Knowing when to end a dream within my reality 14/01/2012

I had a dream and many more, though I decided at a certain point in my life to manifest this one particular dream I had which would set me free from all that I experienced as limiting and which kept me bound to the system that I despised. It was like a wish, a desire that turned into a ticking time bomb inside of me, while I wasn’t aware of the ticking and not at all aware of the bomb that was the cause of the ticking. So I lived the dream and I walked the dream in order to escape reality and I found out that there isn’t something like escaping your physical reality if you do not want to end up dead. My physical reality can’t be ignored as hard as I tried, since my physical body is the only vehicle I have at my disposal to manifest and experience anything here on this earth.

To make this dream I’m speaking of more tangible I have to go back in time to see where the building blocks for this dream were formed and what emotions/feelings these building blocks consisted of. The dream I’m speaking of was escaping Holland to settle down in Italy and start all over, far away from the evil outside world. One of the building blocks was the urge for a “spacious” house, another was no longer dealing with compulsory education in regards to my kids, wanting to be self sufficient on a level of food and basic living, enjoying the fresh mountain air and escaping the petty Dutch state of mind.

I always longed for a “spacious” house and when I started opening up this point I had no idea where that urge ever started. It was simply there all my adult life, I didn’t question it, I simply followed it like a manual of how to live my life. Since ignorance isn’t bliss I had to dig deeper and find out more. When looking at my life I saw a life where I had been moving around the Netherlands  with my parents a lot. Always when my dad was able to get a better job we got a better house, that was the first imprint from childhood. Then we ended up living in a trailer for over a year with my parents, waiting for a house to be built. Living on such a small space with 4 people was doable, but not really enjoyable. As I’ve been suppressing most of my emotions/feelings throughout my life, always for the sake of something, I only have happy memories of this period. Though when I speak of this period I speak of all the inconvenient things that were inextricably connected to my life in the trailer and I was not really in peace with myself through suppressing all the negative. When we finally did live in the new “spacious” home it felt like a real relief, a feeling of “now I’m able to truly live”. So all that was negative turned now into positive and therefore a “spacious” house was the equivalent to freeing myself from the negative. These two imprints of “moving is improving” and a “spacious” house is “freedom”, which I allowed to  make me believe that moving into a bigger house would solve all that I was facing inside myself as negative was ignition for my ticking time bomb. Not realizing that I didn’t experience yet  this negative inside myself as something of myself, I experienced it as the evil outside world that was coming for me.

This meant that I made the effort to emigrate to Italy to find a “spacious” house and set me free of the negativity I experienced in my world as not being of me. I completely separated myself from my physical reality in order to not face this world as me. Once in Italy I fully experienced all the shit I had been resisting/ denying/suppressing, when I started my process and especially when I started my DesteniIProcess I knew that there is but only one solution; facing myself or going down with my dream. Only now, after almost 6 years in Italy, this point is opening up and getting clear to me.

Compulsory education is the foundation of the dutch education system, therefore homeschooling is not allowed by law. Back then I saw it as unfair, especially unfair towards me as a personal attack of the system which made me decide that I was going to fuck the system and let it know that I could fight it. How wrong could I be. Looking back at it now, I can see that I am the system and that I therefore was fucking myself big time. I was fighting myself and the system hit back with a judge and a fine. I was totally disillusioned and couldn’t see that it was simply cause and effect. I broke the rules of the system by homeschooling my kids for a year while the Dutch law forbade such a thing, so I was breaking the law and had to answer the system in the form of a judge and I was corrected by the system to follow it’s path again and paid my fine.

While taking this step of emigration I found out that also Italy had a compulsory education system and that only kids that lived too far away from the civilized world were allowed to be home schooled. Which made us look for remote areas where we could buy a ruin to restructure. On the brink of my emigration and wanting to escape the compulsory education system I knew there was a big chance that the kids had to go to school, which did already deteriorate my dream, but I didn’t want to face it. Instead I considered school all of a sudden as a good thing to establish the Italian language for the kids. Not that there was no common sense in this perspective, but it was the opposite of what I had believed in. What made me experience again only the positive and suppress the actual negative.

