The manifestation mantra “every dollar I spend comes back to me tenfold” has contributed directly to some massive financial devastation in my life and the lives of others.

Here’s the thing: if that were actually true, inflation would be astronomical since everyone would be billionaires and trillionaires. And even in a metaphorical sense, it’s very rare to get that kind of ROI on… anything. It doesn’t happen very often in investing, and people who invest are people who have money to spare when they start, because it’s not common to even get what you invested back twofold. So why is this such a commonly used phrase in manifestation?

If we are to look at this more metaphorically, it can be true that money you spend is returned to you and then some, when it’s being spent on things that promote your financial well-being. Spending money on, say, your business, or on a coach who is the right fit for you, is something that can, in the long-term, produce a fiscal return on the investment you made. Things like spending money on a more reliable vehicle when you make money with your car, so you’re not paying for repairs as often and can allocate energy to making money, is another example of how the dollars you spend can come back to you tenfold. 

But it is not possible for EVERY dollar you spend to come back multiplied. Your rent doesn’t come back tenfold (wouldn’t it be amazing if it did, though?). Your Starbucks purchases don’t come back tenfold. Your car insurance payment doesn’t come back tenfold. The things we have to buy in order to run our lives, mundane things like dish soap and health insurance and groceries, are not purchases where your money is coming back to you tenfold. It is physically impossible for that much money to even exist.

I know for me, this type of thinking, when I was deeply entrenched in the manifestation industrial complex, led to me actually making more impulsive purchases and poorer financial decisions than I had been making prior to entering these programs, because I was supposed to “trust that the universe has my back” and believe that “every dollar I spend comes back to me tenfold.” And where did that get me? At one point, I almost returned to homelessness as a result of those poor financial choices, something I told myself I would never do again.

And I’m not the only person with a story like this. Sure, I take responsibility for my own actions. None of my coaches made me spend all of my money on bullshit. I did that on my own. But my reasoning was clouded by these mantras that are taught by hundreds of manifestation and money coaches every day. Coupled with undiagnosed ADHD, it was a disaster for my finances when I was told that spending money based on emotions was okay because I was always going to have my ass covered by the universe, in some magical way, as long as I didn’t worry about the “how” of it (AKA, spend all my money and make no plans to generate more).

Some would say I just did manifestation “wrong”. And maybe I did, or maybe manifestation failed me. There was never any discussions of trauma-informed money management or encouragement to seek therapy for my impulse control problems, which in retrospect is what I actually needed from a mentor.

On acting responsibly.

You build self-esteem though doing esteemable acts. The same goes for building up your self-worth. 

Acting responsibly builds your sense of worthiness because you’ve decided you are worth the effort. You are worth healing. You are worth doing the work to have the life you want. Following those statements up with actions that confirm them is how you begin to heal your worthiness wound.

This doesn’t mean you need to be rescuing cats from trees or performing spectacular feats. An esteemable act is simply one you can feel good about doing. If you know you always wait until your trash is overflowing before you take it out, make the choice to take it out as soon as it’s full instead. There you go. You’ve done an esteemable act, and in doing so, have attached muscle movement to the belief that you are worth doing the right thing. Now that fact is being affirmed by your body, not just your mind. 

It doesn’t have to be grandiose or complicated. You can start by just taking out your trash. 

Making endless “I am” statements can have a positive impact on your self-image, but what’s really potent is following them up with actions so your body knows you’re serious! Sometimes when we’re addressing our worthiness wounding, making positive affirmations feels like lying. You’re saying things to yourself that have never “felt” true before, and suddenly you’re just supposed to believe them as core tenets of your identity?

Here’s a secret: it’s actually easier to ACT your way into a FEELING than it is to FEEL your way into an ACTION. You will not always feel worthy. I don’t wake up every day feeling worthy. If you always let your feelings dictate the actions you take, you’ll continue to self-sabotage. Making choices and taking actions that you truly feel good about, whether big or small, is an excellent way to stack up some “proof” that you are all the things you’re saying to yourself. Adjusting your self-talk is crucial in building self-esteem, but don’t let it become something that feels futile. Your self-worth flourishes when you act as if YOU are someone who is worth it.

(And you are 😘)

Are You Afraid Of The Dark?

