Let's Talk About Money

Part Two: Capitalism and Feral Systems

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Capitalism wasn't built with care in mind.

I quit my job a year before my first child was born. A year into motherhood, I tried to get back to work and failed miserably. And since I wasn’t working, it never made sense for me to send my child to daycare. It was me and the baby, the baby and me. Always. Now with my second child, it’s the same, except that I have to do sibling mediation and parent-to-a-seven-year-old things as well.

Flashback to 2017

My partner is the sole breadwinner and hence, decides when I receive access to money and how I would spend it. My mobility was limited to the times a friend would pick me up, take me out and bring me back home. This, unfortunately also meant that my son and I spent a lot of time indoors and I engaged in very little grown up fun. 

Most people my age had jobs and lives to worry about, the moment I became a mother, it felt, I was forgotten. 

To remedy that, I approached a coworking space here in Cairo with a proposal to dedicate hours or a room to mothers with children and the young owner’s response was that it “didn’t make business sense.” As it would also disturb other entrepreneurs. I never went back and all my business endeavors since that time have been solo and albeit unsuccessful. 

Fast forward to today when I still spend a lot of time contemplating my experience tending to two young children while everyone around me is busy on their hamster wheels. Too busy to see me drowning, too busy to see my mental health suffer, my body suffer and my kids, too, suffer with my diminished capacity and limited space to regulate.

Except now I have to do it alone alone because society makes me “pay” for choosing my safety and my children’s wellbeing over giving them a life in a household where both parents live - in an “unbroken” family. Their father gets all the time and freedom, I do school runs, practice runs and the wizardry of having three people live on $40-50/week depending on what my ex-husband transferred to my account that week.

What was life like before capitalism? When we lived in groups on land and not in units and tall buildings - to each their own, we say, and think of this as the epitome of being a civilized person roaming streets of asphalt. And yet, without them on their hamster wheels and me on mother duty, would we even survive? Why do I feel so entitled to their time and money?

Feral Living as Liberatory Work

I watched my clothes become threadbare, my shoes getting holes in them and replacing them getting harder and harder, I come from a relatively affluent family and when I left my job and a few months later left home to get married to someone I had chosen - two things happened:

• Having worked nonstop and tirelessly for 7 years, I was burnt out and lonely. This made Dahab living the most glorious in my eyes (Dahab is our own version of Bali or Praia Do Forte) - I had the savings to carry me through, I thought.
  

• I got married to someone who led the exact lifestyle I thought I craved, no structure, no job, no office - he worked his own hours at his own terms and I had no idea what that came with. But I got pregnant and my savings had to support a lot of inner child healing instead of other luxuries of setting up a business.

When things moved online with the pandemic, nothing changed for me. I was home all the time anyway. And suddenly, I had access to a free zoom account, online classes and online community and solidarity. 

One of the teachers I met at the time – similar to many spiritual mentors and coaches – asked that I “carve out time for myself.” That was at a time when I felt like such a big burden already. 

So imagine this: 

A person who’s not a parent, suggesting that, I – a parent of a young child who has to wait for and ask for everything to be handed to them – ask people to babysit my child so I can have some meditation, practice or coaching time. 

I have a master’s degree in economics in international development and actually worked on the economic empowerment of women. And there I was, locked up at home. I knew “independence” and was experiencing extreme dependence but very little belonging. 

It felt like, still feels like, my ability to make money, my access and ownership of it are the only things tethering me to the fabric of society. When I no longer had access to clothes, shoes, hangouts and travels that qualified me to belong within my family of origin, I was, for lack of a better word, discarded?

My resistance comes in the form of creating choices. I chose to leave the house, I chose to unmute and come on camera, I face the world with my kids. I attended homeopathy class with my baby because I breastfed him. I take my daughter to workshops. 

This is decolonizing to me and it presents in blurring the lines between “work,” “family” and “life.” I facilitate meditations to the sound of my snoring baby. 

As someone who’s colonization is deeply internalized because of how recent it was in my country’s history, it’s important work to me. And I realize the irony in my writing this in English, okay?

Next up in this series is: insta-reciprocity and righteous entitlement.