My partner P. and I have been talking a lot about being self sufficient and seeing it as the ultimate form of freedom. We considered collecting rainwater for the toilets/shower/washing machine and a cane field and anti bacterial Philips lamp to clean our own water to re-use it for consumption. We were investigating many ways of growing our own vegetable garden and building a house with straw and other ecological products. We searched for a place far away from any village to experience life as I thought it should be. There was one tiny little problem I didn’t oversee, I’m part of a whole and I was planning on separating myself from that whole. I thought I was strong enough to do it all on my own not realizing that I was allowing a polarity to play out at my own expense. I felt like I could handle the whole world and take a stance like, me against the world, surviving life on my own force, while in reality I was the opposite. I feared life, I was running away from life and therefore I was running away from myself, separating myself from myself and not willing to face myself. So the ideas I had about living self-sufficient were not bad or evil in itself, it was my starting point for wanting this dream to come true that turned life/me against myself. Where it were first thoughts and ideas, later I walked them in reality and experienced life as being against me while my starting point was one of self-sabotage.

I liked the idea of enjoying the fresh mountain air and made it into a highly prominent motive to do this emigration into the Italian mountains. We lived around Amsterdam where the air was polluted and my kids and partner experienced astma-like symptoms of it. My reference points for thinking that mountain air would be better than the air we were breathing at that time were nice travel pictures of mountains throughout my life, hiking in areas in the mountains where no one lived and my partner P. his stories about his Italian youth and the nice air in Italy. Looking at these reference points I have to come to the conclusion in common sense that I’ve manipulated my reality into fitting into my dream/ideas. If someone would suggest me to buy a certain product, because of pictures and stories of others, I would not even consider buying into it. In my own case I sold myself Italy because of it’s fresh mountain air based on pictures and hearsay and I didn’t ask myself questions. Which shows me my true nature and who’s my possible worse enemy.

Escaping the petty Dutch state of mind is the same as escaping myself and that’s what I did. I changed the Dutch pettiness for the Italian pettiness and kicked it till it was sore. All along I was the one who was sore, I was out of options to let myself know what I was busy doing to myself. And when that wasn’t enough I started to develop physical problems, the last option of my body to ask me to please take self-responsibility. I looped within my physical problems for 3 years till this winter, it became clear to me how I’ve been abusing myself throughout my life and that I have to put this to a stop. I developed shingles, food intolerances, a dust allergy, candida albican and hives. It felt like my body was falling apart, my entire life I’ve been healthy and now the opposite occurred. It’s my physical explaining to me how I kept positivity in place and how I wasn’t willing to see the negative that was there at the same time within me ready to be dealt with. Positive can’t exist without the negative so it was inevitable that this would happen.

So I cried which I hadn’t done in a long time and let a lot of the negativity out, to see who I am and who I had become while not denying half of myself. Within this process of letting go and processing I found out that I had pushed away a feeling of not being happy where I am now in life. Knowing that happiness as we experience it now isn’t a stable factor to rely on, it’s an energy and therefore the opposite outflow of being happy. And yes my whole 6 year stay here in Italy I convinced myself of being happy with my new situation while suppressing the fact that I felt displaced and not belonging anywhere. Searching for this self-worth outside of myself, that I was convinced of finding there. I believed that self-worth had to be brought to me through the fact of who I was for others. Instead of having this stability and self-worth inside myself. Though the others were not seeing me as someone that belonged there, they saw me as displaced and reflected my own belief back to myself which gave me this horrible feeling inside of being eaten away from the inside. And that’s what it was I was slowly letting myself die/decompose letting all life slip away. So I STOPPED and said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, till here and NO FURTHER. There was no escaping possible I had to continue facing myself and redefine my situation in common sense in the best interest of all.

I looked at my own created situation together with my partner P., knowing how our dream had looked liked back then 6 years ago. We had not been able to buy a house due to financial misfortunes already starting in Holland when selling our house. We had a stable job when we came here and within 2 years we lost the job due to the starting worldwide crisis and incompatibility with the Italian traditional way of doing business. We lost about 4 times jobs and tried all kind of little jobs on the side line facing every time the unwillingness of the Italians to use opportunities and to work with us. We’ve gone through winters of hardly having money to buy food let alone other stuff. Right now we lost again our jobs within an impossible labor market while trying to live out our Italian dream. My body is sick and so are the bodies of my family and there isn’t enough money to go and see all kind of doctors.The air we breathe is highly polluted by wood stoves and gives me asthmatic problems, schools are even worse then in Holland, food isn’t of a great quality, the costs of life are the same as in Holland only the salaries are way lower. So what the fuck are we doing here chasing a mindfuck?

I have to face myself as the only and ultimate solution and I’ve been busy doing so, yet 43 years of shit are not easily worked through. Step by step I understand who I am with my ugly sides included, though my physical reality asks for an immediate solution since having no job here in Italy,  means for us no money. And what is common sense? Staying there where you ran out of options without a big network in a country where one only get a job when one has connections and where others grant you with a job due to who you are and not what you are able to do? So we came to the conclusion that the best thing for us to do now is remigration to Holland and pick up the network that we left 6 years ago to which we kept more or less in touch with.

