Wellness in the Unwellness

The class assignment was set.
A wall with 2 parts to it. One titled ‘Wellness’, the other ‘Un-wellness’. The task was for us to visually represent what each of these meant on a sheet of paper and stick it under its corresponding title. It seemed straight forward enough.

Only when I touched the paper did it become clear to me:
This is a false binary.


I remember so vividly how my body immediately signaled to me these states of being are not separate. I took both pieces of paper and nestled them within each other.

There is wellness in the unwellness.
The search for what is already well within me in times of dis-ease. The questions that were birthed. The growing that was seeded. The words that found voice. The constellations of clarity against what needed to fade away.

There is unwellness in the wellness.
The recognition of what happened. The traces. The disbeliefs that accompanied new beliefs. The ungraceful changes. The inconvenient truths. The growing pains. My altered shape coming out of where I was, into the next step.

My experience of wellness / unwellness was: Symbiotic. Collaborative. Communicative. Responding to. Back and forth. Light and shadow. