How Money Gave Me the Freedom to Choose the Life I Wanted

For more than a decade, I lived a life that still amazes me when I stop and really think about it.

A life where I would wake up and decide which country I wanted to go to next.

I’d change my plans, cross a border, spend a few days somewhere new, extend a stay or decide that I wanted to live somewhere completely different.

At some point, I met a man and he started to join me on some of my travels and became my husband. At the moment we are based in Cape Town and re-envisioning our lives.

But the more we sit and think about what we want next and how much it would take to fund it, the more I realize that money gives us choice.

I was reminded of this during one of my trips to Thailand.

I had decided to stay longer than originally planned, which meant dealing with the inevitable travel admin: visa extensions, immigration offices and all the paperwork that comes with changing your plans.

The immigration office was closed for a week because of various holidays, which threw me into a weird little spiral of anxiety.

My visa was expiring in a matter of days, and suddenly I was doing things from panic.

At one point, I took a day trip to Myanmar to do what is commonly called a visa run, which is leaving a country temporarily so that you can return and receive a new visa.

Except when I got to the border, I discovered that the border it was closed to foreigners for a month.

So that plan wasn't happening.

I ended up staying in Thailand and dealing with the immigration process there.

Normally, visa issues wouldn't have bothered me this much.

But I was still working through the trauma of having my name emailed to various embassies and being labelled a tourism fraud by clients who had threatened to destroy me.

Even though the embassies had been incredibly supportive and I had experienced no problems with immigration offices throughout my travels, some part of me had become obsessed with doing everything perfectly.

I was afraid of making a mistake.

Afraid of being banned from countries.

Afraid that something would go wrong.

That's the thing about trauma.

It doesn't always respond to what is happening now.

Sometimes your nervous system is responding to what happened then.

Thankfully, I had the tools to recognize what was happening in the moment. I could notice the trigger, slow down and hold myself through it. I could work with my inner child and inner teenager instead of letting the fear run the show.

And somewhere on the journey back to Chiang Mai, I had this moment of gratitude.

I thought about teenage me.

And I realized she probably wouldn't believe the life I had created.

She wouldn't believe that I could wake up and decide to cross a border into another country without having planned it weeks in advance.

She wouldn't believe that I could throw a handbag over my shoulder, leave my clothes and electronics at the hotel and disappear for the day without worrying about whether everything would be okay.

And the wildest part?

I had done this so many times that it had become completely normal to me.

There was even a time when I decided to move from Chiang Mai to Bali in less than a day.

I had bumped into a couple who told me they were looking for an apartment.

I told them I wanted to go to Bali.

And somehow, within 12 hours, I had cleaned my apartment, rented it to them and moved to Bali for a while.

Teenage me would have LOVED this life.

She would have been so proud of the freedom we created.

The ability to choose where I went.

The ability to choose how I spent my days.

The ability to change my mind.

The ability to follow an opportunity.

The ability to wake up and say, Actually, I think I want to go there.

And sitting there thinking about this, I realized something I hadn't fully appreciated before.

I didn't just create money, I created choices.

My money journey started because I was experiencing panic attacks around money.

I wanted to stop being afraid of my finances.

I wanted to understand money.

I wanted to heal the ancestral money patterns I’d inherited.

But somewhere along the way, I discovered that the work was about so much more than getting my finances “sorted.”

Because when you have your money sorted, you can create options.

And having options changes the way you experience your life.

For many years, my options looked like travel.

Staying somewhere longer.

Taking an unexpected trip.

Moving countries.

Following an opportunity.

Changing my plans.

But today, my life looks different.

I'm based in Cape Town. My choices aren't necessarily about deciding which country I want to wake up in tomorrow.

And I don't think they need to be.

The deeper freedom is still there.

It's the freedom to decide what time I want to wake up each day and how I want to spend my time.

The freedom to choose what kind of work I want to do.

The freedom to create income in ways that align with the life I want.

The freedom to say no to things that don't fit.

The freedom to invest in the things that matter to me.

And that's why I've come to believe that how we make money matters.

It's not just about making more money.

It's about creating a relationship with money that gives you choices about how you earn it, how you spend it, how you invest it and ultimately how you live.

For me, healing my ancestral money trauma wasn't just about becoming financially secure.

It was about becoming free enough to choose.

And when I look back at the woman I was when I started this journey, I see a woman who thought she was working through her panic attacks around money but was unknowingly building a life her teenage self could only dream about.

And now, from my home in Cape Town, I can look back at that life with enormous gratitude.

Because the greatest thing that money gave me wasn't the ability to travel the world.

It was the ability to choose how I want to live.