One of the best books that I read in 2021 hands down was Rachel Rodgers’ We Should All Be Millionaires. I expected it to be eye-opening, considering my working class background as the daughter of Nigerian immigrant parents. What I had not bargained for was how much it would hold a mirror up to me and the toxic cultural beliefs that I didn’t even know I had been carrying.
When I read that a study “concluded that if you want to be happier [you should] spend your money on buying time” and Rachel Rodgers’ own assertion that “you need lots of support and a wide array of talent” to build an empire, it made sense to me…logically. Emotionally, though, I found myself in weeks of turmoil and continuing to struggle with work-life balance because I just couldn’t bring myself to hire the help that I so desperately needed.
As soon as I thought about hiring help, like a cleaner or personal chef, I instantly wondered who I thought I was? Only through journaling did I realise that somewhere along the line I had internalised the ideas that such services are either a luxury for the super wealthy or lazy. More embarrassingly to my feminist sensibilities, I also came to realise that all of my mother’s warnings growing up that “no man would marry me” if I didn’t know how to cook and clean had caused me to tie my womanhood to my ability to “keep house”.