Scar-city

I grew up in a well-to-do neighborhood on Long Island. Primarily Jewish and primarily white, the snapshot of my childhood is the epitome of white privilege: super safe town, my sister and I had our own rooms and 3 meals a day, we were able to go on school trips and participate in afterschool activities, our friends lived in nice homes and the bat + bar mitzvahs were the stuff of MTV reality shows. Yet I always hoarded my allowance and was conscientious of spending. I oscillated between anxious and avoidant attachment styles with people in my life. If I let them in, I was petrified of losing them, so for the most part it was easier to keep relationships at an arms distance.

For as long as I can remember I was afraid of not having enough, and that what I did have could be taken away if I wasn’t diligent. This scarcity pattern played out for half of my life. I managed to recreate it over and over again, my choices a carbon copy of a narrative I was playing out consciously and unconsciously. It always felt legitimate and justified, even if there was money, even if I was relatively safe, even if I was trapped in a tiny corner of my mind, suffocating.*

The more I feared being desolate, the tighter I gripped onto whatever I had. Money, certain relationships, my perceived sense of self. The web of scarcity was entangled in every fiber of my being, like a vine desperate to reach the sun, killing it’s host in it’s efforts to survive.

Once I started understanding scarcity and the fear I was harboring on its behalf, I wanted it gone. Its deeply rooted story was like menacing talons keeping me stuck in cycles of lack. I became aware of how the pattern played out in my family and the ways in which it was passed down to me. Annoyed and frustrated, I wanted a magick spell to rid myself of this inherited baggage.

Then, at a shamanic immersion several years ago, I was met with an interesting invitation. We were journeying to meet our ancestors - was this my opportunity to wave my magick wand? I set my intention and felt hopeful that I would break the curse, if only by sheer will and determination.

As the beat of the drum carried me to a time before my existence to a land I’ve never been, I was met with a terrifying scene of destruction and war. The women, my ancestors, shared with me through tear stained faces and bulging eyes, “everything we have, we lose.” Those words reverberated through my entire being. This pain wasn’t just theirs, it was mine. The ones who lost their homes, their spouses, their children, their lands to wars and invasions they didn’t wage. It was a pivotal moment. Scarcity didn’t need to be pushed out the door like an unwanted visitor, it needed to be seen, recognized, cried for, revered. In that moment, I made the choice of compassion, a full body choice that meant I would hold the sharp edges and messy parts with unwavering love and understanding. Turns out, that is a magick spell.

Excavating intergenerational trauma is an archeological dig that offers a glimpse into the past of our collective existence. Scarcity is a legacy of colonization, genocide, racism, war, greed, and righteous fear. Whether it was our ancestors or our grandparents or our parents who truly didn’t have enough because of their gender, color of their skin, orientation, social status, “class’, chosen god - or whatever randomized distinguisher that meant they were marked - they had everything to lose, and sometimes, did.

I’m always continuing to expand my capacity to hold multiple complexities and truths.

Many things can exist at once, it’s this nuance that makes the human experience so tragic and so beautiful. We can love and hate, we can create and destroy, we can have joy and grief. I have unwavering compassion for my ancestors, for all of our ancestors, and for the ways in which I have lived this pattern of fear - sometimes validated, sometimes a whisper of an ancient memory that lives in my bones. And, I hold myself accountable to the ways in which outdated stories, patterns, and beliefs cause unintentional harm - to myself and others.

The scarcity wound is raging in our human family, playing out in so many familiar forms across the world stage. This pattern is written in our DNA. The trauma, the heartbreak, the loss and devastation - it will continue until we interrupt it. The dominos will continue to fall until we halt the momentum, stopping the chain. I recognize it’s just not that simple, and I can’t hold expectations for anyone other than myself - the places I hold privilege and power ask me to do better while realizing healing is a luxury not everyone can think about when there are present threats to their safety.

Therefore I’m driven by a force larger than myself to seek the possibility of abundance available to all life, which means alchemizing the root of scarcity, which means being part of ending a legacy of perpetuated harm. For me, it’s not about what I have to lose - the truth is, everything we love, we’ll lose - it’s about what we have to gain.

xx,

Kerrie

*my childhood was riddled with very real events that supported this fear, enforcing that it was in fact legitimate and justified. This is not about negating or trivializing real lived experiences. It's about looking at how we are part of a larger story, how our healing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, how we are ripples in the collective ocean of consciousness.