The Echo of Financial Trauma

ACT I — THE ECHO WE LEARN TO LIVE WITH Sometimes a moment ends,

yet continues speaking inside you long after the world goes quiet. A sound stops.

But its echo remains. That’s how financial trauma works. It rarely comes from one dramatic

event. More often, it comes from the small tremors that move through a childhood

home — the way voices tightened when bills were mentioned, the way silence thickened at the

end of the month, the way a parent tried to soften their worry but couldn’t quite hide

it. A child doesn’t need to understand numbers to understand fear.

The body learns the sound first. The meaning comes much later. In adulthood,