There was a time when I was making around $400 a week selling used books and other items online.
Not bad, considering I wasn't buying most of the inventory.
I'd search Craigslist for people giving away books and other things they no longer wanted, arrange to pick them up, research what they were worth, and sell them online.
Sounds simple enough, right?
Well, apparently my mother thought so.
In fact, she thought it was so simple that she called what I earned "free money."
Free money.
As in finding a penny on the sidewalk.
Except picking up this particular penny involved hours of searching, making arrangements, hauling things home, researching prices, managing inventory, listing products, dealing with buyers, packing orders, and shipping everything out.
But sure, Ma.
Free money.
And here's the best part.
After I'd done all that work, my mother insisted that I give the money to my younger sister.
Every penny.
By the time I'd accumulated $12,000, I'd finally had enough.
Not because I didn't love my sister or want her to have a secure future.
But because I was working myself into the ground building something that could've given me a little financial independence, and I wasn't even allowed to enjoy the money I'd earned.
Looking back, I believe my mother's fear of being left alone had a great deal to do with it.
And that makes this story about much more than selling used books.
My Little Craigslist Business
Years ago, when selling used books online was particularly popular, I discovered that people were constantly giving things away on Craigslist.
Books, especially.
Sometimes people were moving. Sometimes they were clearing out their homes. Sometimes they simply wanted to get rid of things and didn't care whether those things had any resale value.
I saw an opportunity.
I'd search the free listings, contact people, arrange pickups, and bring the items home.
Then the real work began.
I'd research the books and other items to determine what they were worth. I'd compare prices with competing sellers, figure out where each item had the best chance of selling, and create listings on different platforms.
There was inventory to organize, prices to monitor, customers to deal with, orders to fulfill, and packages to prepare for shipping.
If something didn't sell, I had to decide whether to adjust the price, move it to another platform, or keep waiting for the right buyer.
It wasn't glamorous work, but I enjoyed the challenge.
There was something satisfying about finding an item someone no longer wanted and discovering that another person was willing to pay for it.
And I got pretty good at it.
For a while, I was bringing in around $400 a week.
That may not sound like a fortune, but it was meaningful money to me.
More importantly, it was money I was earning through my own initiative, judgment, and labor.
Nobody had handed me a business.
Nobody had given me a salary.
I found an opportunity, figured out how to make it work, and put in the hours.
It was something I'd built myself.
And for someone whose life had always revolved around family responsibilities, that sense of accomplishment was particularly important.
Apparently, Picking Up Free Books Required a Family Expedition
Of course, even the simple act of collecting inventory came with complications.
My mother didn't like the idea of my going out alone.
She never has.
Her fear of being left by herself has influenced countless ordinary activities throughout my life, and picking up free books was no exception.
Whenever I arranged to collect something, my mother insisted that all three of us go.
Me, my mother, and my younger sister.
Every single time.
Imagine running a little resale business where picking up a box of books requires assembling the entire family for an outing.
I wasn't going on a monthlong expedition through the Amazon rainforest.
I was picking up somebody's unwanted paperbacks.
But if I wanted to go, my mother and sister had to come along.
And because arguing about it would've made the entire process even more exhausting, I generally agreed.
It was easier than fighting.
That's something I've said about a lot of situations in my family.
You agree to something unreasonable because the alternative is another argument, another explanation, another emotional ordeal.
Eventually, the unreasonable arrangement becomes normal.
So there we were, the three of us, heading out to collect inventory for a business that I was essentially running by myself.
My mother may have viewed these outings as family activities.
I viewed them as another example of how difficult it was to do something independently.
But at least I was getting the books.
And the business was making money.
Or so I thought.
When Free Inventory Becomes "Free Money"
My mother's reasoning was extraordinary.
Because I was picking up items people were giving away, she apparently believed the money I made selling them was somehow free.
As though the entire process involved bending down, finding a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk, and putting it in my pocket.
Except finding a free book isn't the same as selling it.
A book sitting in someone's giveaway pile has no guaranteed buyer.
Someone has to recognize its potential value.
Someone has to collect it.
Someone has to research what comparable copies are selling for.
Someone has to photograph or describe it, create a listing, set a competitive price, answer questions, process the sale, package the item, and ship it.
And if the item doesn't sell?
Well, congratulations. You now own another book.
None of that happens by magic.
Yet my mother seemed to focus entirely on the fact that the inventory had cost nothing.
Never mind the time.
Never mind the physical work.
Never mind the research.
Never mind the effort involved in turning something unwanted into something another person would pay for.
