Body Math - Beyond Transaction
Body Math - Beyond Transaction
From mine to yours.
Body Math
Transactions are in our blood. Literally. Every active cell in our bodies are trading with each other to keep us alive. Similarly, we as humans, live and act in transactional ways. Transactional relationships aren’t dirty, they’re necessary for life, and the most common way we humans trade is with money. If you’re a fan of logic, then we can assume that money is not dirty, it’s necessary for life (in our modern context.)
If that’s not settling in your body well, you’re not alone. I used to feel like money was the root of all evil. I used to feel like money was always against me and never FOR me. I was conditioned to believe that money only came to those who overextended themselves, and even then, that I would get only enough money to cling to life and scrape by. Being smart actually worked against me as I would use my mind to justify all the ways that money wasn’t helpful and look for ways to devalue my work because it was familiar to me. Now, I didn’t always have such clean language about that time in my life, but it used to sound a lot like “It’s ok, I’ll just help you out - no need to pay me because I enjoy doing it and you need help,” until I was exhausted and malnourished.
My body was telling me that my transactional relationships were not sustaining me - I wasn’t being fed enough support. The systems were part of that. There’s no denying that we just don’t pay teachers enough and we’re somehow ok with that. I can’t ignore that it’s just harder to access comfort when you’re born poor or can’t afford financial education or the capital to make career decisions from a place of empowerment. I spent so many extra minutes in the shower to just help my body stay warm in the cold. My body wanted to know some of the comforts I saw my friends experience - what was it like to just order whatever I actually wanted a restaurant? What was it like to go on a vacation and stay in a hotel instead of camp? What was it like to get a cavity and not worry about filling it?
The systems weren’t the whole problem. My body told me that too. When someone offered to help me or pay for things, my body felt tight. I was restricting my capacity to receive nourishment from others. I didn’t feel like I was worth investing in or that by simply existing that I was a burden on those around me. Who was I to take up space or eat food? I learned to be incredibly scrappy and stellar at budgeting. I’m grateful for those skills and even more grateful that I now get to choose when to use them.
Glaring Clarity
My life expanded dramatically a the moment I let my body believe that I was worthy of the nourishment I needed simply because I already existed. I mean, I was here already so I may as well think about transactions in a way that keeps me here, right? I didn’t have to earn my nourishment. Despite seeing government policies telling me otherwise, I don’t actually have to earn my right to exist - I already have that birthright. And so do you.
The rest from there is a story for another time. What I learned then was: in order to decondition my mindset from “transactions are dirty” to “transactions are vital and healthy” I had to accept that simple transactional relationships exist.
Beyond Fantasy
I know, it might sound silly, but I was always seeking and acting from a moral place “beyond transaction” because I didn’t want to see anything as purely transactional - I wanted to see every interaction as an act of love and was willing to sacrifice myself for love over transactional nourishment. I was transactionally bypassing. By bypassing the fact that some relationships are actually best staying transactional, I wasn’t able to love the nature of those transactional relationships for what they truly were.
Example: I dated someone for a while who said they loved me and didn’t behave in a loving or nourishing ways toward me. Their transactions didn’t line up with their morality, words, or actions. While I trust that their feelings of love were true for them, my body had a hard time understanding why I felt so drained by them. They were eager to receive my attention, energy, creativity, money, and space and very unwilling to give unless it made them look good to others. I had a lot to give. It “worked” for a while until I was exhausted and had to take a good look at myself and the transactional nature of our relationship. Every intimate relationship has a transactional element to it. Ignoring that doesn’t make us better lovers.
I ignored the truth of the transactional parts of my relationships in order to maintain some idea of morality that I inherited and was no longer serving me. It’s not better or more important to be loved than it is to eat. They’re equally important. If we, as a culture, knew this then no one would be hungry. In seeing the truth - that transactional relationships are healthy, vital, and even joyful - I was able to move myself beyond them and find the love that is inherent to all transactions. I didn’t have to make or infuse the love in transactions. Love was already there, I just had to be open enough to see it - the same way saw that my body cells love each other transactionally to keep me alive. It’s natural and visible to anyone who cares to look. For instance, your food came from a farmer, a harvester, a trucker, and a grocery stocker or restaurant worker. They all know that their work feeds people. I find that both nourishing and loving. I don’t need to know their names or favorite ice cream to receive the love in that transaction. I just have to make sure they’re fed too.