After the first investigations within the possibilities of remigration I found out that my remigration to Holland as a Dutch person means the same as emigrating to what ever country. First a job and a house then re-migration, welfare isn’t an option since they do not provide re-migrants with welfare. Holland is not welcoming their expats and re-migrants, it’s simply, once you leave your spot will be taken. When one Googles remigration the first searches are about non Dutch people who want to go back to their birth country, they can get compensation for their trip home and keep a monthly income from the Dutch State. I was astonished to hear and read about the unfriendly treatment of the Dutch State on several blogs from re-migrants, the same story over and over again. Though when we left Holland I remember that the official agencies were quite blunt and made it clear that they weren’t going to put much effort in my questions since I left. Also businesses are not welcoming people with foreign experience, they see them as a threat. Instead of seeing someone with a foreign experience and the ability to adapt they fear people like us.

So deciding to go back will not be easy when it comes to the practical procedure of it and it certainly won’t be a dream or a warm welcome. We will settle for a job and a warm home, instead of a living room at 14 degrees Celsius with the wood stove on. Sleeping in a temperature of 6 degrees isn’t really fun, so I’m basically looking for a dignified life where I can sort myself out and where I can be part of the whole instead of being separated from it. It’s time to end the dream and a second chance would be great, I’m granting myself a second chance I know I’m worth it.

I’m sharing here my Self-Forgivenesses that opened up through writing this blog. The Self- Forgivenesses that I already did over time are not included within this blog.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see a dream or a desire as something that can be real without consequences, instead of seeing that dreams and desires are based in energy and therefore not real within the physical reality, it will cause friction between real and unreal.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be caught up in the mind and perceive my dreams as real as my physical reality without investigating my starting point.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to despise the system and judging it for limiting me, instead of seeing that the system is me and it’s always me that decides to limit myself.Therefore I need to direct myself and take self-responsibility for the limitations I bring on to myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape reality out of fear to face myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abdicate my responsibility for life and longing for freedom to come and save me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame the evil outside world while in fact I was blaming my evil inside world for being existent. Therefore I didn’t want to be a person with negative sides I only wanted to see my positive personality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from my physical reality in order to not face the world as me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist the negative feelings/emotions inside myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deny the negative feelings/emotions inside myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress the negative feelings/emotions inside myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be angry at the system for fining and correcting me, instead of seeing that I broke the law and had to face the consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to manipulate my believes in order to keep a dream alive. Instead of seeing that beliefs are not based in common sense and what is best for all and therefore not a solution to any problem to participate within.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to long for being self-sufficient without seeing that I’m separating myself from the whole and not bringing solutions in the best interest of all when being self-sufficient.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have a starting point of self-sabotage in life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to experience life as a force that is against me, instead of seeing that life is me and being against myself is self-sabotage and therefore unacceptable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to end up as my worse enemy.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not face myself and let myself loop within a tree year period where my health was the investment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not face the negativity within myself and not wanting to take self-responsibility for the consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not allow myself to cry and seeing it as weak.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that happy exist as something that is stable and real.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that self-worth comes from outside, instead of seeing that self-worth can only be allowed and accepted by me from the inside out.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to slowly die/decompose and not taking my self-responsibility for life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that changing the scenery will change me and gives me the freedom to not face myself.

When and as I see myself participating within this pattern of perceiving a dream as real and worth chasing. I stop and I breathe. Within this I realize that the energy of this experience is directing me and I am not the directive force here. Thus I stop this participation in this energy as living in my mind and escaping reality and myself  and do not participate, but breathe myself here in and as the physical.

Not wanting to look into the face of fear of survival. 18/12/2011

A few days ago while doing groceries, my partner P. and I ended up at the fishmonger. It’s a shop run by a couple, who are always cheerful and ready to give you assistance and service. This week a new lady started working with the wife of the owners couple. The lady didn’t look like she took great care of herself. She was in her forties, had long greasy hair and a face full of pimples. And we were the happy clients that were going to be served by her.

She acted nervous, which isn’t an uncommon thing when you just start a new job. We pointed at a certain fish and asked for 2 of those fishes, already stating that the fish were quite big. The new lady weighed the fish and made the bill. I was a bit puzzled since she asked 20 euro. We both said that’s too much money, that’s not what our budget can handle. So we picked another pair of fishes less expensive and less big. The new lady was not really amused with our behavior, since she already had made the bill, therefore the pay desk had to be reset in order to switch to the new price. She stepped back after one try and called the owner to fix the problem for her. The newly picked fishes were weighed and we paid a reasonable amount of money in relation to our budget.

