Food Insecurity, Money + An Opportunity to Heal

I'm thinking about all the kids who will knock on neighborhood doors tomorrow night and be greeted with handouts - of candy.

I'm thinking about the house representatives who haven't been at work for 5 weeks even though in 2 days, 42 million Americans will lose grocery money.

I'm thinking about the PEOPLE: underpaid full-time workers, single parents, students, foster parents, working parents, seniors, children, and babies who are living with the primal reality and fear of running out food. For no good reason.

And I am furious...

Furious that food and nutrition for those in need is political.

Furious that billionaires like Bezos and the Walton Family are swimming in obscene wealth because they don't pay their workers a wage that allows them to buy groceries without governmental assistance. Yet somehow the conversation has been twisted to see those who receive benefits as getting handouts? Not the billionaires who got the biggest tax break in the BBB?

Furious that the BBB cuts to SNAP were already going to hurt millions of people, AND that the 5+ billion in USDA contingency funds to buffer against *this exact scenario* is not being put into motion. It is undeniable cruelty.

I will pause here and give us both a chance to take a nice, long and slow breath because I have something more important to share than my fury...

Because money is flowing through LOVING hands to feed those who really need to be loved right now.

Maybe you've already heard about Heretic Coffeehouse here in Portland Oregon receiving money from across the globe to provide breakfast to anyone on SNAP.

Maybe you've contributed to your local food bank who can buy the right food at a discount and distribute it efficiently.

Maybe you've stocked a neighborhood free fridge with some provisions that your own family can spare, or found other forms of support to share (this is an incredible resource to bookmark).

We're being called to provide the food security, stability, and support that we long associated with the government. It's up to us now.

And it matters.

It matters that we rise in this moment.

It matters to those who will otherwise go hungry.

It matters for our humanity.

And, it matters to the parts of us that hold a primal fear of food insecurity.

Maybe you're currently experiencing food insecurity. Maybe you've known food insecurity in your own life. Or maybe you carry a generational, cellular memory of food insecurity (It's safe to say that at least one of our ancestors experienced famine, a Depression...)

In my time doing money work it's extremely common for stories of food insecurity to arise, or be uncovered, at the root of someone's relationship with money - from hoarding, to challenges saving, to feeling worthy or deserving.

Trust me when I say, food and money are deeply linked in our psyches.

Food is survival, and requires money. Money and food insecurity intertwine with our most primal human fears.

I want to offer this moment of despair and fury as also being an opportunity for your own healing, and our collective healing.

To provide support to others when you have plenty is to simultaneously provide emotional support to the part of yourself that has previously known the unmet pangs of hunger, or has an intergenerational or collective wound around food insecurity.

Because the truth is that giving is receiving, receiving is giving. When we participate in this cycle, we can trust the cycle.

This is what I mean when I say that we can allow LOVE to flow, as money, to heal our collective, to heal ourselves, and to allow a new paradigm to emerge.

I am envisioning a world in which all beings are fed with the abundant resources that exist.

That is all. I trust you to find your own expression, in your own way. I just know this is a powerful collective moment for deep healing and unity.

-Megan