The Most Dangerous Kind of Rich Girl

What no one tells you about inherited wealth, shame, and the quiet work of becoming fully human.

Kissing my father’s head, post-chemo, my hair—buzzed in solidarity—already growing out

My father and I are having lunch at a restaurant near his office. I’m about to turn 33 and just left my thriving massage and acupuncture practice in California to move back to New York to be with him as he prepares to die from the cancer that recently recurred.

Early afternoon sun streams through tall windows, a cool tone compared to the golden light I’d grown used to in the decade I lived out west.

He says he has something important to tell me.

I think, “Uh oh, what now,” and nod.

“Your grandparents’ estate is finally settling. Remember how their will wasn’t up to date when they died ten years ago? Well, it’s finally done.”

Their will wasn’t up to date because they died in a fire no one saw coming. Electrical, in their bedroom.

“You’re about to inherit a million dollars,” he says. “You’ll need to be careful some man doesn’t want to marry you for your money.”

Of all the ways to frame this moment, he chooses this?

To instill fear instead of gratitude and possibility?

I’ve thought about this moment a lot over the years, in the context of how people relate to money.

How those who want more of it often feel conflicted, seeing money as corrupting or rich people as suspect.

How those who have it often feel afraid of being used, of losing it, and of never being seen for who they are instead of what they have.

How hard it is for most of us to experience enoughness around money, which is an inner experience having way less to do with the amount in the bank than you’d think.

Rare is the person who’s good with money, who lives in a healthy flow of receiving, spending, and saving. A person who lives in sufficiency.

As Lynne Twist writes in The Soul of Money, one of the best books on our relationship to money,

“Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough… Sufficiency is a context we bring forth from within that reminds us that if we look around us and within ourselves, we will find what we need… It is precisely when we turn our attention to these inner resources – in fact, only when we do that – that we can begin to see more clearly the sufficiency in us and available to us, and we can begin to generate effective, sustainable responses to whatever limitations of resources confront us.”

So, at this life-changing lunch with my father, after mostly supporting myself for the past decade, my financial situation completely shifts in the course of an hour.

Now I’m supposed to date while being afraid of being taken advantage of.

Now, because this gift is earmarked for real estate needs and further education, I’m suddenly able to come up with a down payment and get a mortgage to buy an apartment in New York, something I never imagined being able to do so soon.

My hippie-ish values collide head-on with the freight train of old-school expectations barreling in on this generous gift.

I’m not sure how to navigate this, so I mostly hide and start giving chunks of it away to organizations I believe in.

A few years later, I unexpectedly inherit more money from my Venezuelan great-grandmother, who put money away for each of her great-grandchildren years ago that’s been well-stewarded until it was time for it to be distributed.

I keep this to myself, too.

I end up marrying someone six years later who has his own family money, which is a relief. He’s more open about it than I am in the poetry community we move in.

A part of me admires that openness—though I also see the self-protection mechanism involved in making the “rich white man” joke before anyone else does—while also feeling sensitive to how our financial situation separates us from most of our friends.

I find out after our divorce, that his so-called best friend—I say so-called because the way she never misses a chance to tear him down feels shitty, though he hides his hurt feelings from her—once described me to him behind my back as “the most dangerous kind of rich person.”

She could feel my hiding and my desire to fit in and judged it as dangerous, instead of getting curious about what might have shaped me.

But no, the rich don’t deserve compassion, because they’re barely human.

To be clear, none of what I’m sharing here excuses the real harm caused by those who hoard wealth, exploit others, or wield power without conscience. It doesn’t absolve billionaires destroying ecosystems or CEOs bleeding workers dry. Reckoning with the blessing and baggage of wealth isn’t the same as defending it.

You’ve probably felt it, too, that sense that having more makes you somehow less worthy of empathy. Like wealth and privilege should cancel out pain.

See the conundrum?

I’ve heard it over and over, when someone wealthy shares a painful challenge they’re having, the response is, “poor little rich girl/boy,” rather than empathy or concern.

It stops feeling safe to share, and that person withdraws, maybe only interacting with other rich people or people they employ, which impoverishes their ability to connect, care, and love.

This past week, at a neurofeedback and brain training program called 40 Years of Zen, I reframed the story of how my father told me my grandparents had left me money while training my brain to produce more alpha waves, which increases focus and calm.

I imagined him sitting me down and telling me the estate finally settled.

Instead of instilling fear, he said, “Your grandparents so loved their grandchildren that they left each of you a million dollars that you can use toward real estate or further education. Isn’t that amazing? It eases my heart to know you’ve got a solid cushion of support with which to start your new life here in New York, since I’m not going to be around much longer. I trust you’ll steward this money well and put it to good use.”

I felt how this new message landed in my body, the warmth of this loving support from my lineage and the tingling of excitement at new possibilities opening up as a result of this unexpected gift.

So many of us are still learning how to receive without hiding. How to let love in without scanning for strings.

If you’ve ever hidden what you have, or who you are, to belong, this is for you.

Maybe the most radical thing someone with money can do is the deep, unglamorous work of becoming so fully cracked open and human that the beauty and benefit of your presence becomes undeniable.

If you’ve been quietly doing your own inner work in the shadows of wealth, I see you. I celebrate you. We need each other more than we’ve been taught to believe.

Because when one of us breaks the spell of shame and separation, it makes it safer for others to do the same.