How to heal my relationship to the money part 2

After receiving a tyrannical speech from Aphrodite (check out the first part of How to Heal My Relationship to Money) here I was. I unwillingly thought maybe it is now the time for me to have a corrective experience. As a journalist, I was burnt out from putting so much work into my news stories in exchange for very little money. Also, the chasing didn’t feel right. So many emails for interviews were sent yet very few people were responding to them. I grew tired and resentful of this process.

I decided that now was the time for me to have a corrective experience going back to an old way of working but with more recognition and awareness of my patterns of behavior this time.

I decided to go for a job I had done back in my university days working as a translator at an event for $30 a day for a week. It was a hard decision to make, as it felt like moving backward instead of a linear progression. It made me feel like I was a ‘slave’ once again. We would wake up at 7, start working, and finish at midnight. My friend and I used to joke that we were like slaves, stuck in exhausting work with no better opportunities in sight.

‘Without a hero, the victim would cease; without a victim, the hero would cease.’ Once said a wise girl named Margeret Hamilton.

Can you set yourself free from this position? But you will need a support system, right? If the systems are designed to exert their power over us, who do we turn to? Who do we work with? Where do we find the support? And, these systems exist both inside and outside of us. Better to put it, these rigid systems that once existed outside of you as you were born into them, like the family system, the school system, etc. have now become part of your internal story that you see the world with these distorted glasses through. A tyrant father and a devouring mother still live within you.

As much as there are dictators out there we also have a dictator inside, who belittles us and judges us for every little mistake that we make.

Without knowing how to face that dictator on the inside there is no way to our betterment. As I became more aware of these inner storytellers and confronted them, I was ready to deal with those voices on the outside too. To my surprise, those voices needed acknowledgment and love.

Everything changed when I started to take my feelings and thoughts seriously and acknowledge and accept them. As I started listening I could discern if the voice was coming from my inner knowing or a wounded part of me. I’ve come to realize how different situations were triggering different parts of me.

Going back to the story of my first attempt to work a ‘normal job’ after four years of freelancing; It is funny how I really mentally prepared myself for these 6 days of work. My mind was already playing out scenarios. I could see how my ‘inner work paranoia’ was at the forefront while I was grappling with my outer world. I found myself dictating to myself that I have to do all the ‘right things’ now that I have become more ‘conscious’ of my patterns.

I couldn’t help but ‘train’ myself for this work or better to say, scan for threats. I would play all the scenarios so that I could act consciously. As someone who likes to get to the bottom of things, I’ve become a consciousness maniac if you will.

Nevertheless, I have had my boundaries in place while trying to maintain an openness to cooperate with others. This required me to re-collect my projections and muscle my way out to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Yet, at the last minute, they decided not to work with me. 😀

Here is yet another lesson to be learned: nothing is certain, not set in stone. Yet, I would do this all the time. I would get an article to write and then boom, the last-minute editor completely rejects it, and best I kill my article in tears. Even though I felt very powerful having the courage to do this for the first time. I was in control and making decisions about my work.

I could see that the quest for certainty made me grasp. It makes me chase and that is a recipe for losing myself in any relationship that I might be in but I also need stability and structures for my creativity to exist right!

I think the illusionary certainty and stability are about my attachment to outcomes and the authentic stability is within, it is how I hold myself in the world and as a result of that holding, I move through the world upstraight.

If my holding is shaky the bumpier the road will be but sometimes it is bumpy just because it is and there isn’t any meaning to be found or that we can not see through it. Maybe we are not meant to just yet.

So the question is: How do you bridge this? your creativity and your need for direction, structures, and systems to create stability.

My first attempt to get a ‘normal job’ left me with a big ex-hale of not getting it. When these people didn’t want to work with me. I was lowkey happy. It is not meant to be, I said to myself. Indeed it was not. It is funny how I make myself so sure of what will happen when choosing a career path, a job, or a partner. And I am confronted with the ambiguity of life. So then the question becomes: What if I can trust life, the universe, god whatever you wanna call it? What if I can have faith that what’s meant for me will make its way to me? Otherwise, we will cross paths as I keep moving, keep going, and keep working my way towards my mission. What if I trust that?

Recognizing the value of my work. Trusting that pieces will come together, dots will connect without a force.

To heal my relationship with money, to life, to anything really, I needed to trust that people were there to help me. However, this is easier said than done.

My first attempts at coming in contact with reality

So what now? How will I sustain myself? After my first attempt to get a normal job didn’t work.

I was torn between getting money out of something that supposedly doesn’t mean anything to me and being able to keep on going with creative aspects of my life. But I knew things had to get moving. I needed to get going.

