Redefining Money
We all have a relationship with money—complicated, emotional, and deeply shaped by capitalism. Let’s explore how to make sense of it.
Welcome back to another deep dive into The Restorative Rebel. I’m so glad you’re here.
Spring is starting to take hold—at least where I am in the Bay Area—and that familiar sense of transition comes with it. The days are longer, the air is shifting, and everything feels like it’s beginning again. And yet, even in seasons of change, one thing seems to stay constant in our culture: money. How we chase it, fear it, organize our lives around it, and (as a product of internalized capitalism) judge our worth by it.
In the last substack, we explored Chapter 2: Making Sense of Social Impact, where we looked at how capitalism has commodified care, co-opted “doing good,” and reduced social impact to a glossy branding tool rather than embedding it as a core business ethic. TL;DR, Real impact can’t be tacked on—it has to be built in from the beginning. Now, we’re shifting the focus to Chapter 3: Redefining Money—because if social impact has been reduced to optics, money has become the metric for everything that matters.
This is especially true in the U.S., where the cost of basic necessities—housing, healthcare, childcare, and food—keeps rising. At the same time, layoffs, political recklessness, and economic uncertainty create instability across industries and almost every aspect of our lives. Tariffs and inhuman policy decisions threaten broader economic shifts, and for many, money feels tighter than ever, even though we’re living in one of the wealthiest periods in human history. It’s a paradox: abundance exists, but it’s unequally distributed—and when things go wrong, we’re told it’s our fault. There’s little safety net, just shame. So many of us learn to relate to money through scarcity, fear, and survival—not freedom or choice.
This chapter examines the emotional weight we place on money, how internalized capitalism distorts its meaning, and what it means to reimagine wealth—not just in dollars but in well-being, dignity, and enoughness.
Money Means Everything... and Nothing at All
In the book, I unpack how internalized capitalism has warped our understanding of money—and even the textbook definition of capitalism itself. We’re sold stories about free markets, personal responsibility, and the idea that money is simply a neutral tool. But in practice, the markets aren’t free, the system isn’t fair, and money is anything but neutral.