When we left the shop we wondered what had went differently and how this confusing could have happend. We came to the conclusion that the owners always before making up the bill, ask whether we agree with the weight and amount of fish. In that moment we usually change it into more or bigger fish or smaller fish. No big deal, it’s just in the game of buying. So we missed one step wherein we as a client were able to accept and allow the deal that was about to be made. Now we were confronted with a price that we didn’t want to pay.

Then I looked further and deeper inside myself, because the new lady had left an impression on me that I interpret as not comfortable to look at. I felt some what disgusted with her, not blaming and judging her for her actions in the physical reality so much, but more blaming her for her overall presence. I realized when slowing myself down after rewinding the whole event that I didn’t like to look her in the face. Why? What had the lady done that I was disgusted by looking her in the face? What reaction was triggered inside of me?

It was the heaviness of how she looked, the total separation when she failed resetting the pay desk, where her eyes almost rolled back as if she jumped into her mind. And then I knew what she triggered in me, I was looking in the face of fear of survival.This lady didn’t want to be there and dealing with “difficult” clients, this lady was there to earn money in order to survive. Lets be realistic, no one’s career desires are serving people in a fishmonger. Although I’ve been in a position of doing work to survive and still are in the position of doing shitty jobs in order to survive, I hated to look into the face of the very same thing that also I fear.

I always make sure that I look cheerful while doing my job, since it’s my doing why I ended up having to do shitty jobs, another person has nothing to do with my unresolved shit. So I rather not show feelings of not being satisfied with my job, while this lady on the contrary wasn’t capable of doing so. There is no wrong or right in showing your feelings or not, it is about being self-honest towards yourself and making the situation into the best interest of all. So when I look at myself it’s obvious that suppressing these feelings of disliking my job as a cleaning slave for someone else, isn’t in the best interest of all. It’s best to deal with these feelings of discomfort and then for the time being accepting  and allowing the job as it is, which gives me the opportunity to look for other job options that are less abusive. Therefore throwing ones disgust for the job on ones employer or clients and not taking responsibility for it is not a self-responsible thing to do, simply dealing with it without suppressing the feelings is moving forward.

There are things though that I no longer will accept and allow from my employer, like cleaning a clean Persian carpet on my knees with a small brush. My employer has this desire for cleanness that’s on the edge of hosophobia. She calls me to clean the house because it’s so dirty, we clearly do not have the same definition of clean and dirty. If I stood in her shoes within her house, I would have said, it’s still clean I do not need to clean the house now, lets spend some time with the kids. But I need the money and my relation with her is not one of equality, a slave and a master are never equal. So saying to her that her house isn’t in need of a cleaning, isn’t something I can say within our relationship, if I want to keep the job.

So the bottom line here is that I do not want to see in others what I experience within myself as negative. Therefore the first reaction in me is separation from what I’m dealing with and only focussing on the other. Lucky enough I’m doing the Desteni I Process which enables me to look behind that first reaction and not getting distracted with my outer world while the problem for me is within my inner world. Isn’t that what we, humanity, tend to do? Finger pointing at others when they make us feel uneasy? We better stop if we really want to evolute and starting to understand ourselves. Our reactions are always about us, they won’t go away if we separate ourselves from it while blaming others. I intend to take responsibility for my own reactions, to clean out the shit inside of me, how about you?

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to judge another for her uncared appearance, while it’s simply pointing out the fear I have inside of me to become a person that will neglect herself.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to fear neglecting myself out of separation of my body.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to ignore the needs of my physical body while I’m allowing the mind to occupying my existence.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to judge another for the very things that I dislike inside of myself.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to blame the lady at the fishmonger for being nervous and making me feel uneasy, while it’s me that decides to act on the reaction I have towards a nervous person an define it as negative.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to justify the nervous behaviour of the lady at the fishmonger with the fact that it’s normal to be nervous at a new job, while I’m being agitated over it and start back chats about her unfriendly approach.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to measure myself with other standards than the lady at the fishmongers, it’s okay for me to be nervous, yet it isn’t okay for her since she makes me feel uneasy. Not seeing that there cannot be 2 standards of measurements over the same feeling when I’m equal to all there is.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to judge the lady at the fishmongers for working in a different way than her boss does. While in fact it’s my fear of change and not being here within the physical that makes it difficult to adjust my actions within my physical reality.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to feel disgusted with the lady of the fishmonger, while in fact I was disgusted with myself for having to do slave work that I dislike in order to survive.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to fear the fear of survival as it is this signal that entails that I fucked up in life and not being able to fit into the system money wise.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to fear that I’ll never will arrise above shitty jobs and never will see a dignified life.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to reject the mirror that my fellow human is to me and instead dislike my fellow human for the negativity that they reflect onto me.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from those beings that express the things that I have defined as negative within myself.

