In an indigenous way, it’s sort of a form of sickness to stockpile resources or wealth while your tribe member or relative is starving. I’ve always sort of felt that, even before I could articulate it, and felt aversion to people charging what seems like insane amounts of money for this kind of work, that creates a barrier to accessing it for people like myself. The issue isn’t really the amount of money per se, it’s the idea of profiting off others with the kind of large disparity that capitalism can create, and stockpiling instead of sharing. I think this is part of what makes us uneasy when we encounter it, but it’s also a facet of a very Christian/Western/capitalist world that splits money/worldly things and spiritual things into diametrically opposed categories that don’t exist in a tribal way.

In TRiBE and the Balanzu Way, we talk about the concept of “aya’a”, (pronounced eye-YAH-ah) which is a form of interdependence or right relationship that we try to foster. In a capitalist world, it’s a zero-sum game where we’re all out for ourselves, fighting each other for resources, and benefiting while others are losing.

I don’t think we need to do that anymore. I want you to be well in your life, and to have what you need. I want that, too. I think we can both have that and figure out how to change our definition of wellness to a collective one in which we’re trying to take care of each other, not in a codependent way, where we’re sacrificing our own needs, but in a way that allows us all to thrive collectively better than if we’re all trying to survive alone.

I’m committed to trying to live in that indigenous way of being, to figuring things out in relationship, which I’ve realized means I need to let myself be part of the equation, too, something that I didn’t do for a long time. I came from a family where it was a mark of pride never to ask for help; this was so ingrained in me that it never occurred to me to ask my parents for money even when I was struggling to buy food in my early twenties. During that time, twenty years ago, I learned about food banks, and learned to ask about sliding scales and work-trade options and was diligent about putting in hours and tracking them. Because it was so hard for me to ask for help, and I had so much pride about it, I found it sort of humiliating to be questioned about it, or to have to jump through hoops, and would just avoid places where I had to do that. I literally had to be starving to grudgingly accept assistance.

Consequently, in the early days of doing this work, when people used to ask me for a sliding scale, I gladly offered it to them, no questions asked. I assumed that everyone was like me, and I never wanted to make someone uncomfortable. I especially liked being able to offer my scale to ‘my people’—queer and trans folks, people of color, folks from marginalized backgrounds who statistically make less money. The wake up call for me was with a particular client who was ‘one of my people’. After a long time of working together, completely on my sliding scale, in the course of her session where we were discussing job possibilities, I learned that she made a lot more money than I did, and that she had two out-of-state vacations planned. And not trips to see family on the cheap, actual vacations where she could afford the ability to take time off, to buy plane tickets, as well as additionally paying to stay in nice places. This was a shock to me, and lead to me feeling like my generous nature was being taken advantage of. I felt like I had essentially helped pay for her to take a vacation that I couldn’t afford myself.

Sadly, this experience was not the last time I encountered this.

In the course of the decade plus that I’ve been working with clients, I’ve realized that people aren’t intentionally trying to swindle me, but that challenges with money stem from a variety of places. First, there are people who just don’t value money spent on themselves or their own healing. They might have the money available, but have inner blocks about putting it towards healing work, or have just arbitrarily decided that it ‘shouldn’t’ be worth that much. Then there are people who have impulsive spending habits, who might have the money available to pay my full rate, but who don’t have a budget or track their spending, and live in a constant state of fear and scarcity because of that, believing they can’t afford it when they actually can. Then there are folks, like the several clients I’ve had who told me they were unemployed and couldn’t afford it, who I later discovered had large trust funds or savings they were living off of ($50,000+), but out of a combination of the aforementioned issues and their own anxiety, wanted a sliding scale. Last, there are folks who have partners or parents who are well-off, or might be able to financially support them to pay for sessions or class fees, but out of shame, guilt, or our wounded healer syndrome that makes it hard for us to ask for something, or believe we’re worthy of receiving it—people don’t even ask for their help.

