Visibility Mastery: Release Your Vow of Invisibility

🤔Have you ever felt completely unseen by those around you?

🤔Have you ever been told or made to feel like you are too much?

🤔Or worse have you ever been told or made to feel like you are not enough?

I get it.

I’ve been there.

My name is Vangile Makwakwa and I am an ancestral money trauma coach.

I’ve been told that I have no original thought in my body, that I think I am better than everyone else, that I think I can do everything and that I need to learn to humble myself.

When I started this work I was told by a coach that no one would buy financial courses that have investment components from a hippie.

Then I was told by a well-meaning strategist that no one would believe anything I said about money because I was a “backpacker”.

A leading speaking agency in South Africa told me that nobody wanted to hear what I had to say about money and emotional intelligence and that I would never make it as a speaker in South Africa.

They advised that I stop talking about ancestral trauma and only talk about budgeting and investing. No one wanted to hear about spiritual and emotional stuff on stage.

A lead financial services company told me South Africans don't buy online courses and would never spend money on a virtual course (this was before Covid of course).

I was told Black women don’t pay that much for private coaching and don’t do virtual coaching and would need to see me in person to work with me.

Why am I sharing all this?

Because if you don’t know yourself, don’t have support and don’t have the tools to work through hurtful events, expansion can cripple you and you will spend your life believing there’s something wrong with you or that increasing your income is not meant for you.

Everyone of these events had me crying and doubting myself and the journey I am on. And it felt lonely as hell.

Some people may even look at me and think that I am naturally confident and it’s easy for me to shake things off.

When we look at entrepreneurs, we only see the end result, we don’t see the moments that leave them in tears and wondering about their journey.

Because we’re told that doing the thing, we feel aligned to do will mean there is no resistance.

But what happens when your aligned goals and expansion journey, bring all your fears to life?

What do you do when the journey makes you feel not enough or too much?

All these events triggered my: "You are not enough or you are too much” stories and beliefs

And I often had no clue what to believe – am I too much or am I not enough?

I quit coaching and entrepreneurship for a year in 2016 when one of my best friends stopped being friends with me and told me it was “The Van show 24/7” and a mutual friend responded by telling me, “You have to learn to give other children a chance to shine.”

I got a job as an English teacher for 8 months in South Korea and convinced myself that that was the only way forward.

I didn’t know how to deal with people feeling that I was “too much” and taking other people’s shine, so my solution was to run, hide and try to shrink myself so I could be smaller and easier to digest.

I hoped that I would miraculously wake up one day with the confidence to take the next step.

When that didn’t work, I tried to pretend that the things said to me or about me didn’t bother me and I tried to override the fear and forced myself to get over it.

But things actually got worse - I developed a fear of losing people and being criticized, I silenced myself to the point where I stopped writing and blogging for a full year.

I tried to buy people by giving away money to people, eventually I stopped making any money in my business and for a while it looked like the business was going to stop operating altogether.

I couldn’t imagine a world where I wasn’t doing the work I do on trauma, but I also couldn’t imagine a version of me that did this work despite the criticism.

I felt stuck and like I was betraying myself.

No one had told me that my childhood experiences of abuse and bullying were affecting how I was showing up in my business and affecting my income.

No one had told me that our nervous system plays a crucial role in how we respond to threats and challenges in our environment. When we experience trauma or perceive a threat, our nervous system goes into overdrive, activating the body's fight, flight, or freeze response.

When we lose friends and family because we are expanding, expansion can feel unsafe, which can trigger our vow of invisibility and we can respond by going into freeze mode or sabotaging our expansion.

When we get bullied and criticized for sharing our truth, living out loud, launching new products and/or services or setting our prices, we can make ourselves invisible by retreating, running, or going into hiding.

In business, this can look like feeling lost, doubting ourselves, being unable to sell, being unable to make money, getting of money as soon as we make…

Our need to be invisible is often triggered by past experiences of abuse, bullying, or rejection. When we're subjected to traumatic events during childhood, our nervous system becomes hypersensitive to potential threats in our surroundings. We learn to associate visibility with vulnerability, and we learn that being seen can make us targets for further harm.

Our nervous system remains in a state of heightened arousal (always ready for danger), constantly scanning our environment for signs of danger. This hyper-vigilance leads us to adopt behaviours that help us avoid drawing attention to ourselves, such as staying quiet, blending into the background, or avoiding social interactions altogether.