According to her, it was free money.
And because it was supposedly free, she decided that I should give it to my sister.
That's the part I've never been able to make sense of.
Why did the fact that I was resourceful enough to obtain inventory without paying for it somehow make my labor worthless?
If anything, I would've thought finding a way to earn money with little upfront investment was something to be proud of.
Apparently, my mother saw it differently.
The Money Was Going to My Sister. Whether I Liked It or Not.
Now, I want to make something very clear.
My sister didn't demand my earnings.
In fact, she objected to the arrangement.
She knew I was doing the work, and she didn't insist that I hand over the money.
This was my mother's decision.
She wanted the money to go to my sister, and she insisted on it.
And as so often happened in our family, my mother's wishes took precedence over mine.
I did the searching.
I made the arrangements.
I researched the merchandise.
I created the listings.
I dealt with the inventory, pricing, buyers, and shipping.
And my sister received the money.
It's almost comical when you put it that way.
I was running the business, but apparently somebody else was the beneficiary.
And this wasn't an occasional contribution to the household or a gift I'd decided to give my sister.
It was an ongoing arrangement that my mother expected me to accept.
I wasn't being asked whether I wanted to share some of my earnings.
I was being told what would happen to them.
That's a very different thing.
And because I was already accustomed to accommodating my mother's wishes to avoid conflict, I went along with it for far longer than I should have.
At least, that's how I see it now.
Twelve Thousand Dollars Later, I'd Had Enough
Eventually, I'd accumulated approximately $12,000.
Twelve thousand dollars.
Money I'd earned selling books and other items that people had given away.
And instead of feeling excited about what I'd accomplished, I felt exhausted and resentful.
I was doing all this work, investing my time and energy, building up an income, and getting absolutely nowhere in terms of my own financial independence.
What's the point of working so hard to earn money if you're never allowed to use it?
I wasn't expecting to become rich selling used books.
But I would've liked the freedom to decide what happened to the money.
Maybe I could've saved some.
Maybe I could've invested some.
Maybe I could've bought something I wanted without having to explain or justify the purchase.
Or maybe I could've simply enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing I had money of my own.
Instead, every sale contributed to an arrangement that wasn't my choice.
And eventually I decided enough was enough.
I stopped.
Not because the business had failed.
Not because I'd lost interest in finding bargains or selling things online.
I stopped because I couldn't justify continuing to do all that work when the financial benefit was being taken out of my hands.
It's a strange feeling to walk away from something you're good at because succeeding at it no longer feels rewarding.
But that's where I'd ended up.
Why I Think My Mother Wanted Me Financially Dependent
I've spent years trying to understand why my mother behaved this way.
And when I consider it alongside everything else that's happened in our family, I keep coming back to the same explanation.
My mother has always been frightened of being left alone.
When my father was alive, she worried that if I married and moved away, she'd be left alone with him.
Their marriage was difficult, and my father could be abusive. I grew up witnessing those problems and taking on responsibilities that shouldn't have been mine as a child.
As an adult, I continued helping manage the household, caring for my parents, and supporting my younger sister.
My mother came to depend on me for an enormous amount.
And I believe the possibility of my becoming financially independent frightened her.
Because money creates options.
If you have an income and savings, you may have more freedom to make decisions.
You may be better able to live independently, pursue relationships, travel, or simply spend time away from home without depending entirely on your family.
And in my mother's mind, independence has often seemed closely connected to abandonment.
If I become independent, I might leave.
If I leave, she'll be alone.
That's the pattern I believe has influenced much of her behavior.
I can't prove that she consciously decided to take away my earnings to prevent me from leaving. I don't know exactly how she justified the arrangement to herself.
But I do know that she insisted I surrender money I'd earned, just as she's repeatedly resisted other forms of independence throughout my life.
And I believe those behaviors are connected.
Whether or not my mother intended it as financial control, the result was that I lost the opportunity to build financial independence through my own work.
That's something I've never forgotten.
Why This Was Different From Helping My Sister
Here's where the situation becomes emotionally complicated.
I love my sister.
I've helped care for her since she was young, and I've always worried about what her future will look like when our mother and I are no longer around.
I want her to have financial security.
I want her to have options.
And I don't begrudge her the money.
In fact, my sister has handled it responsibly.
She's been investing it over the years, and the original $12,000 has approximately doubled.
So what began as money from my little book-selling operation has grown into a much more substantial amount.
My sister has even offered to give it back to me.
More than once, she's made it clear that the money is available if I want it.
And I've chosen to let her keep it.