This first dose of eclipse season is feeling like a black hole, a vortex, and I’m getting sucked in. But I’ve been through black holes before and they taught me that I always come out the other side with my gravity rearranged, very much something forged anew. Scorpio and Taurus risings, the time for embodiment is now. Taurus risings especially, y’all have been dealt the oddest hand on a consistent basis lately, with Uranus in your first house, as well as your chart ruler, Venus, only recently escaping her run of retrograde and malefic besqueezement. Now that the lunar nodes are playing on your angles as well, I can only imagine some of that first house work involves transmuting shame and illuminating corners you’d prefer to keep dark.

The truth is, I am afraid of the dark. I believe in nightlights. And a lot of the time, I’m afraid to “do the work” that I know will involve walking into the dark and digging up my own demons. I don’t think this is rare, in fact I think it’s closer to being a universal experience than a rare one.

I’m afraid to get deep sometimes because what if people peel back the layers of me and don’t find anything interesting or lovable? I’m afraid to step into the darkness because what if what I find is actually nothing? It’s not the presence of monsters that scares me, it’s the absence of anything worth loving.

Phrases like “doing the work” and “embodiment” and “shame” and “the shadow” are often shrouded in mystery themselves, much of their core meanings already lost to the cerebral sparkle dust of the “healing” industry (there’s another one).

In the next week, I’m going to be releasing a Worthiness Worksheet that will include some definitions of these terms that can sometimes seem to have lost their meanings. Sign up for love letters here, so you can be notified when it goes live and get to “doing the work,” whatever that means.

“There’s no nobility in poverty” doesn’t mean that there is nobility in wealth.

Neither are inherently noble. Money is amoral. Poverty and wealth both just describe a situation. And almost all situations are impermanent.

Your current money situation is impermanent. Depending on where you are, that statement can be a blessing or a curse. It feels like financial stability is a commodity and comes in limited amounts, so we’re all just scrambling for what stability we can find and those of us who have stability are scrambling to keep it.

I want to say two conflicting things here: one, that we can hop out of that scramble any time we want because stability is merely a feeling and therefore cannot exist in finite amounts, and even though money exists in finite amounts, that doesn’t mean there will never be enough to make you feel safe. Two, can we consider that ‘stability’ is kind of a farce, in the natural laws of the universe and in our lives, and that since our money situation is impermanent and always changing, that means there are always opportunities to create more feelings of safety instead?

Stability is a goalpost that constantly gets moved, for a lot of us. Perhaps the reason we never feel we achieve true stability is because what we should actually be seeking is safety. Nothing is truly stable, everything is always in transition. There’s always some growth or decay (or both) happening, at all times. So then, why do we expect money to act that way?

Maybe your finances will always be in flux, but that doesn’t have to mean your safety is in flux, too. There’s an obvious minimum of flow that needs to be achieved for base-level safety and just having your needs consistently met, but then there’s a level of flow that feels safe for you. And even that can fluctuate.

Combining the practical and the magical in this sense means formulating a tactical approach to your real life finances, getting vulnerable and getting your hands dirty, using magic to transform your fear, and consulting with the universe for grounded clarity. It means you, in whichever medium or language feels most authentic, boldly declaring the universe and every being inside of it as your co-conspirators in safety and play and creation and flow. It means looking at the parts of your financial life that you don’t want to acknowledge, the things you’ve pushed into corners, and bringing them into the light with compassion, bursting down any walls of shame that attempt to rise up.

I want so badly for you to have a relationship with money that is based on safety. Is that a noble cause? I don’t think so. Safety is our birthright, receiving is our birthright, creating in tandem with all forces that surround us is our birthright. You aren’t a lone force in the universe, putting thoughts and actions in and getting money and accomplishments out of it like an ATM.

Do you realize how freeing this is, when you release any shame you’ve been holding about not being ‘good at money’ or ‘good at manifesting’ or ‘good at thinking’? Co-creation doesn’t just mean everyone gets what they want. Forces like racism and capitalism and exploitation and violence are also co-creating reality with the rest of us. Capitalism traumatizes us in ways that nobody would ever ask for or ‘manifest’ into their life. When we stop viewing manifestation as something that is done alone and start noticing all the ways in which it is something done collectively, then maybe we can stop feeling so bad about not being able to ‘capture our thoughts’ and remain ‘high vibe’ all the time.

When we can stop placing the onus on ourselves to ‘heal’ our thoughts in solitude so that we then may ‘heal’ our bank accounts so that we may eventually achieve the almighty ‘stability,’ then we can start navigating, with compassion, the roots of our shame around money. When we step down from the cerebral, unseen realm of manifestation and get into the tangible, material realm of your actual money, then we can enact some real changes that can be seen and felt in the body, not just the mind, as you journey through your new relationship with safety.

