It’s Thursday. This morning I forced myself to take a shower. For the past 11 months, I’ve been semi-consciously showering only on weekends. It’s the same shower schedule we had when we were homeless.

Getting an apartment and having access to a shower anytime I wanted hasn’t helped me escape the scarcity mindset of homelessness. Even though I can shower whenever I want to, I still treat it like something that can only happen on the weekend.

Homelessness fucks up a person in so many ways.

Imposter Syndrome

Just over a year ago, I met a woman named Kate. She was a speaker at a professional women’s entrepreneur event I attended. At the beginning of her speaking time, she asked what scarcity means to each of us—those who were willing shared what came to mind.

I didn’t share. I felt like the biggest imposter for being at the event. The room was filled with business owners who seemed to be doing well for themselves. Some of them had known each other for years and mingled freely. Meanwhile, crippling anxiety seized me and the chair I selected in the back row was my safe place.

Earlier in the event, during the around-the-room “tell us a little about yourself” sharing time, I was intimidated by the services these women offered and how confident they were as they spoke about their businesses. I couldn’t imagine the prices they must charge for workshops, coaching, consulting, holistic wellness practices, and so on.

Then there was me—a homeless freelancer scraping by on barely sustainable rates. The RV I lived in was part of the unsightliness of homelessness in our city. For all I knew, at some point one of the other women in the room had driven or walked by my RV and thought, “I wish that thing wasn’t here.”

The space where the event was held that evening was the co-working space I’d joined to have access to electricity and Wi-Fi. I used the shower on the second floor of the building 1-2 times a week. I’d attended the event because the organizer was a member of the co-working space and she’d invited me as her guest.

As the song goes, one of these things is not like the other.

What Scarcity Means to Me

But I never forgot Kate’s question that she asked us that night: What does the word scarcity mean to you?

For me, scarcity means fear. When we were homeless, I lived in constant, never-ending fear.

Fear that there won’t be enough.

Not enough propane to keep us warm through the night. Not enough water for the week. Not enough food for the month.

Fear of gaps in basic needs.

No money for showers, laundry, food, or public transportation.

Fear that things won’t last. 

Our bedding, towels, and clothing would be lost to mold, which meant having to replace them the following year—if there was money.

Fear of losing assistance.

There was also the fear that I’d lose my EBT and state health coverage because I made one dollar “too much” according to an income table with a ridiculously low cut-off point, based on unrealistic numbers about annual income and cost-of-living amounts.

The one thing that was always abundant in my place of scarcity was fear.

How Long Does it Take to Get Over Fear?

I still live in fear almost a year after escaping homelessness. Trauma leaves a deep wound that doesn’t heal overnight. I call it my homelessness-induced PTSD.

Fear is always in the room with me. It affects my life in ways I’m aware of (panicking when I have a month of lower-than-expected earnings), but also in more subtle ways.

  • Feeling secure only if our kitchen cabinets and refrigerator are overflowing with food. 
  • Experiencing anxiety if our clothes hampers get too full of dirty clothes and towels.
  • Feeling like it’s not okay to turn on the heater during the day because I associate heat with nighttime.
  • Showering once a week.

I remind myself that it takes time to recover from bad things. There’s no standard formula for how much time a person needs to heal from the wounds they sustained from the bad thing they went through.

Change is About More Than a New Environment

I haven’t been making an intentional decision to only shower once a week. There’s an alarm on my phone that goes off on Wednesday evenings to remind me to shower or even enjoy a bath soak in our bathroom’s clawfoot tub. 

But I can’t remember the last time I didn’t just shut off the alarm and continue what I was doing. Maybe fear of not having enough time has become a thing for me.

Getting housing hasn’t helped me move into a place of thriving because I’m still stuck in survival mode. I’m in survival mode because I’m still in a place of fear. I’m afraid that one day I’ll be homeless again.

The scarcity mindset of homelessness has followed me into this apartment.

The Choice of Gratitude

I think I’m going to try something new this year—an experiment, if you will. Something I know will be hard to do at times.

Zen teaching is that you can’t think two thoughts at exactly the same time.

When I recognize that I’m in my place of scarcity where fear rules, I’m going to make the conscious choice to move away from scarcity and fear and move into gratitude.

Instead of panicking because I only have a finite amount of resources, I’m going to be grateful for having the things I’m so scared of losing. And I’m going to choose to enjoy them.

I’ll see if this helps heal my mindset of scarcity.