I am one and equal to all that is life and I will stop and breathe whenever I see myself hiding in separation afraid of others who are pointing out how afraid I am of myself. I will no longer deny myself, separate myself nor sabotage my physical body. I will take life, as life, here in every moment and every breath, in the best interest of all. I will direct myself to become my own improved version to change myself inside and outside. A responsible world citizen that takes care of herself and others.

Lucky it isn’t me 14/02/2011

Someone posted a news item on Facebook today about how life stock was attacked by viruses and how the life stock in Africa and Asia had a harder time surviving in comparison to the developed countries. Further it entailed how these diseases caused by the viruses were easily spread onto humans and that these viruses become more equipped and harder to fight. This person shared this news item and she wrote with it: “lucky I do not eat meat”. It’s a perfect example of who and what we have become within our world. We are humans who do not want to take any responsibility for our world and are glad when something happens to others. We feel that we have been saved for this atrocity by some higher force.

Whenever an ambulance drives fast or has it’s sirens on, people here in Italy say: “Oh my God”. So within my first year here I asked why they were saying this. They all told me that they were convinced the patient in the ambulance was almost dead or about to die. They indirectly said that they were glad that it wasn’t them inside the ambulance or any relative or friend. Also here I see a lack of responsibility and being glad that another suffers instead of you.

The dog from across the street had been walking around the neighborhood and eaten something that was poisoned. By the time the dog returned home he was already foaming at the mouth, the owners took the old dog to a vet, but it was already too late. We all were in a way relieved that it wasn’t our dog that had been suffering and dead. My daughter A. asked around what exactly had caused his dead, but nobody had found out or was going to find it out. I myself have no idea how to find out what it was exactly what the dog ate and who had put it there or given it to him and if it was on purpose. At this point also I decided that my responsibility stops here. With this attitude of mine and my neighbors the poisoning can easily happen again, how many animals will we allow to suffer and die? Probably till the point that it’s our dog or cat.

The mother of the neighbor living a little down the street and who lived in the same house was old and sick when the ambulance came to bring her to the hospital this week. It was too late and she had already passed away. We were all watching from behind our curtains and really glad that we hadn’t to deal with the loss of our mother, a funeral and all the family that comes by. Most family you never see in normal life, but they want to pay their last respect to the family. To me it’s again not taking any responsibility for the world you live in, you are only glad it’s them.

Less then a month ago we were in the situation of hardly having any money to survive within modern society, due to not having a stable job. People who came over saw our situation, they admitted that such a life was though, but were not able to assist and support practically. When these people were in our home they understood how life was for us, when they were in their own home again they were all forgotten about us and they were just glad they weren’t the one’s without a job. Most people that managed to help us out were the people who had little money themselves and shared and exchanged foods with us. It seems like we only become responsible people when we experience what it is to be affected by loss ourselves.

We are so absorbed by our own survival mode that we are incapable of looking beyond the windows of our own mind. Only when we return, through shock within our physical reality, and when reality is forcing itself upon us we will have to listen. Only then it is again all about us, we are the victims, we are the one’s that need to be saved. Only a few of us are capable of understanding that many of us are in the same position, there is only so much variety within organic robots and only so much themes to play out. Which implies that we all fear loss and death, only it plays out in different scenario’s.

It’s a pity that it’s always only about us, so basically we are driven by self interest. This “quality” can also be used for the best of all. When it’s all about you then it’s you that can change you in order to gain what’s best for you. The way we are approaching our problems now isn’t working very well so we need change. Lets change ourselves in such a way that it’s always best for everyone, then everybody is satisfied and capable to take responsibility. First we didn’t take our responsibility out of the simple fact that we had separated ourselves from the whole of humanity/animals/plants out of fear of loss or death. Now when we are capable of doing what’s best for all we are part of the whole and no longer separated. Therefore we can be equals without comparison and competition and fearing each other.

As long as we are equal and one we can embrace an Equal Money System and start to live, because our basics are taken care of and therefore we are able to expand and work on solutions that will benefit all and leaves no one behind. Be one vote for an Equal Money System.