Cheap Bodies
Even “unfair transactions” have love in them and are sometimes necessary for health. I’m currently in a place in my life where I need to receive more than I’m giving for a few months as I recover from surgery and an exhausting relationship and I intend to balance it out as my capacity shifts. We learn to dance with the ebb and flow of our capacity in all of our intimate relationships.
Extractive capitalism, however, supports ONLY an uneven, unfair, selfish love in transactions. It exhausts us in every way - and specially bodily. The transactions we support as a culture are not rooted in justice, but rather in maximizing how much we can take from another. The love is lopsided and most of us are left feeling hungry for love and nourishment. We’re taught that “winning over” someone in negotiations is powerful and what we should strive for in order to be “better than others.” This idea of winning only feeds supremacy mindsets and keeps us hungry for authentic connection. It keeps our bodies cheap.
We experience that extractive, lopsided energy every time we hear the words like “deal, cheap, bargain, or discount.” Those words make us feel like we’re taking more than we’re giving and that make some people feel powerful in their selfish love. That’s why many of us think money is bad - because those of us with empathy feel bad when we extract because we know and feel how unfair it is. Most people don’t actually like taking more than they give, and are coerced into doing so by what’s been made available. We then refuse to look at the inequality and move on with our lives because “it’s too much.”
Which choices can we literally afford here? We subconsciously ask ourselves that question every time we ignore someone on the street asking for support or before buying another sweater from a brand that uses child labor. There is no ethical consumption in extractive capitalism. It’s all been tainted by injustice, built on slavery, and is completely unavoidable by anyone reading this article.
That’s depressing, now what?
Let our judgments rest. Release the blame. Love the transactions for what they are. Ask for the nourishment you need and give nourishment within your capacity.
It’s all conceptually very simple and all it requires is a commitment to practicing our own personal transactional integrity - not what anyone else tells us our values and integrity should feel or look like. Nobody knows our capacity to give or receive like we do - the thing is that we must consciously engage that capacity first. Since many of us are so skilled at using our minds to ignore our relationship to transactions, we can easily bypass and gaslight ourselves into justifying extractive transactions. It’s a good thing we can use other parts of ourselves, like our bodies, to move beyond transaction by noticing and feeling the energy trading behind those transactions in the first place.
My body knows the math. So from one communal cell to another:
Your body knows the math. Balance your equation. Move beyond Transaction.
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Co-Conspirator Highlights - Cathy Rivers - Human Design Coaching
Simply put, I would not be sharing all this with you without Cathy. She has lovingly guided me to many of the best decisions I’ve ever made and supported me as I made them reality. She’s as loving as she is intellectually sharp and firm as she is supportive. Her mastery of Human Design helped me recognize my gifts and develop them and share them with confidence and trust. We met up recently and she asked me point-blank: “When are you going to write a book?” I took a breath, trusted her intuition, insight, and intellect, and said “soon.” If you wanna know who this coach trusts as a coach, it’s Cathy Rivers.
(“OMG CANDIS - why are you sharing who you use as a coach? Isn’t that going to hurt your business?” —— NO. No it will not because the people that need to work with Cathy will work with Cathy, and the people who need to work with me will work with me. It’s simple. No scarcity mindsets here!)
Personal Updates
I had a strong resistance to writing a book up until now. What I don’t want to do is perpetuate white supremacy’s worship of the written word - to make words more important than actions - to make words more important than trust - to make ideas more important than bodily experiences - to replace relating with conceptualizing.
That aversion made it really easy to ignore every other time people asked me to write a book. It wasn’t for me and I knew it. It wasn’t the right time. I didn’t think that what I had to say or offer would be as important as anyone else’s writing. I felt like everything I was thinking/feeling/acting on was already written about. And while I still think that’s true, to a degree, I don’t see a lot of people writing about the convergence of love and money, and they certainly can’t do it from my unique perspective. (People hire me for that, I know my perspective and practices are literally worth a lot.)
Before now, I only preferred to directly relate to people. I love feeling them move with me through our experiences. I like feeling the tether. Writing a book means releasing my art to the world with less of a tether than I typically prefer. In exchange, I open myself to many many more connections of varying relatable depth. I’m not scared, it’s just different. It’s receiving in a new way. It’s giving in a new way. I’m ready for new.
If bell hooks’ writing can feel like relating to me, then I can find a way to have that relationship with someone else too through my own book. I can find a way to share my findings in a way that challenges and heals supremacy mindsets through the very things that wound it the most - money, words, and justice.
Cathy, thank you for asking me that very blunt question.