In all of these situations, I realized that the person who was trying to access my scale wasn’t actually unable to pay the regular rate for my services. They just had dysfunctional relationships with money or receiving that I was enabling, out of my own projected assumptions, and discomfort of asking questions about their finances. I’m in a place in my career where I have more people who want to see me than I can take, and I get to hand-select my clients. I don’t think any of the folks I worked with thought about the fact that when I offer someone a scale, I’m essentially taking money out of my own pocket to gift to them, because I could put another client or student in their spot instead, who could pay me the full rate. That’s less food on my table, and less money for my rent, with the reminder that I am also a marginalized person, doing my best to juggle my finances and take care of my kid. I’m not over here getting rich off of all of you and buying a Benz. I’m just trying to not be someone who’d need to access my own scale, lol.

Just to explain why things are what they are, first, I try to keep my session fees generally in alignment with mental health counselors in the Portland area, even though I offer so much more than counseling, and commensurate with my 10-20 years of experience in psychology and shamanic work. Second, I deal with a debilitating chronic pain disorder that makes me unable to function for a third of my life. Because my pain is semi-predictable, I have to build my life, my work schedule, and my rhythms around it. Because it’s semi-unpredictable, I often have to cancel sessions or class I was expecting to earn money from. Consequently, I have to earn enough in the part of the time I’m well to be able to support myself and my child as a single parent, and have some buffer for unpredictable drops in income. I have also generally lived most of my adult life with less than $1000 in savings. I was able to do that because I move so closely with spirit, and Spirit and my spirits guides have always taken care of me and made sure I had exactly what I needed to survive, right at the moment I needed it.

But I have come to realize that surviving is not thriving. I’m in my forties now, and I’m ready for things to be a little easier. I have a six-year old child, now, too, who needs clothes and childcare while I’m with you, and eats as much as a full grown adult! I’d like to travel, and save money towards collectively buying land or a home instead of staying trapped in the rent cycle. Those feel like really important goals for me and the work I’m here to do. They also feel like reasonable requests after putting in twenty years surviving close to the bone, so I could be of service to the world and do work I love that helps others, in the most affordable way I could offer.

So, I’d appreciate it if you would consider me and my needs in your thinking about your own finances and needs, too, as it relates to asking me for help. I’ve realized it’s important for me to practice being more transparent and vulnerable about my finances, so I can model that in a good way, and it just becomes something we can talk about easily as part of the work we’re doing.

That’s why I wrote this whole piece, and decided to share things about my own relationship to money, and what I’ve experienced with people, so we can think about each other and see how we can best find the place to support each other, reaching for the collective wellness of all.

Session Fee Sliding Scale Decision Tree

Maybe just reading all that I wrote will help you identify whether to ask for sliding scale. If any of those dysfunctional relationship with money scenarios I’ve just described apply to you, please pay the full rate, or do some work around really examining your access to resources. On the other hand, if you are one of the people who my scale is intended for, which is generally someone living paycheck to paycheck, working full time or as much as they’re able, struggling to meet their basic needs, without savings, without a safety net—then I 100% am here to support you, and I’m glad to do it. Please ask for help and don’t feel bad about it, my scale is there for you.

If you need some help to break it down, please use the decision tree below to see if you might qualify, and please answer these questions honestly within your own integrity.

1. Do you have a parent, partner, friend, etc. that you could possibly ask to support you, or could borrow money from, even if it might feel uncomfortable to do so? Have you directly asked at least two people?

Yes—>No luck. Continue No—> Please do that first before asking me for a scale. It’s really there to offer assistance to folks who don’t have a support network. Isn’t it funny how we’ll ask a perfect stranger to give us money or support us before we ask those closest to us? [If you answered ‘no’ because, for instance, you’re estranged from your abusive parents and don’t have access to support, etc, please continue.]