Money and I, a hate love relationship (part 2) 05/01/2011

Before I graduated as a social worker I already had a job at a rehabilitation centre. It was a temporary job that I got through mediation of the administration of my university. I had the right experience and done the right direction within my study, together with a few others,  for working within a medical setting. I got the job and had still 1 or 2 months to go before the exams. I felt really proud at myself for being able to sustain myself. The job started out as part-time, but within a month it was full-time and in the end I was a substitute for 2 colleagues. In essence I was proud of fitting into the system and my self validation was depending on how I had been able to get this job. I measured  myself to my  classmates who had been doing other directions and hadn’t yet succeeded within the system. When interviewed for the job I lied about having a car, because I knew for sure that I wouldn’t get the job without having a car. At that time my little brother had an old car, so I borrowed his car till I bought my own first car. I took a loan from my parents in order to buy the car. Financial enslavement started, we made an agreement how much I had to pay them each month. The salary I earned wasn’t fully free to spend, I had to pay my living with it and my car. At that time I had a boyfriend in the USA and my phone bills were sky high, in those days skype wasn’t invented yet and phone companies parasitized on their clients. The salary that I was left with to spend on luxury wasn’t that much anymore. When my grandmother died and left me €4000,- I paid off my debt and was financially free from my parents again. It felt like freedom in my mind.

When I met my husband P. he was unemployed and I still worked for the rehabilitation centre so I was the breadwinner. I payed our first vacation together and all the costs we both had, it didn’t bother me so much that it was my money we payed everything with, it was more the pictures in my head of a male breadwinner that gave friction. The moment P. started working again I felt relieved without really knowing why. I didn’t had this pressure anymore of bringing in enough money and being the one on which all financially was depending. For a while we worked both till I got pregnant and during my pregnancy my boss decided not to prolonge my temporary job. A lot of confusion at that time, I had to go to court and the lawyer of my formal boss started to intimidate me in the lobby of the courthouse. The deal was that they made it possible for me to get a settlement, but they filled in the forms wrongly and then we had to go to court. The judge was on my side and they still had to pay me the settlement and later that became welfare. A lot of emotions and fears to be sure I got money to sustain myself. At that point my future wasn’t bright, because who wants to hire a pregnant employee,  nobody. I applied for jobs, but with zero results. After my daughter was born I again had to apply for a job otherwise my welfare was withdrawn. It took me about a year and within that year I studied on-line interior design. My welfare agency didn’t want to pay for this study, because it didn’t relate to my profession as a social worker. I changed profession because there weren’t much jobs in the social sector, but wasn’t rewarded for changing and studying again so that I would fit into the system again.

I started to work in a furnishings business to see how I related to real clients after having studied on-line and if they liked my advises. I was planning to start my own studio and by taking this job I had access to clients and products. After a while I wasn’t really motivated to do this job, it did provide me clients, but I never knew what hours they had planned for me. I worked on the hours the permanent employees didn’t want to work, they changed hours without confirming and in the meanwhile I had to find my  babysitter available for those strange hours. The payment was low and could differ from month to month. I made an agreement with a friend, she had her child 2 days after I had my daughter A., we would babysit for each other and in that way the hours would score out together. Every time when she had to bring her child over for me to babysit she cancelled a hour before so in the end I had to pay her and our win win situation was totally illusionary. She bought a lot of stuff from my money and at a certain moment she was only in it for the extra money. My daughter, as little as she was made clear that this friend was mean to her. Another friend of the same friends club offered to take over the babysitting job, at that time I was pregnant with my second child and she already had her second almost a year before me. She didn’t want money for the job, but I insisted, I was afraid that without payment she wouldn’t be loyal to me and I had to count on her. During that time I started my own studio and stopped working for the furnishing business. I stopped because after taking off all the costs necessary to make it possible for me to go to my work, I was left with only €90,- a month. So I stopped. After about a year my friend and new babysitter was entangled within severe relationship problems and wasn’t capable of functioning with 4 kids screaming in her house. Again my A. told me that my son J. was sitting all afternoon in his bouncer and nobody looked at him, when he had to sleep the friend carried the bouncer upstairs and left him there sitting and sleeping at the same time. One day she called me and said: “I can’t do it anymore”, which meant that I had to find another babysitter for that week since I had client appointments. I found another lady in my street that watched over already a lot of children and I sticked with her till J. went to school.

In this period my partner P. had a permanent job and a lot of the times I envied him or was even jealous at him. In the morning after breakfast he closed the door of our house behind him and in the evening he came back in. When I had to work I had to arrange a lot of things to make it even possible to start and close that door behind me. The main focus was on P.’s job since he generated a stable income. In a way it was impossible for me to make a big succes out of my business and looking back now I felt as a victim. This made me incapable of really directing myself within this situation. The money that I earned wasn’t superior to or equal to the money P. earned so I felt less due to the amount of money I made.