The fear of being seen activates a freeze response, causing us to withdraw further into ourselves in order to protect ourselves. We become good at hiding our true thoughts, feelings, and desires, believing that staying invisible is the safest option.

This only gives us a temporary sense of safety because it keeps us feeling lonely, stuck, scared and frustrated.

It’s from this space of frustration that I started doing my research and my work on ancestral trauma and developing my online course meditations to help me heal my not good enough wounds, my fear of rejection, fear of losing love, vows of loyalty to my family etc.

I realized that breaking free from this pattern requires a conscious effort to rewire our nervous system and shift the ancestral beliefs and behavioural patterns that keep us stuck in invisibility.

I went from zero income in mid-2016 to making US$8,000 a month in 2018 when I started doing this work.

I started charging what I wanted to charge.

I went back to blogging weekly, launched a podcast, published books, have been interviewed on countless podcasts, have been featured on radio, TV and and different stages as a speaker and I started sharing my travels shamelessly.

It turns out the naysayers were wrong - people did want to hear from a hippie who talks about ancestral money trauma and emotional intelligence with money. And publishers approached me for book deals instead of the other way round.

I saw how the more I focused on healed my trauma and worked with the parts of myself that were scared of being seen, the more resilient I became when met with criticism, the faster I was able to step into my magic.

I learned that life isn't about avoiding criticism or striving for perfection—it's about resilience. Life is full of ups and downs, and inevitably, there will be moments of criticism and imperfection. But it's how we respond to these challenges that truly defines our journey.

AS I healed my not good enough wounds, I discovered that real strength doesn't come from battling everyone or striving to create a flawless facade for others to admire. Instead, it’s having enough self awareness to love who I am, even if someone sees me in a negative light.

This understanding helped me find peace in setting my boundaries and gave me permission to keep showing up in my business, no matter what was happening around me.

And I started coaching others and helping them release their vows of invisibility so they could start living in their truth and be celebrated and paid for who they are.

I have seen how this work has helped my clients as well, here’s what some clients say:

So if you've ever felt unseen, unheard, or unworthy, know this: you are not alone and I want to invite you to my Launch Your Next Income Project coaching program.

The magic is in the healing.

The more we heal our ancestral trauma and start tapping into our ancestral wisdom, the more we expand our nervous system’s capacity to hold and navigate the complexities of life; we cultivate resilience. The more resilient we become, they more equipped we are to able to bounce back from setbacks, and stay focused on our goals, even in the face of adversity and that’s where the magic happens.

This coaching program is for you, if you want to:

1. Feel Safe Being Seen & Launch Your Next Income Project: Give yourself permission to be seen and successfully launch your income-generating projects

2. Confidently Price Your Products and Services: Confidently price offerings based on value without fear of what others will say

3. Increase Your Income Without Compromising Your Values: Trust yourself to align financial goals with your personal values

4. Own Your Voice Even When It Feels Scary to Be Yourself: Develop resilience to express yourself, attracting opportunities aligned with true values

5. Embrace Your Brilliance Unapologetically: Cultivate self-acceptance and resilience to external judgment so you can keep launching your products and services despite the external noise

6. Change Your Money Patterns: Break unhealthy money patterns rooted in seeking validation, fostering a healthy relationship with money

How it works

• You can choose from two coaching packages: 3 or 6 months of coaching

• One on one 2 hour calls every other week on Zoom

• Journal prompts and meditations in-between coaching calls

• Daily check-ins via WhatsApp on weekdays

We spend our coaching time focusing on your financial goal, which means we get more done at a faster rate and you have an accountability partner (me).

This results in faster financial breakthroughs in a short space of time.

As your coach, my job is NOT to give you advice or feed you the answers, my job is to help you heal so you can tap into your inner and ancestral money wisdom.

Your Investment:

Option One: 3 Month Coaching Package

Price: US$5,000/ ZAR94,000 upfront (save US$1,000/ZAR18,800)

Monthly payment plan: US$2,000/ZAR37,600 per month for 3 months

Option Two: 6 Month Coaching Package

Price: US$10,000/ ZAR188,000 upfront (save US$2,000/ZAR37,600)

Monthly payment plan: US$2,000/ZAR37,600 per month for 6 month

I have 3 coaching spots available.

If this is resonating with you or you have any questions, fill in the form below and let’s have a conversation and see if it is the right fit for you.