2. Are you able to save money right now, even if it’s not much?

Yes—>continue No—>continue

3. Do you have more than $1,000 in savings?

Yes—>Consider paying full rate, unless unemployed, then go to next question. No—>Skip the next question, then continue

4. Are you unemployed or part time but have more than $4,000 in savings?
   1. Yes—>Please pay full rate, or consider asking for a partial rate if you make it through the rest of the tree.  No—>continue

5. Do you make $15/hr or gross $30,000 a year or less?

Yes—>Skip next question, then continue No—>Consider paying full rate, unless you have extenuating circumstances, then go to next question.

6. Do you make under $60,000, but have a child or parent you’re supporting, are still struggling to meet your family’s basic needs of food and shelter, and don’t have savings or a safety net?

Yes—>continue No—>Please pay the full rate.

7. Are you planning a trip or vacation or have you taken one in the last year? Or could you travel if you wanted to?

Yes—>Please pay full rate. No—>continue

8. Do you have enough money to eat out occasionally, grab a coffee when you want to, or buy clothes, etc.?

Yes—>Please consider paying the full rate. No—>continue

9. Do you have a budget where you track your spending? Do you know how much you spend on any given thing in your life, and have you tried to rearrange said budget to make space for our work, without luck?

Yes—> Continue No—>I encourage you to search the internet for a budget template. I wasn’t raised to know how to budget, or manage my money, either; this was something I had to learn as an adult. Before asking me for a sliding scale, please create a budget for yourself, and see if there is anything you could change in that budget to have the money to see me.

If you have made it all the way through this decision tree, please ask for my sliding scale, I’m glad to help support you. If you got turned away in the tree, but feel like you have extenuating circumstances, please talk to me. This is a set of guidelines, not a rigid rule. Maybe you make above the level of poverty, but you have huge medical debt you have to pay, or a parent you’re supporting. I never want to turn away someone because of money, but I also have to manage my own expenses. Talk to me.

Also, if you made it through the tree, and even my lowest sliding scale is still too much for you, I can additionally offer you a deeply discounted rate if you’re willing to be part of helping me teach a new generation of healers. The Balanzu Way offers individual sessions with apprentices for $105, or a virtual clinic with short sessions, community-acupuncture style, for $45 for 30 minutes. If you can’t afford even my lowest rate, these options could provide relief, while also letting me pay my rent, and helping my students learn. This is the way we find aya’a that is of benefit to all.

Investment in School

Education is one of the things we invest in as a people and as a country. Way too much money, in my opinion, which is why we’re culturally having discussions about crippling student loan debt that sometimes follows us for the rest of our lives, and how to change that.

I got my Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Lewis and Clark College, and the current average price for that is about $65,000 a year, for three years. That adds up to almost $200,000 for the degree, and that doesn’t include loans you need to support living expenses while doing practicum and a year of unpaid internship. That’s a completely insane amount of money, and none of us should be in debt for the rest of our lives in order to help people.

With the Balanzu Way School, I wanted to be able to offer life-changing and world-changing education at a price a sort of average person could afford, with some budgeting.

Tuition for the Balanzu Way School is $2880 for the 2024 year. I let folks pay that at $240 monthly for 12 months instead of yearly, so it’s more feasible. The monthly fee breaks down to about $30/hr that you pay for classes, which is dirt cheap. It’s about 1/25^th the cost of a year of my Master’s degree, which, to be honest, was mostly a lot of useless nonsense that I really didn’t need. There were some really useful parts, and those are the parts that I teach you, my students, so you don’t have to pay $65,000 for it.

I also ask/require that my students do two healing sessions a month the first year. In therapy school, they require you to do a paltry 10 sessions, whereas I require 24 to graduate from Healing the Wounded Healer, and 48 for graduation as a shamanic practitioner. This works out to roughly two sessions a month for a year, and one session monthly for two more years, if you’re intending to complete your training with us. I watched so many of my peers in my Master’s program struggling with their own issues, their lack of self-care and boundaries, their own anxiety, and essentially, not do their own healing before they tried holding healing space for others. The results are not pretty, and I know, because I’m the person healers across all fields come to when they hit that point. The current burnout rate for mental health practitioners hovers at around 50%, and the drop out rate is also disproportionately high.