To be continued…

Money and I, a hate love relationship (part 1) 02/01/2011

Since Cenk’s video series and Viktor’s digging as well into his relationship with money I started to look at my own life. What role did money play in my life?

I was born into a family where my dad worked for a small company that was selling construction materials and my mom was a housewife and mother for the first time in her life. She worked before in a shop, but after she got married this wasn’t appropriate anymore. My dad was born 2 years before the Second World War started and my mom was born when Holland was liberated from the Germans by the Americans. They both grew up in the reconstruction period after the war. People in Holland started to gain welfare again and when my parents got married they were proud on the furniture they could buy for their rental apartment. Due to the job my dad had they had to move from the east to the west of Holland, only a 2 hour drive, but for Dutch people an almost impossible distance to overcome. They bought a car, a volkwagen beetle, to travel every weekend to the east of Holland to visit their parents. They had the money so they were supposed to do so.

When I was 3 years old my dad got unemployed due to bad management of his boss and the company went bankrupt. Lucky enough they received welfare, but my dad always tells me how humiliating that period was for him. I was too small to understand what was happening. Due to the welfare we didn’t had to move out of the apartment, but my mom learned to be creative with little money. Within a year my dad had a new job and when I was 4 my little brother was born.

Then we began to move through the country, every time my dad got a financially better job we moved. We as kids learned that it was okay to move your family around and ripp them out of their reality every time my dad had a prosperity to more money. I ended up in life as a compulsive city hopper, after a year living somewhere I got really restless and wanted to leave the life that I lived and move on to another place. I didn’t move because of money, I moved out of not willing to face  myself within the life I lived. Whenever I felt discomfort I started planning to move. I never asked my dad if besides money there were also other reasons to pick up his life and start over again.

When I grew up there was always sufficient money from the jobs my dad had. My mom on the other hand kept spending the money as if she was still in this period where my dad was on welfare. So they saved up quite some money and were capable of building their own house twice in heir life’s. Although there was money enough and I had expensive clothes and enough toys to play with, it always felt as if there wasn’t enough money due to my moms relationship with money. My brother expressed once, as a grown up, that he felt shortchanged by my parents when it came to money. I never experienced it that way, which is a fascinating point since we had the same upbringing within the same family. Already at a young age my brother was obsessed with money, I recall that family members send him birthday cards with pictures of money on it. My brother studied economics and works now for Shell where he has made a nice career if it comes to money.

As a child I saved up money to buy the things I liked, I saved up for quite a while till the moment was there to buy something practical I longed for. I remember that counting the money to see if I had saved up enough was important and that gave me a certain attachment to the money, whenever I spend the money the attachment was gone and I couldn’t care less about this money. Money wasn’t real for me as a child, only the means to get what I wanted.

I decided to study Art and I couldn’t care less if that was going to support me financially or not. When I moved out of my parents house to study and live on my own the Ministry of Education forgot to give me study funding. I was simply not included in their system and I had to borrow money from my parents to buy food, pay the rent and school suppliance. I felt really awkward for spending their money and lived on the most minimum possible as I had learned from my mom in the past.

At a certain point I did worry about making a living as an artist and justified changing my study with being able to make myself a living, just as my dad did with moving around constantly for a better job. So I switched studies a few times. Money was an issue for changing studies and also the fact that I wanted to proof the world that I was intelligent, therefore I kept searching for studies that satisfied me within this desire. My little brother was seen as highly intelligent and I was just his sister. My brother told me constantly how dumb he thought I was, my parents gave me the impression that I wasn’t as smart as their son. So I wanted to proof myself and let my choice for a profession depend on wether it was a profession that was seen by the system as successful. I became a social worker and felt needed by the system, it was like the ultimate wet dream. I got well paid for being needed and seen as a good person at the same time.

While studying the state funding wasn’t enough to live from so I had several jobs along my study. I peeled tulip bulbs, I was a receptionist in the weekends at the company where my dad was the boss, I sewed and repaired tents, I made a 1,80m high sculpture, I sorted out frozen strawberries on an assembly line, I sold on the phone vegetables to supermarkets for a large supermarket chain, I cleaned the interior of KLM airplanes and I worked in an old peoples home, served their dinner and washed the dishes. Except for making the sculpture I didn’t like the jobs I did, it was the money that motivated me to do jobs I normally not would have done. For money I was able to suppress my feelings about these jobs, but most of the jobs didn’t last for long. I wasn’t able to put money first to the feelings and reactions I had to the jobs I did. Although money did determine the search for another lousy job to survive within the system.

