In my family, money was never a topic of conversation.
I know it wasn’t because we had so much that we never had to think about it. In fact, I think my parents thought about it quite a lot. It’s just that those thoughts were never shared out loud. I don’t think we were struggling, exactly. I learned the shape of our security through the things that stayed out of reach—the school trips I didn’t attend because they cost extra, or the way the air in the house would sharpen when a large bill arrived. You just accepted the silence. You didn’t ask, and you certainly didn’t question the math.
I didn’t realize how deeply I had carried that inherited compliance into my career until I had been in the field for a while.
I chose the nonprofit sector with my eyes open, knowing it wouldn’t come with a generous paycheck. That was fine with me. The work was fulfilling and I was good at it. Frequent promotions followed and the recognition felt like enough. Negotiation never even occurred to me. I didn’t want to let anyone down, and I already felt lucky to be paid more than I used to be. There was a part of me that wanted to believe if I just did my part, the system would take care of me.
It wasn’t until I became a leader and started looking at the actual budgets that the skepticism set in.
I saw the numbers on the page. I saw what we were asking of our staff versus what we were able to pay them. I saw how vital it was to invest in people to keep them from burning out, yet how often the “mission” was used as an excuse to keep everyone’s head just above water. I realized that the silence I had learned as a child was the same obedience keeping this whole system afloat.
Now that I’m stepping out on my own, I’m trying to unlearn that social contract. And it is much harder than I expected.
When it came time to set my initial rates for this practice, I felt a physical resistance. I spent hours agonizing over the numbers, worried that if I asked for what was reasonable, I would somehow be seen as self-serving.
The doubt was louder than the math. I wondered, who would actually pay for this? I looked at all the things I didn’t yet know about running a business—I didn’t have a formal business plan, a sophisticated pricing matrix, or a background in financial forecasting. I felt like a fraud trying to sell a service when I didn’t even have a fancy name for my product. My inner dialogue was a constant loop of you don’t know what you’re doing.
It took me a long time to realize that in this work, I am the product. I don’t need a complex algorithm to justify my worth; I know how to support clinicians. I know how to hold the space. I know how to be. Once I shifted from trying to build a business to simply valuing my presence, the resistance began to lift. I realized that my value didn’t come from a spreadsheet; it came from the decades of being me.
But unlearning a lifelong agreement isn’t a single event; it’s a practice. More recently, when I needed to raise my rates for a pilot program to better reflect the depth of support I provide, that familiar, hot racing in my chest came right back. I found myself planning concessions I hadn’t even been asked for, or trying to find a way to delay the change for just one more month.
But then I looked at the clinicians and leaders coming up behind me. I realized that if I don’t use my voice, I am inadvertently teaching them how to be quiet. I don’t want them to wait as long as I did to realize that having a say in our own security is actually part of the job. So, I had the conversation. And it wasn’t the horror story my brain had scripted. The mentee met me with a clarity I hadn’t expected; they understood the value of our work and were ready to invest in it.
I realized then that by avoiding the conversation, I hadn’t been protecting them. I had been projecting my own old patterns onto our professional relationship. Raising my rates wasn’t an act of greed; it was a move toward sustainability for both of us. If I’m not willing to model what it looks like to value this work, I’m just passing down the same cycle of self-sacrifice I’m trying to outgrow.
I’m learning to look at this intergenerational pattern with more skepticism and a lot more curiosity. By understanding that worth is more than just a number, I’m finally finding the confidence to speak more clearly about concepts that used to feel taboo. It’s a process of mending the relationship between what I give and what I am worth. I’m sharing this because I know I’m not the only one who has spent years waiting for a system to notice my value for me.
We can be healers and be whole at the same time. In fact, I’m starting to think that’s the only way to ensure this work is a legacy that empowers the next generation, rather than an unhealthy habit that just repeats itself.