Find Where You Fit in the Sustaining-One-Another-Money-Model:
Consider the total amount of money that your family receives per year – include job-wage, government support, inheritance, or any other money. Divide that by the number of people supported by that money. For example, if I receive approximately $30,000 a year and that money supports 2 people, my equation would look like this: 30,000/2 = 15,000 per family member. If I am a single person and receive approximately $50,000 a year, that looks like 50,000/1 = 50,000 per family member.
- If your total is less than $20,000 per family member, your fee is $35 per session.
- If it’s $20,000-$40,000 per family member, your fee is $55 per session.
- If it’s above $40,000 per family member, your fee is $105 per session.
I believe in economic access to this kind of work. This sort of money model only works if people with access to money participate.
Please note, I am only able to support a few people in the little-money-access pay range. This model depends on participation of people with a lot of access to money. When we talk in person I will let you know if there are currently any slots open for this fee range.
Open Book Money Talk
Most people don’t do this sort of thing. To be true, I find it mildly awkward. Nonetheless, I am trying it out because I really love the idea of open book economy. I feel what is normalized in terms of economic practice is not good for plants nor people. This is my way of trying to do economy differently.
That said, here is a little info about my money scene. These prices are not what I make per hour. There is lots of invisible labor behind this being a practice. I have made, on average, less than $15,000 a year most of my adult life. There are many and varied reasons why this is so. If you are curious, you can ask me more about it.
The most important things I think to say here are – I find this work fulfilling. I can only do so much of it and I need to receive a certain amount of money for it, else I burn out. I aim for a modest income – aka I am not trying to get rich via you working with me.
Ecosystems, Intersectional Oppression and Money
Each of us has a different experience in life, in terms of how our ‘nature’ – our physiological body – combines with our ‘nurture’ – aka the sorts of nourishment/lack of nourishment we received as children in terms of love and basic needs, what we are exposed to in life, the extent that various social systems privilege and oppression effect each of us, and so on. For each of you arriving here who you are and what you have experienced may be drastically different than the next person. If don’t know you yet but I do know that all of those things typically effect ones access to money.
Sometimes people hear the term intersectional and they think that cancel culture is rearing up, getting to eat them. When I hear it I think about ecosystems. Often misconstrued, intersectionality ‘isn’t an effort to create the world in an inverted image of what it is now’, states Crenshaw. The point of intersectionality is to “make room for more advocacy…” to create a more egalitarian system.‘
As Barbara Smith says it, “we acknowledge that people have different relations to systemic oppression, based upon who they are. And that we have to take that into account when we are trying to figure out ‘which way forward?’ and ‘what are we going to do to eradicate and to challenge that oppression?’
Thinking about all the saplings in the forest, some get a lot of light, some have the sunlight blocked. Some get sat on by a bear, some do not. People are not exactly trees but for certain – in our current version of social systems, some people get more sunlight than others. This model is a way to say, if you have been fortunate enough to have a nature-nurture combo that equates to having access a lot of money – this is a moment to acknowledge that some people have had that sunlight blocked. Your participation in this models helps redistribute nourishment.
Relational Awareness 