I often see posts that say that people who are late, don't respect your time and don't respect physical boundaries and I think we need to start talking more about the intersectionality of systemic oppression, time and money.
All in Black Tax
How To Handle Family Asking For Money
Just because people are your people, it doesn’t mean you are their person
This applies to everyone Including family.
People will often show us if we’re truly their person in their actions towards us and in the way they talk to us and treat us.
Not all of us are our people's person so we use money and over give in every way as a way to make them our people.
We know we don’t have their loyalty or their devotion.
They may love us but they don’t like us.
But we are loyal to them and we like them because they’re our people so we do the most (financially and otherwise) to make them feel the same way we do and fool ourselves into believing we are their person.
That if we just do XYZ and they see how awesome we are they’ll accept us as their person.
And then we get angry when they keep showing us we’re not their person.
When Your Financial Baggage Is Inherited and Is Not Your Own
When I was struggling with depression; a friend of mine asked me a very interesting question:
“How do you know that the depression you’re struggling with is your own?”
He explained that since traditional therapy hadn’t worked for me, it was possible that my depression could be from my ancestors and from 400 years of oppression.
He advised me to start connecting with my ancestors and to consider ways of healing my ancestors, at the same time I was healing myself.
It would take me years to fully grasp the power of that conversation. That conversation opened up a whole new way of healing for me and got me to start exploring inherited financial trauma.
Why Families Have The Same Financial Patterns
Understand that the relationship we have with money and the way we're currently experiencing money can be unwittingly passed onto our kids.
This is why it's not uncommon for a family to have a similar spirit of money or a similar money archetype.
You can find the current generation responding the same way to money as the previous generation did.
It can feel like no matter what we do, we find ourselves in the same situation as our parents.
Maybe your mom would spend all her money at month end, and you feel like you can't stop yourself from spending all your money on month end - no matter what you have to use that money....
On Sons & Daughters Who Take On The Father Role In The Family
We all know about the daughter who will try to replace her father through romantic relationships and even dating older men.
But we don't talk about the daughter or son who feels obligated to help their mother carry the load financially.
Often this will be the first born daughter or son - they will often step into the role of the father, be super responsible and become their mom's wing man.
3 Myths About Giving Financial Help (or Black Tax) that Block Us Financially
Often when we talk about black tax, we talk about the recipients of black tax being problematic.
This is a major myth, because a relationship isn't just made up of one person.
For today I want us to explore this myth and stop looking at the givers of Black tax as victims, and also explore their motives.
I say this as someone who has watched both their parents pay black tax.
And as someone who has felt deep resentment that their mother had to help her family and end up losing so much in the end.