Letting go of dreams.

What do you do when the cost of the world you desire is opposed to your dreams? When head knowledge becomes heart knowledge, it means one thing: letting go.

What they don’t tell you about resisting capitalism is that it’s not just all rest and bubble baths and shorter work weeks. It’s not even just marching in protest or charity work. Truly dismantling capitalism also means letting go of some of your dreams.

When I chose to leave my marriage after ten years in 2019, it felt like the end of my future.

When I left my faith after 33 years of deep toxic indoctrination, it felt like splitting open, the way a canyon does, eroding over centuries, like a soul-deep tear, a primal cry echoing through my bones, muscles, and flesh, ripping me apart in my identity - and after, I was a new shape.

The last 12 months have split me open, once again, in a way I didn’t think was possible.
This time I found better words to describe the process, being so familiar with it now. I wasn’t splitting apart. It was the veil. The veil in front of my eyes tore completely, so now I could see behind it. See behind the lie. See behind a dark secret. And see the liberating truth.

But I identified so much with the veil - the veil was all of me, it was what my whole life built on - that it felt like I was being ripped to shreds when it finally tore.

In reality, I was whole. A snake sheds its skin in one piece. And I was about to become even more whole.

photo of me by my friend Ami.





Today, as I had this download of truth, at the age of 38, I wondered, when will the splitting end? Does it ever?

Of course it doesn’t.

I thought at 33, that was all the splitting my body could handle. How could I take more agonising nights writhing on the floor, gasping for air like a fish out of water?

Of course, I was wrong.

When I jolted out of bed at 7 am to write these words down because they all came to me while I was face down on my pillow, I realised I had been writing this piece for a few years. I had been searching for the words for a while, but I didn’t know the search would lead me here. They had been brewing over my head like storm clouds.

The last two weeks, unable to write, were simply the final push, the one that feels the hardest, most confusing, exhausting, and most scary.


For a few years now, I have been reading, talking, craving, researching, and sinking my teeth into deep analysis and detective mode on this topic. Calling it ‘topic’ feels strange because it is so much more than that. It feels so visceral. So true.

I know this mode intimately. I know this hungry side of me. Once she is unleashed, there is no stopping her. She has no emergency breaks.
The side that can’t help but follow her questions and curiosity through to the end, no matter how dark it is down there, no matter the scary or uncomfortable consequences.
When I am in this mode, I know it’s too late to turn back.
This has happened to me before.
It always happens before I burn things down.
It always happens before the shedding of a skin.

I just never thought this was the skin I would shed, nor was I aware for a long time that this was something I would eventually outgrow.

This is the beauty of growing with life.
You have no idea of the versions of you that await. The versions that are possible.

This time, the veil was hanging thickly in front of my eyes, hiding behind good intentions. The old skin was made up of my own dreams.

The last couple of weeks, I realised that there was no going back from what I know now. I had to take responsibility and get into integrity again.

What am I willing to give up if I am serious about making a lasting change? (Whether I will live to see it or not)

Two of the biggest pillars of capitalism are “Love” and money. The nuclear family, sold to us as the ultimate life achievement - and the goal of being a financial success, which means you are a successful human.

So much is connected to those two things. With the dismantling of the capitalist version of love and money, so many other systems will fall apart too.

Over the course of the last five years, one part of me spent time building a life around me that I deeply craved internally - a life of community care and collective love - another part of me kept working towards a version of ’success’ that wasn’t aligned with that. My whole body could feel the discrepancy between the two. All along. My mind, as so often, just caught up later.

All I could think, breathe, dream, and talk about with friends was collective liberation, taking down the structures that oppress us, living in community, and distancing ourselves from capitalism.

Yet I was chasing it so ardently too.

I left the community I had built in one place to go after commercial success in the big city.

Always telling myself I was resisting capitalism because I was ‘resting more’ and not participating in hustle culture.
But oh, Nadia, resisting capitalism is more than that, isn’t it?
Within capitalism, rest is a privilege. Who is going to pay for my rest?

Resisting capitalism means I have to actually let go of my dreams. Brutal and simple. No, I can’t “have it all” if I am serious about dismantling the powers at be.
I have to give up my conveniences, the luxuries I desire, and the things I think I am entitled to. I have to let go of what I want, for a more equal distribution of wealth. My idea of becoming rich so I could use my money to help others started looking more and more bizarre: having a few wealthy people who ‘help the poor’ is not the ultimate solution; it will always uphold the imbalance we have right now.

”Generational wealth” started looking differently too: If I am only looking after me and mine, am I not just raising future capitalists? What is really going to change, then? Who is going to benefit? One group of people or everyone?

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My friend sent me a link a couple of days ago about an online coaching programme for single people, hosted by an American couple on Valentine’s day: how to have ‘liberated’ relationships and find love. She asked if I wanted to join?