You will never be fully ‘healed’ or arrive at ‘safety’ as an endpoint. But you can renew your relationship with safety and allow it to become one of the major co-creating forces in your life, replacing shame and guilt and constant scarcity. We do not have control over all of the forces in the universe or on our little planet, but we do get to decide which forces are invited to sit in our passenger seat while we navigate our reality. 

What’s different about working with The Financial Witch

I am blending the practical & the magical to help weirdos & witches who are burnt out on mainstream manifestation gain control over their finances, repair their relationship with money, and redefine abundance, all through a trauma-informed & neurodivergent lens.

My approach utilizes a combination of astrology, tarot, and my 5+ years of experience in financial training & mentorship programs to heal your money trauma and address your financial aspirations on both practical and metaphysical levels.

What’s different about working with me is I’m here for the weirdos. If you’ve tried coaching programs that preached the Law of Attraction and constantly felt like you were “failing” at manifesting, I’m the coach for you. The truth is, there’s nothing wrong with you just because you aren’t consistent at repeating affirmations in the mirror, or because you experienced money-related trauma despite thinking positive thoughts and keeping it “high vibe”. It doesn’t mean that manifesting a healthy and vibrant financial life isn’t for you, it just means you were trying to flourish in a system that is built to ignore the things that make you and your incredible, unique brain endlessly valuable: things like neurodivergence, varying levels of mental and physical ability, socioeconomic status, race, gender, and all the other things about humans that white supremacy seeks to oppress or stomp out completely.

There’s no “your thoughts create your reality” style coaching here. Together we will address your fears, anxieties, and traumas around resource AND create a sound strategy for navigating your particular currency flow, while repairing your relationship with manifesting your reality.

You aren’t wrong or broken for wanting an abundantly resourced life. Your unique qualities & abilities, your fabulously bizarre brain, and your inconsistencies are all gifts, not hindrances, when it comes to your relationship to money. I’m here to make clear & comfortable for you what may be confusing or shame-inducing in other, more mainstream money coaching containers. You can take ownership of your story around resource and step into a safer somatic experience with money. You can develop a straightforward financial strategy that enables you to build trust with yourself after cycles of self-sabotage. You can co-create with the universe, without the individualistic overtones, and enchant your finances like the magical money maker you are. 

“Your thoughts create your reality” never really worked for my neurodivergent experience of the world.

It invites in a lot of shame, really, when I think about it. I spent years in programs that preached the law of attraction as the only means to true financial freedom, and all that work I did to ‘rewire my brain’ didn’t improve my financial situation. In fact, my finances got worse during that time, due to factors outside of my control (aka big financial trauma), and the shame was unbearably heavy. If my thoughts created my reality, then my thoughts must have brought me to rock bottom, which must mean there’s something deeply wrong with my thoughts, and by proxy, something deeply wrong with me.

It honestly kept me in a cycle of self-sabotage longer, this shame. The worthiness wound is something I think about a lot in relation to money-related trauma, because shame is such an effective weapon in this sense. If you don’t believe that you’re worthy of a better experience, if you don’t even find yourself worthy of hard work or earnestly trying at something, the chances of self-sabotage go up while the chances of making true positive change go way down. Like a seesaw. Thus, when the financial trauma or self-sabotage occurs, it reinforces the idea that you are not worthy of prosperity, because if you were, you would have figured out how to think better thoughts and your reality wouldn’t look the way it looks right now. At least that’s what the voice in my head told me. 

It was devastating when I realized how much shame and feeling unworthy were effectively derailing my finances and really, my life. It was hard not to shame-spiral about how much I had given shame control over my life. It was extremely sobering. The only option was to invite in compassion, because shame clearly wasn’t even getting me closer to the goals I so craved. Simply put, it became clear to me that shaming myself into prosperity was a poor strategy and should probably be abandoned. It wasn’t serving me anymore, as the kids say.

Money is such an emotionally fraught subject. It’s really no wonder so many people are caught in shame spirals or cycles of self-sabotage with their finances. Money is just one of those things, as a neurodivergent person who didn’t realize I was neurodivergent until my late 20s, that I assumed everyone just “figured out” at some point and I had missed the boat. Money management was a skill I never developed, and every attempt I made at developing that skill always had the same result: further embarrassment and frustration as I snapped back to my sabotaging ways like a rubber band.

