In the sections above I described the concepts and energies of heroes and heroines, of the masculine and feminine. Below I show what that looks like in my own investment practice — the reality from which this chapter was born.

I am not a financial expert. That is perhaps the first thing I need to say. I have no MBA, no background in economics, no decades of investment experience. I received an inheritance and a question: what do I do with this? Not as an abstract exercise, but as a life-size, moral, sometimes frightening question that I avoided for a long time.

Fortunately I am curious, and I have a genuine willingness to not know. That combination proved an unexpected gift. Someone who does not know the financial system from the inside is not bound by its logic. If you have not internalised the rules of the old economy, you do not first have to unlearn them before you can ask new questions. I entered the field as an outsider — and because of that I saw things that insiders no longer saw, no longer wanted to see, or no longer dared to say.

I also had the willingness to lose — a precondition for the willingness to genuinely try something new. Below I sketch my portfolio as an exercise in public: an attempt to live with wealth the way I try to live with the rest of my life: attentively, curiously, willing to be surprised by what wants to arise.

The hero — 41%

Market-oriented sustainable capital — 21% This is my most conventional category. Public and private markets, sustainability frameworks, diversification, liquidity. The logic here is optimisation within frameworks, sustaining what already exists. Not the most exciting part of my portfolio, but the most load-bearing.

Learning capital in networks — 20% This is capital that moves in communities of reflection and collective development. The energy here is still masculine — we set direction, we learn, we develop our role — but it softens. Like that of the hero who connects with others in order to navigate together. What I learn here is perhaps my greatest investment: how do I move as a woman with wealth in a world that does not expect this of me? Which questions should I ask? Which mistakes are worth making? These networks are my practice space.

The heroine — 59%

Patient investment capital — 30% Long-term, regenerative, entrepreneurial, multiple value according to the 4 Returns — inspirational, social, natural, financial. Some investments here turned out differently than expected, to put it gently. But what I learned from them is of great value. For instance, that the beauty of a project is not the same as its viability. Or that someone with a clear, wise life vision is not necessarily a good entrepreneur. Regeneration requires decades, not quarters. You cannot optimise a landscape — you can only create the conditions and then wait, observe, adjust. That is the feminine in practice: not managing what grows, but being the soil from which it can grow.

Enabling capital — 29% This is the most feminine category in my portfolio. There is no requirement for financial return, only for systemic care, healing and bedding. This is capital that enables without being visible, and creates space without filling that space. Here I invest in the conditions for something that does not yet exist and may never have a business case — but that lays the foundation on which everything else can stand. The logic of the hero has been fully released. There is only the question: what does this ecosystem need in order to live? The masculine energy wants to know what it yields, and the feminine knows that some things only become visible after I am no longer here. Intergenerational investing sometimes requires investing in what you yourself will no longer witness.

The dance: 41% masculine and 59% feminine

This is not the result of a deliberate allocation I planned in advance, but of moving forward tentatively, asking questions, making mistakes, adjusting. I began with loose donations and gradually discovered I was building a system. I learned that the boundary between giving and investing is not the boundary that matters. The boundary that matters is the one between relationship and transaction.

This is a living portfolio, not a finished model. It breathes, it shifts, it keeps asking me new questions. The not-knowing with which I began has not proved a deficiency but a method.

The hero knows where he is going. The heroine knows from where she carries. I try to be both. And I try to feel which one is being asked for now.

Heroic investing