So many revelations coming about the nature of the money and scarcity wounds. It feels fitting to share on this Thanksgiving Day when we celebrate gratitude for abundance, harvest, and plenty.
Schuyler, I love your (and David's) radical vulnerability and sharing of insights that feel significant and resonate in our times. Thank you for your offerings.
I want to weave something in that may or may not be relevant (I sense there's a connecting thread here somewhere). I was speaking with a woman who shared that she often felt ashamed about her body and was put on Weight Watchers at a young age. She noted that her grandmother frequently made comments about her children and grandchildren’s bodies with relationship to quantity (weight), while expressively disparaging quality (feeling). Her grandmother would say, “your legs are thick and are meant for German farming fields.” What dawned on me from this conversation was the deep inseparability between body and land. My hypothesis was that this grandmother’s comments were more deeply rooted in unmourned grief around her body/soul being uprooted and disconnected from her ancestral land (her body/earth). I thought about how her body must have longed for the landscape and people from which her body was borne. And how separation from the land may have been underpinning her obsession and seeming discomfort and displeasure of the body. The foreignness in migrating to a new land, in effect, may have been creating a sense of foreignness with her own body. Perhaps this grandmother struggled to make the US her home and passed down a sense of lostness and body rejection/dejection. A real struggle of home-making. If we don’t feel connected to the land and to our ancestors (both human and non-human alike), how can we feel fully connected to our bodies (and vice versa)? This is a question that is arising for me.
This may tie into our relationship with money. And I really want to thank you and David for such an incredibly inspiring prayer (that arose in the form of conversation) that has me in deeper prayer with the topic. How can we sense into our relationship with money, which, as you so beautifully note, has such deep ancestral roots, if we feel like a foreigner in our own backyards, in our own bodies? I’m sensing something about uprootedness, lostness, land, and home-making being significant in our relationship with money. Money has lost its body--even its form in pieces of paper and metal are disappearing. It's homeless, so to speak. A long share, and these thoughts aren't fully formed, but I suspect we will continue to sense into it with support from the collective. The many visible and invisible forces that are helping us find our way home. Very thankful for this space and the invitation into this inquiry.
Holly, YES I fully believe you're right. I was also encouraged to go to Weight Watchers when I was a teen struggling with an eating disorder. I was sent there by my mother who didn't know how to help me feel at home in my body, presumably because she didn't either. It's sad and shocking to me how many women suffer from eating disorders and I do believe at a foundational level it is our disconnect from earth, MA, home. Goddess help us return to her and to our home within these sacred bodies. Thank you for your share. I also think it's related to money. There's a lot to say about the times past when the relationship between fertility and prosperity was clear. Think about how much infertility we have now. Why? That's a scary question to ask. But, worth asking. Maybe that money "god" we put on the throne and started worshipping took the place of the worthy gods we knew when we were better connected to place and community. A lot to chew.......love you and thank you for your wisdom, which I always feel is in deep connection to ancestors and earth.
Love this--I resonate with so much of it. Weight Watchers. The chronic hatred of the body. It feels like "Diet Culture" needs to go on the extremely long list of things that need to be composted collectively. Even just thinking about diet culture makes my entire body collapse in on itself. Nauseating. So helpful to know that I'm not alone in these experiences tho <3
Really hard to read this one Schuyler, a bit like being skinned alive. I have defaulted to the "abundance mindset" camp, and don't feel a warm welcome to this important wake-up call.
All the same...thank you for the fierce pointing, and for the tonic:
"... the body is built to alert us to real danger and to allow us to relax completely in the absence of it."
"Already I understand that the opposite of scarcity is not abundance in the unlimited sense, but a deep sense of being cared for and knowing how to care for that which cares for us. "
Schuyler, I love your (and David's) radical vulnerability and sharing of insights that feel significant and resonate in our times. Thank you for your offerings.
I want to weave something in that may or may not be relevant (I sense there's a connecting thread here somewhere). I was speaking with a woman who shared that she often felt ashamed about her body and was put on Weight Watchers at a young age. She noted that her grandmother frequently made comments about her children and grandchildren’s bodies with relationship to quantity (weight), while expressively disparaging quality (feeling). Her grandmother would say, “your legs are thick and are meant for German farming fields.” What dawned on me from this conversation was the deep inseparability between body and land. My hypothesis was that this grandmother’s comments were more deeply rooted in unmourned grief around her body/soul being uprooted and disconnected from her ancestral land (her body/earth). I thought about how her body must have longed for the landscape and people from which her body was borne. And how separation from the land may have been underpinning her obsession and seeming discomfort and displeasure of the body. The foreignness in migrating to a new land, in effect, may have been creating a sense of foreignness with her own body. Perhaps this grandmother struggled to make the US her home and passed down a sense of lostness and body rejection/dejection. A real struggle of home-making. If we don’t feel connected to the land and to our ancestors (both human and non-human alike), how can we feel fully connected to our bodies (and vice versa)? This is a question that is arising for me.
This may tie into our relationship with money. And I really want to thank you and David for such an incredibly inspiring prayer (that arose in the form of conversation) that has me in deeper prayer with the topic. How can we sense into our relationship with money, which, as you so beautifully note, has such deep ancestral roots, if we feel like a foreigner in our own backyards, in our own bodies? I’m sensing something about uprootedness, lostness, land, and home-making being significant in our relationship with money. Money has lost its body--even its form in pieces of paper and metal are disappearing. It's homeless, so to speak. A long share, and these thoughts aren't fully formed, but I suspect we will continue to sense into it with support from the collective. The many visible and invisible forces that are helping us find our way home. Very thankful for this space and the invitation into this inquiry.
Holly, YES I fully believe you're right. I was also encouraged to go to Weight Watchers when I was a teen struggling with an eating disorder. I was sent there by my mother who didn't know how to help me feel at home in my body, presumably because she didn't either. It's sad and shocking to me how many women suffer from eating disorders and I do believe at a foundational level it is our disconnect from earth, MA, home. Goddess help us return to her and to our home within these sacred bodies. Thank you for your share. I also think it's related to money. There's a lot to say about the times past when the relationship between fertility and prosperity was clear. Think about how much infertility we have now. Why? That's a scary question to ask. But, worth asking. Maybe that money "god" we put on the throne and started worshipping took the place of the worthy gods we knew when we were better connected to place and community. A lot to chew.......love you and thank you for your wisdom, which I always feel is in deep connection to ancestors and earth.
Love this--I resonate with so much of it. Weight Watchers. The chronic hatred of the body. It feels like "Diet Culture" needs to go on the extremely long list of things that need to be composted collectively. Even just thinking about diet culture makes my entire body collapse in on itself. Nauseating. So helpful to know that I'm not alone in these experiences tho <3
Really hard to read this one Schuyler, a bit like being skinned alive. I have defaulted to the "abundance mindset" camp, and don't feel a warm welcome to this important wake-up call.
All the same...thank you for the fierce pointing, and for the tonic:
"... the body is built to alert us to real danger and to allow us to relax completely in the absence of it."
"Already I understand that the opposite of scarcity is not abundance in the unlimited sense, but a deep sense of being cared for and knowing how to care for that which cares for us. "
Wow and yes.
I really appreciate your honesty, Liz. I get it. To be continued...