One of the things that compounded my shame and frustration about money and my financial trauma was the fact that I was always told, by the manifestation “experts” and life coaches and self-help podcasts I surrounded myself with, that the reason these things kept happening to devastate my financial life and my stability was because of my own thoughts. I hadn’t fixed my thinking. I hadn’t rewired my brain properly yet because I wasn’t saying my affirmations in the mirror every morning while getting evicted, or my attitude wasn’t “attracting abundance” while I lost job after job due to my undiagnosed neurodivergence. Being told to “focus on the positives” when my car, which was my sole source of income at the time, broke down every 2 weeks and eventually stopped working altogether, did not inspire feelings of adequacy or competence for me. It was quite the opposite. Not only was I bad at making, keeping, and spending money, I was also bad at thinking because I couldn’t maintain a gratitude journal while my life kept falling apart over and over again. 

If you relate to any part of this, I first want to say I’m sorry, and I’m proud of you. There’s nothing wrong with your thoughts. They aren’t representative of who you are and they don’t determine what you deserve. If the manifestation industrial complex has left you feeling more ashamed and less empowered than you were before, your experience is not terminally unique. It is possible to change your financial situation and heal from your money trauma without conforming to ableist and tone-deaf dogmas about manifesting your destiny. It is possible to not only co-exist with money, but co-create with it. Money is not an energy, but it is a story, and you can rewrite your story in a way that leaves you empowered and safe.

Q&A: Why Can’t You Heal From Financial Trauma While Remaining In Poverty?

Why can’t you heal from financial trauma while remaining in poverty?

One, because poverty is an unnatural way of living. Poverty is a state of being that comes as a result of exploitation. Capitalism exploits humans and therefore perpetuates poverty. We aren’t meant to live in scarcity because there is always more than enough.

There always has been. The scarcity we experience is manufactured. It’s not the way humans are meant to experience life. We are meant to both have access to and be able to share our abundant resources. On a very simplistic level, the earth provides everything we could ever need. It’s the disrespect & depletion of earth’s resources by several systems of greed & (frankly) evil that has created the scarcity we see and experience on a global scale.

Two, because poverty is traumatizing (hence the term ‘financial trauma’). Poverty is not limited to a dollar amount; it’s the distance between your material needs and your ability to meet those needs. That’s it. And not being able to meet your needs, or the needs of those who rely upon you, creates within ourselves such deep wounding that there’s no way to undo, or even begin to examine and diagnose, while you’re still in that wounding. It’s pointless to tell people to save money when there’s often not even enough money between paychecks to keep the fridge stocked.

Of course, everyone has to start somewhere. Healing is not a prerequisite to escaping poverty, just as healing is not even really a destination that can be reached. It’s a constant process and it looks different for everyone. You can exit the cycle of poverty while still working on your worthiness wound, of course you can. I’m the last person who’s gonna tell you that your inner state of being is a prerequisite to having what you want. You can make money while you’re going through some shit. You can flourish financially and continuously have your needs met, and then some, even when you’re depressed or pissed off or feeling extremely alone. Negative emotions are not roadblocks to success or abundance or stability. They’re temporary, just like positive emotions, and yet we often expect ourselves to spend the majority of the time experiencing positive emotions (or at the very least, avoiding negative ones).

Healing from poverty and money-related trauma is not something you can do and still remain in poverty. We do not heal in the same environments that hurt us to begin with. You are worthy of having choices in your life, and the first choice you get to make is if you are going to remove yourself from the environment (whether physical or mental) that wounded you in the first place, the environment that led you to believe that you weren’t worthy of having more than you need. 

The Number One Thing To Remember About Financial Trauma

The number one thing to remember about working through financial trauma is that you aren’t going to heal by remaining in poverty. 

Money is a fact of life. It doesn’t mean you have to attach your worth to how easily or abundantly you earn money. The paradox, however, is that when you start healing your worthiness wound, usually that’s when money starts to appear more easily and abundantly.

Quoting The Wolf of Wall Street is very finance bro of me, but it’s true what Belfort says: “there is no nobility in poverty.” I think a lot of us, especially those who are anti-capitalist or even just critical of capitalism in its current form, feel a sense of guilt when we think about becoming financially resourced or even living in financial abundance. I know I often felt like (even if I wasn’t consciously aware of it yet) getting rich was a betrayal of marginalized and impoverished people. MY people. I would no longer be relatable or even trustworthy if I was to take myself out of the cycle of chronic poverty. Some part of me still feels that way occasionally. But there truly is nothing noble about keeping yourself small and, by proxy, making the scope of your life extremely small.

If you hold the core belief that everyone deserves to have their needs met *and then some,* then why aren’t you included in everyone? Why are you exempt? 

You’re not. And I’m not.