How I Learned to Hoard
I grew up in a pretty sweet, middle-class family setup. But there was a period after my parents got divorced when money was very tight. Mom worked 3 and 4 part-time jobs while going to college, and we three kids got to experience what it's like to worry about money. A lot.
Born in 1930, she was raised in Depression mindset. So she saved coupons, saved coke bottles for return, bought stuff when it was on sale, knew and appreciated the nutritional value of cheap foods like beans and peanut butter.
Mom and I did the grocery shopping, being careful with her hard-earned cash, trying to stretch every dollar.
Pre-divorce, Mom was pretty careful with the grocery money, but she splurged on quality ingredients. Post-divorce, however, we became very familiar with budget-stretchers like tuna casserole and other uses of cream of mushroom soup, generic brands, bulk buying, cheap cuts of meat, quantity versus quality. Out went steak, in came hamburger. This hamburger couldn't be made into actual hamburgers, something a kid appreciated and recognized. No, as a precious, high-dollar meat item, it had to be broken up and stretched with a sauce, into "stroganoff" or "stir fry with bean sprouts" or "spaghetti".
Same with chicken. We bought whole fryers, and they had to be stewed in a pot, deboned, and given the stretching treatment. One day Tim and I hurt Mom's feelings by posing two stewing chickens in the pot as if in a hot tub, with their wings around the rim and each other, drumsticks rakishly crossed. I remember begging her to make her famous fried chicken instead of "chicken spaghetti" made with (gag) vermicelli.
Trusted with Mom's worries about cost at the grocery store, I took our consumption to heart. I knew exactly how much each item cost - how long Mom needed it to last. I had two teenage brothers at home. If you've never lived around teenage boys, let me tell you - they can EAT. Whole loaves of bread would go within a couple of hours. Gallons of milk. Jars of peanut butter. Anything that looked like snack food, like potato chips or cookies, rarely lasted past a day.
As the little sister, it was understood that I didn't eat as much, didn't NEED as much, as my brothers. I took that to heart, but it was the beginning of my obsession about food and my intake thereof.
Add to that picture, a culture where thinness for women was becoming a wider cultural obsession, and you get - here. Where I am today.
Moving Beyond
Today, when I am stressed about money, I like to go grocery shopping. Weight Watchers wisely advises not to go grocery shopping when one is hungry. That's great advice for me - but I also need to not shop when feeling money anxiety. The amounts change, the worries remain the same, I find. I still tend to overcompensate. I don't LIKE the feeling of living in a scarce universe. I don't like feeling that my needs (physical or imagined) aren't real, or legitimate. I feel discomfort, so I buy more to prove to myself that I am deserving.
But I also deserve to feel healthy. And to grow out of this scarcity thinking. I've never actually starved, or been sent to the poorhouse. The reality is, I almost always had plenty, and even when I didn't have plenty, I had enough. I now have plenty of cash, plenty of food in the pantry. And it's time to grow up.
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