As wounded healers, as instruments of the medicine we offer, our own healing is critical to be able to offer a clear channel and a safe cocoon for others. Everything that I do, the ways I do it, what I teach, etc. all comes from understanding what every other school of medicine, mental health, massage therapy, etc. gets wrong. Most of them ignore the first primary tenet: “Healer, heal thyself.” That’s why our program is designed the way it is, to focus on the primacy of our own personal work.

Doing two sessions a month with me is $330 at my standard rate. Tuition and sessions takes the total cost for your individual healing work and the program to $560 a month without a sliding scale. I recognize that can be a lot for a single person trying to manage on their own, even if it’s still, like, a 10^th of the price of graduate school. But I would really like to see ya’ll take this work seriously on the level of grad school, and be willing to take out loans or ask for family support as you would if you were enrolled at Lewis and Clark or wherever. I’m also working to figure out an integrated system, where my higher level apprentices can possibly see first-year students at a deeply discounted rate, so you guys can help each other. It’s obviously not the same as working with me, but I hope it can help my apprentices get the client contact hours they need for graduation, and offer a more affordable path than working with me at my normal rate. I’m also always willing to offer a sliding scale on my session rate, which may slide $20 down per session. In future I may be able to offer financial aid for the program, but to be honest, the program is as stupidly cheap as I can make it and still survive.

This relational process we do in the Balanzu Way also relies on you guys helping each other, too. I need a minimum number of students in order to not take a loss on teaching you instead of seeing clients in the same time, as I otherwise would. That’s what your student fees are based on, needing to cover the amount of money I lose holding class instead of seeing clients. So if you stay with me and each other in this process and stay with the work to figure it out, we may be able to do it altogether. If ya’ll fall off one by one thinking it’s too expensive without seeing what other options we could come up with, then I can’t afford to offer the program for anyone without a quorum. This isn’t to try to guilt trip you or force you to do something that doesn’t feel right, just to honestly know in a relational way that your choice to bow out affects others’ capacity to access this, too.

Humility and Hustle

My first job out of college was delivering pizzas for a place down the street from my little backyard ‘apartment’ in Seattle, that was like a fitted out shed with a hot plate behind a friend’s house. I was 22 and ruminating one day at work on all the epic rhetoric we get in graduation speeches about our bright futures, and laughed to myself, “This is my fancy liberal arts education at work”, while I scrubbed out the toilet at the pizza parlor. To say that it was humbling and a general dashing of my expectations for myself was an understatement. But I had some internalized classist bullshit thinking I was too good for that work, too smart, or somehow superior to scrubbing toilets. I needed to be humbled, because everyone has to scrub toilets at some point, even if it’s just our own.

I had worked many awesome non-profit jobs, had climbed the rungs to be Community Director of the spiritual community I apprenticed in before I left to found my own community, TRiBE, at the age of 30. Almost a decade intervened between then and my pizza parlor days, but in order to get TRiBE off the ground, in addition to doing this thing I felt called to do, that scared the shit out of me and overwhelmed me, that I poured my heart and soul into, I worked three part time jobs to support myself, which included waiting tables. If you’ve never done it, waiting tables is exhausting, soul-crushing work sometimes. It feels like you’re running a multi-tasking marathon where you’re always behind and everyone’s mad at you. I arrived home so dead beat after a shift, my feet killing me, my face hurting from smiling so much while hustling for tips, and my teeth grinding from dealing with people who felt entitled to treat me like shit for things that were beyond my control. Also, I had to clean toilets.

