Womanhood • Thought Piece On Mode On the ways we shift, adapt, and learn who we are in different states of...
On Mode
On the ways we shift, adapt, and learn who we are in different states of being.
I was never taught to talk about money honestly.
Not as a woman.
Money was framed as something practical, secondary, a detail to be handled quietly, preferably by someone else.
As if wanting financial autonomy meant I was less romantic, less trusting, less feminine.
So I learned to downplay it.
I learned to say, It’s not about money, even when it absolutely was.
Womanhood slowly taught me that money is rarely just about currency.
It is about choice. About safety. About how much of myself I am allowed to protect.
For a long time, I associated money with dependence. With compromise. With the need to negotiate my needs carefully.
I learned how to be grateful instead of secure. Flexible instead of stable. Patient instead of prepared.
And I called it love.
But after enough exhaustion, enough imbalance, enough quiet fear at the end of difficult months, I had to be honest with myself.
Lack of financial agency does something to a woman’s nervous system.
It teaches her to hesitate. To calculate. To stay longer than she should because leaving feels too expensive, emotionally and materially.
Money, I realized, was never the enemy.
Silence around money was.
Womanhood after survival, after divorce, after disillusionment, is learning to see money clearly, not as greed, but as grounding.
Having my own money changed the way I breathed. The way I rested. The way I said no.
It shifted my posture in conversations. I no longer negotiated my worth through accommodation.
Financial independence did not make me colder. It made me calmer.
It allowed love to be a choice, not a survival strategy.
Money gave me options, and options gave me dignity.
I stopped romanticizing struggle. Stopped believing that suffering was proof of depth.
I learned that being cared for should never require self-abandonment.
Womanhood taught me that asking a woman to choose between love and security is not romantic, it is irresponsible.
Now, money feels like clarity.
It shows me what I value. What I prioritize. Where my energy actually goes.
I spend differently now, less performatively, more intentionally.
I invest in rest. In education. In peace.
I don’t measure success by excess. I measure it by sustainability.
Womanhood with money is not about control. It is about freedom without apology.
Freedom to leave unsafe spaces. Freedom to start over without panic. Freedom to build a life that does not rely on silent endurance.
I am not rich in the way movies glorify. But I am rich in something quieter, self-trust.
And that, I’ve learned, is the most stable currency a woman can hold.
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