Can't Earn a Good Living? Maybe Blame Your Happy Childhood

In 2024, at the Academy Awards, Robert Downey Jr. thanked his unhappy childhood when accepting the award for best supporting actor.

Pop culture writer Molly Jong-Fast got a bestseller "How to Lose Your Mother" from growing up with self-absorbed problem-drinker Erica Jong as primary caretaker. 

And Eminem, Gloria Steinem and myself are among those in creative/activist professions who had mentally ill mothers. Mine committed suicide.

The research, expert opinion and observations about how a crappy childhood can generate unique professional success are piling up. Those include:

No Hallmark/Disney world view, later to be shaken off when reality intrudes. From the get-go, the gestalt is that life is tough and survival is up to us. Problem-solving is embedded early. Mine was to ace high school in order to get a scholarship to an out-of-state college, away from the crazy family. 

Raw resilience. With instability the norm so is the necessity to continually regroup. We intuit that it isn't what happens, it's how you handle it. When our industries collapsed, we pivoted to the possible nexts. There's no ranting on Reddit about being unemployed two years or more. 

Risk-taking doesn't seem like a such a gamble since there is usually little or nothing to lose. Learning to calculate risks is so critical to success that it's the first card in the tarot deck. Many who become founders experienced severe emotional neglect. 

The lack of guidance enables freedom. It has been said that the misfit Puritans who emigrated from Europe to the new land were able to build a whole new economic model - the most successful in the world for centuries. That is attributed to their freedom from the old-world rules about business. 

Getting it that somehow we've survived and understand how thankful we should be. An attitude of gratitude is a very attractive trait in Emotional Intelligence. In itself it can invite others to move the needle on our success.

But, is there hope for you who have experienced a stable caring childhood? 

From my tarot-reading sessions, as well as providing intuitive coaching, I have observed that success in earning power usually comes down to, as with the Puritans and entrepreneurs, questioning the rules.

For example, a traditional rule was not only the more education the better but to get top grades. The reality is that the rule-breakers are the ones who land and stay on top, that is the "C" students become the bosses of the "A" students.  

In the high-wire act of being a partner in Big Law, those not forced out and who even acquired star status have gotten it that the old rules - lockstep policies, loyalty and employment security - were collapsing. They comport themselves like free agents who know that there's no longer such as state of professional being as "making it."

In setbacks they don't embrace platitudes such as to run out and network. They understand that networking is about having something useful to others to trade. Until they can put together that kind of position of strength they lay low, figuring out how to proceed. 

Of course, those outside the family might never know what goes on inside that family. So, there's no payoff in attempting to size up who might have had a happy childhood and who didn't and what could be the implications. If wasn't until decades after college that former classmates disclosed what a nightmare the first 18 years had been. But all had made it big in their line of work.

Meanwhile a key tarot lesson for the crappy-childhood crowd comes from the Five of Cups. 

The warning is not to fixate on the past. Too many who have only known emotional neglect and outright abuse fail, not only in how to earn a living but in relationships. It's all too convenient to retreat into the pain. 

Path to earning a good living, finding your tribe and not going insane is doable.

Let’s start the journey together with a Tarot reading.

One free question.

Jane Genova, 3^rd Generation Psychic 203-468-8579, jangenova374@gmail.com