I was a bit startled when my inbox began filling up with Paypal contribution receipts. Yesterday I put up a Contributions box on the Farm Journal Page, and it took me fix or six years to get comfortable with it (I am not totally there) and I have lost count of the number of contributions. I can tell you this much. I am touched by it – the contributions range from $2 to $200, most in the $10 to $25 range – and they are powerful things for me to see. I can’t quite believe so many people are willing to do this so generously and easily.

I feel good about the contributions box. They were going to call it a “donate” box but donate implies charity, and I see it more as simply being paid for the work of the blog. I guess it took me awhile to value my own work, and to not hide behind false modestly. That does not serve me, isn’t truthful or authentic. In the real world people are compensated for their work and while I will never be comfortable charging people to read my blog or use my photos, I understand now that there is nothing wrong with giving people the chance to pay you for what you do. It validates them as well as you.

It has been a great source of pride for me that I always made a living from my writer. That is still so, but the new writer has to be more flexible and open-minded than that. I will always see myself as a book writer first and foremost, but the world doesn’t really care how I like to see myself. It is asking me to grow and change. So I will accept that challenge.

One reader said I was learning to ask for help, but I am not asking for help, that is a different thing than asking to be paid for what you do. One person complained that she was sick of handouts, she resented being pressured to pay for things that are free. I told her she had several good options: she could read the blog for free (it is still free), she could contribute to supporting the costs of the blog, she could go read someone else’s blog. She apologized, said she hadn’t meant any harm, and in that moment, I understood her completely.

We live in a world where we are bombarded by fees, special charges, the conversion of free things into things that cost money. Banks do it, airlines do it, everybody does it. In hard times, nobody wants to raise their prices but everybody is raising their fees. I know how she feels. But I am also learning to understand how I feel, and to stand in my own truth. I love my blog, I work hard at it every day and have for seven years. I hope my work is always worth something and the contributions spur me to keep it that way. It feels quite wonderful to see how much people care for the blog, how much they  value it. It is good for them and good for me. This is an important thing to learn in life, and also, a step forward in my continuing efforts to forge a better relationship with money.

I am deeply touched by these messages pouring into my mailbox. Each one of them is an affirmation of me, of my work. Each one is an angel singing to me that my work is worthwhile, and that I need to keep doing it well enough for people to care enough about it to contribute to it. There is nothing that doesn’t feel good about that.

I will never permit anyone to convince me that it is too late to change when you get older. It is the best possible time to change.