A long time ago, I was mixed up with companies that were scamming many people out of their life savings! I was extremely unaware and had moved between working at 3 different companies (assuming that the subsequent ones were legit). It turns out they were all awful and I had worked as a salesperson for all of them. Nothing for too long – 1 month here 2 months there.. Then I went on to help create a company that was supposed to help people get their money back, and my partner at the time who brought me into this venture ended up going to jail and truly ruining my life and reputation.
To this day, he is the most toxic person I have ever come across, second to only my father, though we were able to retrieve funds for many. It was all a blessing in disguise, and I had always come from a good place, yet to this day, just as I make any remote waves of success (a web series that gained traction, a close new friendship, etc) there are many anonymous accounts that will email friends or colleagues saying that I’m a horrible person, etc and not to work with me.
Instead of defending myself, I feel like “even though I was never intentionally hurting anyone, people were still hurt under my watch and therefore I take responsibility,” so I respond to my friends who ask me about these allegations and I say very simply that I understand if they don’t want to work with me or be around me. I then relocate emotionally or even physically, and distance myself from them. This isn’t fair to them or to myself.
At the end of the day, my naïveté when I worked for these horrible people was real, yet still, I feel responsible for playing a part in so many peoples’ pain.
(Not so) fun fact: Every time something wonderful happens in my life, I need to combat feelings of being undeserving.
I was never cut from the same cloth as the people who were money-hungry and blind-sided by greed. It was honestly never about the money and I had truly lost everything that I had “made” while working at those places, anyways. For me, it was about being respected and having a real job without a college degree that still brought in more money than I had been used to. It was about being respected for a talent that I had – my ability to connect deeply with people – that won me over. My bosses were awe-struck by my ability to connect with strangers over the phone and have them invest in these. I felt seen. I didn’t heed my internal calls to get the fuck out immediately, because I was so intrinsically disconnected from my true self that I couldn’t hear my intuition.
The way that I was lured into working for these businesses was that I had no confidence, and had no idea that I had this gift. All of a sudden, people in corporate suits were buttering me up telling me how much I could “help people make money” and how talented I was. “Corporate jobs? Wanting eccentric me, around?” Wow. I thought.
They were not wrong. I went on to be a top salesperson and even a trainer after an extremely short time. As soon as I had understood what was going on, I left immediately. Regardless of what transpired, I still feel like I was at fault and to blame since my vibration was so low that it attracted people like the ones I had been working with.
Not only have I been told many times that I am not to blame and I need to let go of my past, but even when approaching authorities trying to “turn myself in” I had been told that I had done nothing wrong and I was not who they were looking for. Instead, I let anonymous accounts bully me and I lay low and I stopped myself from becoming as “great” as I could be because I am afraid of what people will say now. There was even a director who told me he wouldn’t work with me because he’s so early in his career and doesn’t want to associate with me.
“One day I will prove him wrong,” I said to myself. But then I disappeared and I’ve been laying low ever since.
I don’t care about this director. In fact, I pity him and am aware that I am the one who dodged the bullet. I don’t care about anything except for the victims of this horrible scam, but I want to be able to forgive myself. Not for doing anything bad per se, as I truly was unaware of what was going on; rather for being aligned with the situation so much so that I had inadvertently become part of it. Or maybe there’s no need to forgive, rather accept that I needed to be immersed in immense darkness in order to experience and help those around me experience light.
Regardless, I feel that I deserve better but that every time I am blessed, I need to feel embarrassed or lay low or feel bad. I have a resounding playlist in my mind that I made up, where I hear people say “how do they live this life? Where does all this come from? There must be something shady.”
My past experiences seem to give Carte Blanche to those who have always been jealous of my independent and unique nature and want to bring me down, regardless. They use these anecdotes to discredit and undermine my accomplishments and then get people to jump on this bandwagon with them. It helps me to see who is weak, but still, it hurts.
I don’t care. I need a way out of my own head – a way to accept that this is part of my past and that I love my past regardless of these moments because it made me who I am now. From this horrible experience, I met my husband who is changing the world by teaching about Crypto and DeFi (decentralized finance) and inadvertently taking part in building a system that will enable millions of people around the world who previously had no opportunities, to be in charge of their own lives and finances.
From these horrible experiences, I became vegan and fully aware that the foods I consume directly impact my thoughts and actions. From these experiences, I became an extremely forgiving person towards those who need forgiveness the most, who feel the most isolated. From these experiences, I will become an understanding and loving mother to my children.
And yet still, why am I afraid to go back into the limelight and shine as brightly as I was always meant to?
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