Because I know she'll need financial resources in the future, and I'm glad the money has grown rather than disappeared.
But there's something important about that decision.
Choosing to let my sister keep the money today isn't the same as having been free to decide what to do with it when I earned it.
Those are two separate things.
I can be happy that my sister has benefited.
I can appreciate that she's invested the money wisely.
I can feel grateful that she's offered to return it.
And I can still resent the fact that my mother made the original decision for me.
My resentment isn't about my sister having money.
It's about my mother behaving as though the person who earned it had no right to decide what happened to it.
And I don't think the fact that things worked out well for my sister erases that.
There's a Difference Between Generosity and Having No Choice
I've thought about this distinction quite a bit.
If I'd earned $12,000 and voluntarily decided to give it to my sister, I'd probably look back on the experience very differently.
I would've been proud of building something successful and using the proceeds to help someone I love.
That would've been my decision.
My generosity.
My choice.
Instead, the decision was made for me.
And that's what changed the experience.
There's a difference between giving someone something because you want to and surrendering something because another person insists.
Even when the recipient is someone you love.
Even when the money ultimately goes toward a good cause.
Even when you eventually decide you're happy with the outcome.
The freedom to make the decision still has value.
And I think that's what my mother has struggled to recognize in so many areas of my life.
She often seems to believe that because something benefits the family, I shouldn't object to it.
But why does benefiting the family so often mean sacrificing something that belongs to me?
Why couldn't I decide how much to save, how much to spend, and how much to give my sister?
Why couldn't my work be recognized as something I'd accomplished?
And why did the money have to become somebody else's simply because my mother thought that was the appropriate arrangement?
I've never felt that those questions received a satisfactory answer.
The Work Nobody Seemed to See
What bothers me most when I remember the business isn't actually the dollar amount.
It's the way my work was dismissed.
People sometimes assume that earning money online is easy because they only see the final transaction.
They see an item listed for sale and a payment arriving when someone buys it.
They don't see everything that happened beforehand.
The searching.
The research.
The arrangements.
The competition.
The inventory.
The packing.
The shipping.
The customer service.
And the hours spent figuring out whether a particular item was worth selling in the first place.
I had to develop those skills myself.
I had to learn how different platforms worked, how to research prices, and how to identify opportunities.
And I was doing it successfully enough to generate a meaningful amount of money.
That should've counted for something.
I would've appreciated hearing my mother say she was proud of me.
Or even simply acknowledge that I was working hard.
Instead, I got "free money."
As though the money had materialized out of thin air and I'd done nothing more strenuous than bend over to pick it up.
I sometimes wonder whether my mother would've viewed the earnings differently if I'd worked for an employer and brought home a paycheck.
Would that have counted as real work?
Would the money have been mine then?
Or would she still have found a reason why someone else needed it more?
I don't know.
But I do know that just because someone doesn't recognize your labor doesn't mean the labor has no value.
And just because you found a creative way to earn money doesn't mean you didn't earn it.
How Family Responsibilities Can Swallow Your Independence
The more I think about this experience, the more I recognize it as part of a much larger pattern in my life.
I've spent decades being responsible for things that other people depended on me to handle.
I took on household responsibilities when I was young.
I helped care for my sister.
I looked after my aging parents.
And I became the person expected to figure things out whenever a problem arose.
But when I found an opportunity to do something for myself, it often became another family matter.
If I wanted to leave the house, my mother worried.
If I wanted to spend time with friends, she questioned their intentions.
If I developed an interest in a man, she feared I might marry and leave her.
And when I found a way to earn money, she decided the earnings should go to my sister.
Different situations, but from my perspective, the same recurring problem.
My independence seemed to make my mother uncomfortable.
And whenever that happened, I was expected to adjust.
Sometimes I adjusted to avoid an argument.
Sometimes I adjusted because I felt guilty.
Sometimes I adjusted because I knew my mother was frightened and didn't want to make her anxiety worse.
And sometimes I simply didn't have the energy to fight another battle.
When that happens over many years, you can gradually lose sight of how much of your life has been shaped by someone else's emotional needs.
You begin accepting arrangements that you might otherwise question.
You convince yourself that keeping the peace is more important than asserting your own wishes.
And eventually, you can find yourself wondering why you never managed to build the independence you wanted.
I don't believe my mother is responsible for every limitation I've faced in life.
There have been health problems, financial difficulties, and circumstances far beyond any one person's control.
But I do believe her fears and expectations have played a significant role.
And the book-selling business is one of the clearest examples I can remember.
