and generosity, it’s also a season that exposes our most deeply rooted beliefs about money, worthiness, and what it means to be “a good person.”
And although giving is my love language — and I truly love both giving and receiving — for most of my life I carried a belief that good people don’t want too much. Good people give, and they don’t ask.
This, of course, is a fallacy. And I am learning to unlearn it — one shiny, paper-wrapped, bow-covered box at a time. This year, I’m choosing to grant myself permission to prosper even while I give. I’m learning that generosity doesn’t require self-abandonment, and abundance doesn’t cancel gratitude.
Here are the three truths guiding me as I remind myself of that.
Truth 1 — Giving Isn’t Holy If It Empties You
For years, I misunderstood generosity, not because I focused on cost or wanted to impress anyone, but because I wanted so deeply to give people what they truly longed for. I wasn’t thinking about budgets — I was thinking about meaning. I aimed for what was hoped for, what might light up a face or speak directly to the heart. And because my giving came from that place, I often overlooked the financial or emotional toll it took on me until I was already stretched thin.
One particular Christmas remains etched in my memory. My children were younger, and I was in one of the hardest financial seasons of my life — a year so tight that I couldn’t even create debt in order to give. There was no cushion, no safety net, no extra anything. And yet, I still pushed myself to make magic for them. I sold things online. I dug through old accounts and exchanged every remaining reward point I could find. I used employee benefits and downloaded apps that paid in tiny gift cards. Even when I couldn’t spend, I was spent.
Because beneath the effort was guilt — the fear of disappointing the people I loved, the pressure to make everything beautiful, the quiet belief that asking for help was somehow shameful.
But that year taught me something I didn’t have the words for then: giving isn’t holy if it empties you. Internal guilt can masquerade as generosity, convincing you that your worth depends on how much you can provide. But guilt doesn’t make you generous — it makes you depleted, anxious, and unable to receive the very care you offer so freely.
True generosity doesn’t demand self-abandonment. Sustainable giving honors the giver and the receiver — and I’m learning to let it honor me, too.
Truth 2 — Receiving Is a Practice of Safety, Not Selfishness
Receiving has never felt as natural to me as giving, and I can trace the roots of that discomfort back to childhood. As a young teen, I guarded my belongings like they were small treasures — especially the things I bought with my own money. They were precious to me because they were mine. But after finding my items borrowed, used carelessly, or broken more times than I could count, I finally built the courage to speak up.
The response I received didn’t soothe me. It taught me: “It doesn’t have your name on it.” Said jokingly, but internalized seriously, it carried a message that burrowed into my sense of safety — unless I obtained something entirely on my own, it wasn’t truly mine. Asking for help meant losing control. Receiving meant risking disappointment.
So I began embroidering, engraving, and labeling everything I owned. Not out of pride, but out of self-protection. It felt like the only safe way to want anything was to never need anyone.
That belief followed me well into adulthood. It made receiving feel unsafe, vulnerable, or even selfish. I grew up thinking “good people don’t want too much,” and that belief became a quiet sabotage, limiting what I allowed myself to hope for.
But I’m learning something very different now: receiving is not moral weakness — it is nervous-system work. It is teaching your body that abundance can be safe. That care doesn’t always cost something. That love doesn’t always disappear.
Allowing myself to receive — whether support, rest, time, or resources — has softened me. It has widened my compassion. It has expanded the space from which I can give. When receiving becomes safe, generosity becomes joyful — no longer a reenactment of old wounds.
Truth 3 — Prosperity Fuels Compassion, Not Greed
For a long time, I viewed prosperity with suspicion. I feared wanting a thriving life might make me ungrateful or out of touch. I absorbed messages that framed abundance as something dangerous, indulgent, or spiritually shallow. It felt safer to want little than to risk wanting “too much.”
But life experience has shown me something far more honest: prosperity, when grounded in intention, actually fuels compassion. When your needs are met, when your nervous system is steadied, when you’re not living in the chaos of survival mode, you become more patient. More present. More generous.
Prosperity doesn’t harden good people — it amplifies their goodness.
It creates margin where stress once lived. Margin to breathe. Margin to give freely and joyfully, not out of fear or guilt. Margin to be thoughtful instead of frantic. And I’ve learned that abundance and gratitude are not opposites — they are companions. A grateful heart can steward abundance with wisdom. A prosperous life can extend generosity with joy.
Prosperity doesn’t pull you away from compassion. It gives you the capacity to live compassionately without losing yourself. It turns giving from something that drains you into something that flows naturally, sustainably, and wholeheartedly.
Well-Stirred Reflection:
May you give from a place that does not empty you,
but honors the steady goodness already living in your hands.
May you release the guilt that whispers you must earn your worth
or prove your love.
May you remember that receiving is not a weakness,
but sacred- a practice of allowing yourself to be held, supported, and sustained.
May your nervous system learn the language of safety,
and may abundance become something your body can rest in.
May prosperity find you in ways that feel kind, wise, and deeply aligned.
May you expand in your compassion.
May you experience generosity as a gentle flow —
a balance of inhale and exhale,
of giving and receiving,
of blessing and being blessed.
And above all,
may you trust that you are worthy of fullness,
worthy of ease,
worthy of enough,
and worthy of more.
Amen.
Well-Stirred & Wondering 
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