Women & Money

Context is Collective

I originally wrote this piece to promote my upcoming marketing class, ​How To Sell Without Selling Your Soul. ​ But then I thought about all of the anti-feminine empowerment sentiment going around, whether it be the rise of the trad-wife ideology, or the “Divine King” and “Divine Queen” garbage going around in the pop-heteronormative spirituality industrial complex right now, or the very scary, completely oppressive laws around abortion and a woman’s right to vote, and I wanted to share it here. There’s a lot around money and women to unpack, and of course, you can always insert “women,” with another historically oppressed group, such as Indigenous people, trans folks, queer men, and so on.

Please note that the marketing course I reference is only available to folks who have taken my Clear Channels series, which you can sign up for here.

Over 10 years into running my own business, and millions of dollars later, I still struggle with underearning and overworking. I’m honest and open about this in most of my containers. I haven’t given myself a raise in 5 years. If I’m not careful, I’ll give and give and give, and then wonder why I am so exhausted.

This is an ingrained habit. My first job was working as a nanny for a special needs 4-year-old, at the age of 12. I was paid 8 dollars an hour and it was grueling work. He would scream, pummel my 80 pound frame relentlessly, and throw things at me. No one ever told me, by the way, that he was developmentally challenged.

After that, at 15, it was 15 dollars an hour at a diner. My feet would ache and ache after a shift, and I smelled like a fryolater. (If you have to look up what a fryolater is, you probably never smelled like one.)

Then, in my 20’s it was 18 dollars an hour working for a creative agency that exploited my genius and talents. My nervous system equated settling for crumbs as familiar from a young age. I was conditioned to work incredibly hard, for very little money, for almost half my life.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it my low self-worth that perpetuated my overwork/underpaid pattern? Or was it that I came from a lower middle-class background, where everyone I knew was working their ass off, barely making ends meet, that normalized this existence?

Or, was it also because I happened to be born a tiny woman, living in a world that was taught to extract from her, underestimate her worth, and expect her to do all kinds of work for free? Emotional labor, physical labor, and the labor of performing a gender that is not only meant to be subservient but one that is also expected to be cheery and accommodating at all times—even while being taken advantage of?

This matters, because no one ever really talks about how class or gender impacts us in business. Hardly anyone ever talks about the context of being a woman, programmed to overwork and devalue herself, in a culture that is also programmed to do so. No one discusses all the barriers that being working class, lower middle-class, or middle-class create when beginning a business: not only with knowledge gaps, but the very energetics and confidence that accompanies someone who cannot afford not to be profitable in a world where most businesses are not profitable for years.

One thing that annoys me in the business space, especially in the “spiritual” space, is that hardly anyone talks about money in a way that I can relate to. One thing I’ve learned is that if you aren’t talking about money, and all the ways it impacts our energy, destiny, or basic existence, you probably have never had to think about it in a way that is linked to survival.

A lot of people in both the business and spiritual space come from resources. With a wealthy family, or a partner in tech that can support them no matter what, it makes sense that they wouldn’t talk about money in the same way that someone who has worked since they were 12 has.

If you do come from resources, I mean you no disrespect. I'm not judging you, I'm happy for you! It’s amazing you grew up so resourced, and have such access to resources. And I know, from experience working with hundreds of clients, some with abundant financial wealth, is that resourced people still have money issues! With receiving money you make from your own gifts. With guilt. With imposter syndrome. With shame.

Money, right? It’s so loaded. It’s so complex and symbolic. Maybe that’s why I love it so much; it’s a mirror for so much.

It shows us how we feel about receiving and giving. It shows us what we value, and what we believe our worth to be.

Money is fascinating because it is a metaphor. What you connect it to, gives it a special power. And what you give a special power to can be a talisman to activate and unleash your desires.

Money is a symbolic language that also expands whatever it touches. If you are a charitable, altruistic person, you’ll use money for those purposes. If you are a greedy, insecure person, you’ll project all of that onto money, and nothing will ever be enough.

How does your relationship with money influence your marketing? In your creativity? In how you show up publicly?
In just about each and every way possible.

If you are afraid to make money, you’ll probably be afraid to market effectively.