The Strange Thing About Being Needed
There's something almost contradictory about the way my mother has depended on me throughout my life.
I'm capable enough to handle household responsibilities.
Capable enough to arrange things, solve problems, care for family members, and manage situations that other people find overwhelming.
I was capable enough to create a small business from practically nothing and earn thousands of dollars.
But somehow, I wasn't supposed to become financially independent.
It's as though my abilities were welcome as long as they benefited the family without changing my position within it.
I could work.
I could contribute.
I could take responsibility.
But having money that might give me more freedom was another story.
And that's where I think fear of abandonment can become especially damaging.
A parent may genuinely need help.
They may genuinely worry about being alone.
But if maintaining that support means discouraging an adult child's independence, the relationship can become increasingly unequal.
The child is expected to behave like a responsible adult when the family needs something.
Yet when that same adult wants to make decisions about money, relationships, or personal freedom, they're treated as though those decisions require parental approval.
That's not a sustainable foundation for a healthy adult relationship.
And after living with that contradiction for so many years, I can understand why I sometimes feel resentful.
I'm Glad My Sister Has the Money. I'm Not Glad About How She Got It.
If there's a positive ending to the financial part of this story, it's that the money didn't go to waste.
My sister invested it.
It grew.
And now she has a larger financial cushion than she would've had otherwise.
I'm genuinely happy about that.
I know how difficult life can become when someone lacks financial resources, and I want my sister to have something to fall back on in the future.
If the choice were entirely mine today, I'd still want her to keep it.
But I wish I'd been given that choice from the beginning.
I wish I could remember the business simply as something I accomplished.
A time when I found an opportunity, worked hard, and built a little financial security.
Instead, the memory is mixed with frustration.
Pride in what I achieved.
Satisfaction that my sister benefited.
And resentment toward my mother for treating my labor as though it had no value.
Those feelings aren't mutually exclusive.
I can feel all three.
And I don't think I need to pretend otherwise simply because the money eventually ended up helping someone I love.
The Twelve Thousand Dollars Weren't Really the Point
Looking back, I sometimes wonder what would've happened if I'd been allowed to keep earning and saving.
Would I have continued the business?
Would I have found ways to expand it?
Would having my own money have made it easier to pursue opportunities that weren't possible otherwise?
I can't know.
Maybe the market would've changed.
Maybe the business would've become less profitable.
Maybe my health or family responsibilities would've eventually forced me to stop anyway.
There's no guarantee that continuing would've transformed my life.
But I would've liked to have had the opportunity to find out.
That's the loss I feel most strongly.
Not simply the $12,000.
The opportunity to make something of my own.
The chance to decide what happened to the results of my work.
The possibility of having more financial freedom, even if it was only a little.
And the satisfaction of knowing that my family recognized the effort I'd put into creating it.
Instead, I walked away from a business that was making money because I couldn't bear the idea of continuing to work for earnings I had no control over.
That's not an experience I look back on fondly.
But it did teach me something important.
Love Shouldn't Require Financial Dependence
I understand that my mother has spent much of her life worrying about being left alone.
I've written about how that fear has affected my friendships, romantic relationships, privacy, and ability to make ordinary decisions independently.
I believe it also influenced what happened with my business.
And while I can understand where some of her fears may come from, I don't believe an adult child should have to remain financially dependent to make a parent feel secure.
Those are two entirely different needs.
My mother needs reassurance, companionship, and support.
I need independence, respect, and the freedom to decide what happens to the things I've worked for.
One person's needs shouldn't automatically erase the other's.
I don't resent helping my family.
I've done it for most of my life.
And I don't resent the money going to my sister, especially knowing that it's grown into something that may help protect her future.
But I do resent having my hard work dismissed and my choices taken away.
Generosity means something different when you're free to choose it.
And independence means being allowed to benefit from your own effort, even when the people you love would prefer you to remain exactly where you are.
As for my little Craigslist business, I still think about it occasionally.
All those books.
All those listings.
All those packages.
All those hours of work.
And the $12,000 I managed to earn from things other people no longer wanted.
Not bad for a little business I figured out on my own.
I suppose the next time someone tells me that money earned from free merchandise is free money, I'll invite them to do all the work themselves.
They can search the listings, arrange the pickups, haul the inventory, research the prices, list the products, answer the customers, and ship the orders.
And when they've finally earned their first few hundred dollars, I'll congratulate them.
Then I'll tell them they've got to give it all away.
After all, it's just free money.
And if they disagree, they can take it up with my mother. 😂