To be continued…

Money has fallen from the sky 31/10/2010

It’s almost as if money is falling from the sky. It’s the end of the tourist season, or at least the large amounts of tourist that’s coming to our region is over. So I’m left with 1 cleaning job and my work as a dressmaker. More time to write and more time to reflect, but inevitable more worries about how to earn money for the basic needs in our life as a family of 4.

Okay, having this said I reveal to myself that I’m still existing within the survival mode. How can I not? We all are surviving, but what I have done was stepping out of my victim role. I no longer pity myself for being in my current situation. I stood up and I’m directed myself within this life of poverty, poverty as in Western poverty. I still own the stuff I had before I went into poverty, I have my computer and my internet connection. The only thing that is lacking is a stable job and a stable income.

Last week my parents gave us €400,- to buy a wood burning stove to keep the living room warm. Wow a nice surprice. We moved the 4 of us into our spacious living room. P. moved his office downstairs, I moved all my sewing machines into the living room and the kids their computers. It’s cosy, but we also have to adapt to the new situation. Watching video’s can now only be done with a headset on, I was used to listen to the video’s and work at the same time. But I easily will give up these habits for a warm room, because working behind the computer or sewing machine at a temperature of 11 degrees Celsius isn’t fun anymore.

So as I said my cleaning job within tourism has ended and one of my employers decided to give me a bonus for all the efforts I had unconditionally done when working for them. Wednesday they gave me €200,- and I normally earn €8,- per hour. To me at this moment that’s a lot of money. So we decided to spend it on clothes for this winter, not out of the urge to be fashionable, but to keep us warm for when the real bad weather starts. So we made a list of clothes that would be practical for this winter. J. and A. are constantly growing as teenagers so even if the clothes are still in good shape we have to replace them. We went to this huge fabric store and collected fabric for €130,-. Now I have to turn them into clothes, but that’s nothing new. When all is finished we are the proud owners of: 8 trousers, 4 long sleeve winter t-shirts, undergarments for 4 persons and 4 fleece vests. I will probably do something with the left overs, I will see.

Than on Thursday we suddenly saw on our bank account a large amount of money, €2000,-. With internet banking here in Italy one cannot immediately see where the money comes from. I was convinced that the bank had made a mistake, so I said to my partner P.: “we’re not going to touch this till we know from who it is”. We could only see that the money came from a foreign bank account. We have family and friends living in Holland, but who would send this much money without saying anything? On friday we were able to see who it came from, it was my brother and his wife. They knew about our situation and they figured we could use some money instead of unwanted advise or gifts. So no worries at the end of this month, when it comes to paying rent, gas, electricity etc.

Friday a friend of us asked if we had gone to the food bank. She has a friend that runs the food bank here in the village. I told this lady of the food bank that we hadn’t, I only would come over if I was in need. She said okay, but do come over in your car, than nobody will see what your doing and you don’t have to carry it all the way back home. How can I drive my car when I do not have any money left? Do I need to shame myself so much for going to the food supply that I’ll use my last money on gasoline? When I’m not in need of food I rather leave it there for the onces who are more in need than me. Than our friend said:” you don’t understand it, it’s already paid for with money from the European Community. If you don’t take it we have to throw it away”. So now she was putting the weight on my shoulders, if I wasn’t taking the (luxurious) food than they had to throw it away. I said, no I won’t take the food if I’m not in need for it. There are many within this village who are in need, just find them.

Than saturday my landlord said the same as our friend, “take the food, it’s excellent”. He said:” I rather want you, as a family, to have the food than somebody who really don’t need it, you are good people.” Our friend and landlord were or still are both in local politics, how come they can’t see what they are doing? They’re participating within this fucked up system of European subsidies, which certainly will stimulate fraude. The food supply here is only open twice a month so how could that help people without any money? It’s all so fucked up. If our basic needs would have been covered for, these European subventions wouldn’t exist at all. Within an equal money system I would have had a basic income and none of my current problems would have existed. No over producing of food, no food throwing away and no European subsidies fraude. The equal money system can erase many problems at the same time, which the current systems can only dream of.

We had quite some money falling from the sky the last 2 weeks. Even if it took me by surprise, it was me who was the directive principle within this. I had been sharing my life in self honesty with the people close  around me and I hadn’t lost myself within shame and pity. All these people decided to share their money with us. I can only stand as my own starting point within this situation. And that’s being my own directive principle and within that being a living example. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. Still lots of work to do within not falling for the polarity of good and bad, but that’s why it’s called process.