Once I got moving so much fear arose. My paralysis was still with me. I realized I was projecting so much of my fear onto the work that I do but I also knew that even the job I thought I chose with my free will (being a freelance journalist for four years) was keeping me stuck and imprisoned too. Just that my ego wouldn’t accept a 9-5 job but in full honesty, I wasn’t free to be a freelancer either.

I let myself relax in my truth, breathing into it... I feel like there is a direct correlation between sitting with something messy, like feeling the impossibility of any solution, and the emergence of something beautiful from that. As if nature was communicating with me what it takes for creation to occur. How yin and yang work in every given moment of time. It is as if there is an expansion to be felt, sweat to be sweated, tears to be wept.

It was so clear that this phase of my life prompted me to change something. And, I think It was very much related to confronting my avoidance of people. I realized working on my avoidance was much harder than working on my anxieties, my avoidance came with rumination and paralysis. (AKA: functional freeze)

I realized this was going to be a very important stepping stone, an initiation to the real world. As I started to mentally prepare myself to ask people directly for a job I realized I never did that before. It was always references and connections that helped me get a job. I was only good at applying for jobs very formally, protecting myself from real interaction, plus this made much better sense as everything was written and I could see the job description. The interactions were only based on e-mail exchanges.

After bringing up my stuckness in my women’s circle I felt the urgency to act and that night I had a dream that I was given metal coins and one of them looked ancient there was the triple spiral (triskele) symbol on it which I found myself fascinated by. I woke up and drew the symbol on my notes app then searched for the symbol. I had no personal connection to this symbol so it was pretty unknown to me. There were a couple of different interpretations that felt right, one of them was, that the triskele is about transition so I thought perhaps this phase is part of a bigger transition and not a dead end. This gave me hope. But how much would this take me really if this was the correct interpretation of this dream symbol? So maybe a year-long transition or two and I was already so tired and felt like I had left one last move to make nothing more than that.

After this dream, I really prepared myself to ask directly for a job from a coffee shop owner that I knew. Even the thought of this made my brain play way too many scenarios. I texted the owner if he was looking to employ anyone in his shop and no he wasn’t. All that mental preparation and nightmare-like dreams about working for this job were just about my fears surfacing once again.

I sometimes think that avoidance is so weird. You are the one asking for a job but also you don’t want to do this. So that takes quite a bit of mental preparation for me. Okay, I don’t wanna do this I don’t wanna go there and then but I need money. This is a job that is only for money right but it feels like sucking my soul. It always felt this way. I remember how I would daydream in my old jobs I would be standing there and dissociate to another realm. That feeling of ‘I don’t wanna be here’ was so present for me for most of my existence.

But I knew that there was something for me to learn. I need to go through this now. I need to figure out what can work for me. This is my stepping stone but I am afraid this transition will take months if not years.

Like I have to have a job to pay me right? That is the source of money but actual abundance and resources are within us. I just didn’t know how to convert that into money. At the same time, I knew I had to do something, I knew I had to take action. This is what was asked of me.

I was angry, as always, to the world, to God. This was my sacred protest. I was asking god if you love me you won’t let me work such a job. I was playing ‘Prove it or else’ with God.

But the Divine doesn’t bargain in that way.

This was not about punishment or failure it was the collapse of the false self.

I was being initiated just like Jacob left with a limp after wrestling with the Self, or with a divine force greater than his ego. The way he met the world also be forever changed.

Jacob’s limp was sacred. It was the mark of someone who has been touched by the numinous, by truth.

So, here is the full story Jacob

The Story: Jacob Wrestles with God

Jacob is on the run again. He has a long history of trickery (he stole his brother Esau’s birthright), and now he’s about to meet Esau for the first time in years. He’s terrified.

The night before this meeting, Jacob is alone, having sent his family and possessions ahead. In the deep of night, a man comes and wrestles with him until daybreak.

They fight all night. Neither wins. Just before dawn, the man touches Jacob’s hip and wounds him, dislocating it. But Jacob won’t let go.

Jacob says:

"I will not let you go unless you bless me."

The figure blesses him and gives him a new name: Israel, meaning “one who wrestles with God.”

When morning comes, the man is gone. Jacob walks away with a limp.

But he also walks away transformed.

The story shows Jacob doesn’t get the blessing by avoiding the fight. He gets it by staying in it. He holds on even when wounded. This teaches: don’t escape your pain or dark nights too quickly something is trying to bless you.

Jacob becomes Israel he is no longer only the trickster, the supplanter. He becomes someone who wrestles honestly with God and life. He’s claimed his full identity.

To walk away with a limp like Jacob is to live from a place of humility, depth, and transformation. It means not trying to be perfect, or unaffected, but to lead with the wound as your soul’s authority.

You don’t need to heal everything to begin. You need to bless the wound and let it shape the way you walk in the world in your truth.

The story will continue…

If this blog article inspired you, You can buy me a coffee.