As of June 2019, all of Darcy’s work is being offered through Youth Passageways’ 13 Moons Education and Consulting Collective. Please visit that site for the most current information. You’re welcome to peruse the pages here for more in-depth (but not up to date!) information on Darcy’s work.
My Way with Money
I believe in making things simple, clear, and transparent. My typical rates are $125-200/hour for consulting and one-on-one mentoring, and $600-1000/day sliding scale plus travel for teaching and consulting. I love to utilize trade as a way of stepping out of the money economy.
Yet as much as I appreciate simplicity when it’s comes to money, in today’s world money is anything but simple. In fact, it’s very tricky business. There are many limitations of our current economic system: it increasingly consolidates wealth in the hands of a few; it provides advantage and incentives to exploitation over sharing and conserving resources; and is built on the suffering, exploitation, and subjugation of many, in ways that are deeply impacted by race, gender, and other elements of social identity.
Yet money can also be a physical representation of a sacred relationship or contract between two individuals or entities. It is a means of energy exchange and reciprocity, allowing resources and energy to flow where they can effectively support creation and generativity.
As a Western-educated, non-indigenous, white woman living in the United States in these times, it is important to me to be aware of my own and others’ social positioning in making financial agreements regarding my work. I strive to make use of the exchange of money to build trust, respect, and healing.
In today’s world, earning money allows me to keep a roof over my head, put food on my table and clothes on my back, support my teachers and others doing good work in the world, and give back to organizations and communities strengthening vulnerable communities and fighting for cultural sovereignty, reparations, decolonization, and the health and vitality of our ecosystems. It allows me to seek medical and wellness care, to spend time with the people I love, and get to the places where I can learn, work, and be inspired.
I do not believe that money reflects inherent worthiness or value; this fallacy is one of the failures of our current system. There is a political context in which I earn my living: a system which seeks to commodify everything, including the sacred (which is the terrain in which I work); a system in which many with gifts far greater than mine are not able to meet their financial needs through the work they’re here to offer; and a system that deems much of the work necessary to support healthy families and communities as outside of the cash economy. I strive to be aware of these issues in financial exchange.
I welcome feedback, and new models.
Thank you to the many folks out there exploring different ways with money, especially Gigi Coyle, Orland Bishop, School of Lost Borders, and rain crowe.