Maybe, you will be afraid to show up as a business. Instead, you might be nebulous around what you do for money, and how people can work with you. ​(This was a major issue I had, and we’re going to talk about that in our upcoming class series.)​

Maybe, you won’t ever get clear about what numbers you need to generate to have the lifestyle you want, so you’ll undercharge, and then feel resentful towards your clients and your work as you hustle hustle hustle on a hamster wheel of lack. Or, you’ll feel so afraid to sit down with a spreadsheet, so you’ll come up with random angel numbers for your offerings like $333, or $444, and then wonder why they aren’t selling. (Guilty as charged! Lol.)

Maybe, like a lot of leftists I know, you’ll equate having more money with being an evil person, like all those terrible billionaires, and you’ll completely avoid it, and your money stuff, altogether.

We can’t shame ourselves around money. We have to be kind, and we have to know our own particular context.

My own mother was literally not allowed to have a credit card until 6 years before I was born. It was only in her junior year of college that she was allowed to wear pants on campus!!!! My grandmother was ripped out of middle school and forced to become…a nanny. She had to support her family who had just immigrated to the United States. She was a nanny at the age of 12. Just like me.

These are ancestral wounds we are healing. I am the first woman in my grandmother’s line who has a choice in how she makes money!!!

This is a new ground breaking in my DNA. For most of my ancestors, it is unthinkable and unimaginable. This is revolutionary.

Of course it’s going to feel scary and uncomfortable sometimes. Of course I am going to perpetuate the patterns of overworking and underearning.

And that’s ok. I choose to work on it. I choose to expand. I choose to not feel ashamed of patterns that came from horrific, systemic conditions outside of mine—or my family’s—control. These are deep, ancestral patterns. Systemic patterns. Collective issues! We have to go slow! We have to be gentle! We have to move at the speed of our nervous system, little by little, bit by bit.

My own money alchemy began through magic. Magic is fun for me, and anytime you introduced play and fun around a charged topic, you win!

Then, I introduced the nervous system support, ancestral work, and capacity.

Little by little I:

-proved to myself that I could support myself through my talents and gifts
-proved to myself that I was trustworthy and responsible enough to receive, steward, save, and redistribute money
-detached my worth from my work ethic, how good I could be for others, and how much money I was making
-detached from the identities of martyr, mule, and overworker through archetypal alchemy

And a whole lot more that I can’t get into in one essay!

The last part I’ll share for now, is this idea around holding versus flow. A lot of practitioners will say that our ability to earn money depends on what we can “hold.” That does not resonate with me.
Like creativity, money is supposed to flow, so I practice how well I can flow with money.

How I can stay a grounded anchor, a clear vessel, for all abundance that wishes to flow through and around me. This includes creativity, love, freedom, friendship, generosity, wonder, and awe.

Why? It goes back to the symbolic language of such a charged archetype like money. It’s about how free, authentic, creative, and joyous I can be. Those are the energies that I associate with money, and those are the energies I cultivate in my daily life, completely separate from money.

There’s a reason why the current political powers want women pregnant against their will, unable to vote, unable to access reproductive healthcare like abortions. They know that when they take away our options, we are subjugated, which is why they are also pushing the “protector King who supports his Queen,” cultural memes like the ballerina farm lady, and the traditional nuclear heteronormative family, which is often the reality where many wives have to work the equivalent of three jobs: all unpaid.
(Jobs like: housecleaner, household project manager and organizer, therapist, parent, tutor, personal chef, yard work, leisure activities creator, appointment scheduler, and special events/traditions director. Not to mention the emotional and energetic labor of being the rock, the nurturer, the calm nervous system, which, in these times, could be a part-time job on their own. And while a lot of us are lucky enough to like these activities, they are all unpaid labor and hard work that adds up, especially if we are also expected to work for money.)

And of course, the rights’ attack on trans people is not only a red herring of hate, as no trans person is a threat to anyone’s bathroom or child, but it is an attack on one of the tiniest populations in this country, that also happens to be the most authentic and free.

They don’t want us abundant, because that leads to our liberation.

So, as you continue to show up, ask for more, understand your inherent worth, stand up for your rights, know you aren’t only doing it for you. You’re doing it for colleagues, future generations, and your ancestors. You are creating new templates and blueprints for a better, safer, more liberated world.

Questions to ask yourself:
What ancestral patterns around money, might I be perpetuating?
What is money a positive symbol of, for me?
How can I cultivate those energies in my daily life?
What ancestors am I honoring by inviting in more abundance, wealth, and prosperity, into my life?

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