I want to be rich.

On the shame you inherit and the wealth you earn.

I first met the Demons of Poverty through my parents.

My father, a successful entrepreneur, losing millions of dollars due to the economic crash in the 2000s. My mother was always working, and she worked hard. Together, my parents went from hardworking, joyful, and grateful, to broke and mentally deranged in weeks. I felt their pain. I knew the truth about the fog behind their eyes. They never had to tell me.

My sister and I were raised to earn our keep by both parents. Raised to be proud of hard work, to create, and build, and pursue our ambitions without fear. We are a family of dreamers, chasers, and, unfortunately—in our darkest moments—accidental self-saboteurs.

We are independent as well as we are supportive, drawn to our own adventures, and often losing ourselves in worlds of our own design.

My personal relationship with money is fractured.

A dynamic in desperate need of counseling. A marriage borne from misunderstandings, gaslighting, cyclical problems, and a lack of accountability. An absolute disaster fostered in trenches of doubt, denial, and desperation.

It took me too long to realize—despite my positive mindset on the surface—that my actions, emotions, and thoughts were contradicting how I was actually handling money. I was lying to myself, but didn’t know it.

Years ago, there were days I woke up with my heart hammering in my chest.

Where I would drive to work with ten dollars in my pocket and a near-empty tank of gas. Where I didn’t want to accept gifts because I saw the burden it put on my kindhearted mother. Where I charged pennies for my first copywriting project, and failed to break out of that mold for a full year.

And then, I bring you to just one year ago. I left a job that stole my soul and crushed it into pieces. I started a business that did the same. I earned money, but hated the work, and so, as a result, I began to resent money. I started to wonder if my artistic pursuits would ever be worth someone’s dime. I started to doubt, and I fell into that doubt with little resistance.

Subconsciously, I believed money belonged to everyone, but me.

This ache was so deep and painful, you would think someone skewered me with a knife. I was so terrified of money, the concept of “receiving” money at all was not only foreign to me, but stupid. It seemed fake; a manifestation pipe dream to comfort people who had zero ambition and only wishful thinking to protect them in an armor of clouds, touted by teenage Instagram girls with unmatchable beauty and effortless charisma.

Mind you, I was not judging them for their appearance.

They were intelligent women that could do what I could not. I thought I was being supportive of other females, but in actuality, I was rejecting myself before I could realize my real desires for wealth.

This pattern went unnoticed, and now I face it with bared teeth.

To be truthful, this letter is for me, yes, but it’s mostly for you.

For the person who echoes this phrase with so much yearning, desire, and ambition, that they need it reflected back at them in order to embody it:

I want to be rich.

(You want to be rich)

I used to be afraid of this.

(Maybe you were, too)

This desire. This need. This truth.

This blasphemous, socially unacceptable want.

I used to be so afraid of wanting to be rich, that I pulled a sash over my eyes, and blindly carved these fears into a block of shame. Gave them rivulets of pain and trauma and the bloodied wounds of my deep, crippling fear.

I created a visage of Wealth and Money and Unattainable Things that I believed was never meant to be held by me, loved by me, and shared by me, and did everything I possibly could to crumble it into dust.

If you’re with me—and maybe you feel the same way, and you’re sick of holding yourself back after caring way too fucking much about the world and its cruelty and its judgments—you’ll resonate with this.

And so, I will say this from the well of my chest, for you as well:

I want to be rich building things I care about. I want to be rich creating work I’m ecstatic to create. I want to be rich investing in the builders of the future. I want to be rich in knowledge, ideas, projects, and stories. I want to be rich managing and distributing mental and monetary wealth. I want to be rich from helping others achieve the same thing. I want to be rich doing what I fucking love to do more than anything else. I want to be rich in order to support the people I love and care about more than myself.

If you wish to be rich, and you’re ashamed of this—for whatever toxic, disgusting seed has been planted in you and sowed and nurtured from the soil of your past, your parents, your traumas—this is permission to completely eradicate all fear.

“I want to be rich” is not an empty statement.

It’s a promise.

If you are also on a quest to be rich, you know this comes armed to the teeth with Enemies. Enemies who have built their weapons on foundations of judgment, isolation, emotional disregulation, and self-sabotage.

Know that I am not wealthy. Not yet. But, I will do whatever it takes to build a wealthy life designed around mind, body, money—and creating things I love.

I will do whatever it takes without losing my soul, for making money simply to make money is a fractured crash-course that always leads to self-destruction.

My destructive relationship with money—built on insecurity, fear, shaking hands, tears, anger, pity, and a deep, unending abyss of self-disrespect—has cost me endless opportunities.

It’s become so clear, looking back through life’s spyglass, and seeing how the patterns I’ve established have created a circle of unhappiness, bitterness, and fear.

I was never jealous of the wealthy. I always admired them.

I studied them voraciously. The artists and entrepreneurs who lit stars in my eyes and made me want to build and create faster than ever before—they were the ones who served as my first mentors. My undying inspirations.

Most people have brainwashed themselves into pointing fingers and accusing the rich of only being rich because of inherited wealth, luck, and situations outside of their control.

This could not be further from the truth.

This is not based on emotional perception.

This is based entirely on evidence.

Cold, hard, uncomfortable numbers, stories, and outcomes that the majority of people will never try to explore because they are afraid of what it will show; that their excuses are useless, and they have been their own worst villain.

I feel you pulling your eyes away. Read these words carefully. Repeat them over and over again in the caverns of your mind. Let them seep. Let them stir. Discard the cloak of your previous beliefs and open a vortex of future possibilities, because this essay has come at a profound time for you and me, and I invite you—no, I am telling you—that you must read this in its entirety before you write off the possibility of becoming wealthy forever.

Know this, and know it well…

You have been fed this lie since birth:

The only people who can be rich are anyone but you.

You have been told that you must be born amongst the Kardashians, the Hiltons, and the Rothschilds in order to build anything of impact. You have been told you have to wine and dine your way to the top. You have been told—if you’re a woman—that you’re only gateway to millions of dollars is to sell your body, your worth, your soul. You have been told only the privileged few can achieve real wealth. You have been told only conventionally beautiful women can be wealthy women.

If you look outside of this toxic Sphere of Victimhood, you’ll see the truth.

You’ll read stories about normal people who went from rags to riches.