Another friend got an astrological reading about her perfect partner, another one joined a membership on how to find the love of your life, I have friends who move in with someone they’ve dated for two weeks, friends who get giddy over boys texting them. I, of course, have been giddy too. I found myself googling which star sign I am most compatible with more than once. Everyone around me, seems to be in pursuit of romantic love. By putting energy and money into it as if it’s an Olympic discipline we can win.

I have done so too, and I kept feeling a deep sense of “but why exactly?”

(Why is my favourite question, isn’t it?)

What exactly is it about romantic love that makes us feel like it’s somehow different from other types of love?
And something switched inside of me.
The bizarreness of it all.
How come we don’t spend the same exact energy pursuing community? We don’t read books, join courses, or pay for tarot readings about healing our friendships and building community care and love, do we? We don’t move in with our friends after two weeks of knowing them, many of us barely let friends into our houses.

Why?

Because of the spell capitalism has us under. The hierarchy of love is such a strong and powerful chokehold that not many are willing to question and reframe. No wonder it’s taken me this long to truly see it and rip the last of the veil off in front of my eyes.

I have written about forms of love and community here before

Is there a difference between love and love?
’You don’t owe anyone anything’ is a lie
Why I don’t believe in the nuclear family
Soul mirrors

I love Toi Maries’ work on this and I will share four books and resources on this that I found through her over the next few weeks! There is so much, so much to say, because thousands of people have already wrestled with these systems over centuries.


Previously, I knew these things. I knew about them.

The way you know that the sky is blue but you actually don’t know - you don’t understand why it’s blue, how that happens, and it’s not taking up space in your mind.

But now I know them in my heart. In my body.
Now it’s visceral, and there is no turning back.


There is a difference between head and heart knowledge.

Heart knowledge doesn’t leave you the same. It pushes you to act. You can’t ignore head knowledge once it has sunk into your heart.

But when head knowledge becomes heart knowledge, it means one thing: letting go.

If I want to build a different world, even if I won’t be the one experiencing it, I have to do something different now.

I have never understood that so clearly as I do now. On a physical level, not just in my mind.

That means letting go of dreams and goals I thought I wanted to achieve. Things I thought I needed to survive even.

What am I prepared to let go of?

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I came to the big city to expand my portrait photography business. I thought the only way to survive well was if I was a celebrity photographer. Photography is something people value less and less. So the only way was: shoot people who always need photos: Celebs! (It turns out, that doesn’t pay either.) I was tired of finding clients. Tired of marketing. Tired of the rat race.
Oh, Marketing.
Another insufferable cog in the capitalist wheel.

Nonetheless, we have to participate in it in some way as creatives, if we want to eat, that is.


After two years, I realised how misaligned this chase was with my core. My wonderful friend told me this recently too: “I always thought you didn’t fit in it, you hate that world.”

I hate celebrity cult. Not them, the celebrities. They’re just people. I hate the cult of it. Why did I want to participate so badly? What was I after?
Because capitalism told me so.
Because I needed food on the table.
Because I wanted to be seen.
Because I wanted to be validated for my work.
Because unconsciously, I held on to the belief that I needed X amount of cash and a house of my own to be ok, to be ‘someone’, to not be a failure.
Because ‘celebrity’ looks so shiny.


”Celebrities are the sweetener that allows us to swallow the bitter taste of capitalism and colonial enterprise.”
Joy Malonza

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And now, I let it all go.
I am not chasing it anymore. I am done. I don’t want the bag. I don’t want the fame. I love photography. But I never wanted to use it like this.

This has been years in the making. I have always been this person: I just tried to assimilate into a system to survive in it.

It took two years in London and a live-streamed genocide to push me over the edge.

What I really want is a changed, just, equal world.

And I am surprised at how natural the letting go feels this time. I felt no sting, no pain.

Maybe because this letting go is so aligned with our humanity?

I have no idea what comes now. But I feel free.
Empty and free.

This year, I have started taking practical steps towards a new way of living in community. It is just one small beginning, but hopefully the first of many ways to re-imagine life away from this hardcore capitalism. I will be sharing more about it in future posts.

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Giving up dreams for a wider purpose:

People call that radical because, in this system, it is. Anything against the status quo is radical. I call it normal.
I call it going back to our human roots, freed from the disease of capitalism and the long consequences that come with it.
The word radical comes from the Latin word ‘radix’ and it means “root; vital to life; coming from the ground.” The Italian word for roots is still radice, so I know it very well.


This is my invitation to you:

What are you willing to give up? What are you prepared to change your mind on? Are you okay with giving up your desire for a child? Your hustle for the million $ house? What about the obsession with getting the ring or being a famous fill-in-the-blank? How will you prepare this world for a future free from capitalism and the connected injustices? What do you really need to live well, and what was packaged and sold to you as a requirement for a good life, that isn’t?
When is enough enough?

What if giving up dreams just means there is space for new and better ways to live, collectively, for everyone?