But I survived, and TRiBE survived, and lo and behold, even though I was the founder and Visionkeeper of a spiritual community, who had people showing up every week to listen to me bring through wisdom from Spirit…I still had to clean toilets, just at the large warehouse we now rented to meet in, instead of at a restaurant. I smiled to myself while I did it, thinking of it as my humility tax to keep from getting too big-headed about my work.

Sometimes people see my life, where I have a thriving private practice, get to hand-pick my clients, and enjoy a modest life doing work I love that changes the world, and assume they can just easily do that, too. In the last decade I have helped launch many people into their own successful, unique healing practices, and I can teach you how to do that, too, but not without humility and hustle. If you think you’re too good to metaphorically clean toilets (do DoorDash, drive Uber, work in a call center, do customer service, wait tables etc), you’re not going to get far in this work. Unless you already have a giant Instagram fan base, I generally tell people it realistically takes a minimum of two years of hard work to really build a steady client base that can actually start to pay your rent. And unless you have a trust fund, or parents or a partner who can support you, you’ll have to work one or more of what I call “jobby jobs”, things like the aforementioned that don’t take a ton of mental energy so we can pour that energy into the creation of our life’s work—while busting our asses to pay the bills.

If you are unwilling to make sacrifices, and scrap with everything in you to figure out how to support this dream that’s calling you, it will die a cold death before it ever rises from the ground. Being an entrepreneur requires what my grandmother would call ‘gumption’: vision, passion for a mission, determination, scrappy hard work, the willingness to persevere against all odds, and confidence in the importance of the work, paired with humility in regards to the importance of you. That’s the recipe that will get you to a life of purpose doing what you love.

Working a jobby job doesn’t mean you’ve failed somehow. It doesn’t say anything about your worth or value as a person. It’s just labor. In the capitalist society of America, everyone overidentifies with their work; it’s the first thing we casually ask anyone, but that’s not true in all places of the globe. If we don’t need to get our sense of worth from our work, if we don’t decide that doctors are truly superior to janitors as human beings, then the work we do to pay our bills really doesn’t matter. It’s paradoxical that releasing our attachment to that is the thing that gets us to the work that matters to us more than anything.

It doesn’t mean that waiting tables isn’t grueling sometimes; it totally is. But we all like eating out every now and then, and someone has to bring us our food. It’s like an agreement we offer each other that we all have to take a turn doing those jobby jobs that no one really loves, but the world needs to keep turning. I was thinking about this because I was at a restaurant with my dad and brother recently, cringing at their behavior, because it’s just so very obvious that neither of them ever waited tables. I’m grateful that I went through that soul-crushing time doing it, because I’m relieved of the burden of acting like an ass towards people who are working their asses off. I’m so grateful that I can be grateful for the labor that others provide for me, and tipping well regardless of the service is one of my small pleasures in life when I can do it.

Gratitude is a wonderful way to exist in the world, and very often, we are not grateful for what we have if we’ve never been without it, or faced hardship in order to understand its worth. I am grateful for my servers, and I’m also so, so grateful I get to serve in a different way these days. I love this Martin Luther King Jr. quote, “Everyone can be great, because greatness is determined by service.” Doing our part to take our turn, and humbly serve the world in whatever way we can at the moment—without ego that tells us we’re either too good for it or truly worthless—is the way we earn our calling and become clear so that Spirit can move through us, and eventually lift us up to be of service in the way we were most perfectly designed to be. I can tell you from being on the other side of it that it’s an extraordinary feeling, it is a sweetness beyond believing, it’s like all the melody of the cosmos singing through you at once, and it’s worth all the sacrifices and hard work it takes to get there.

But you’ll still have to clean toilets.

❤️

I hope these writings inspire you to think more deeply about your relationship to money, work, worth, and your dreams, and to stay in relationship with me and the hope of doing this program, as we figure out how to take care of ourselves, share what we need, and hopefully find a way forward that can work for all.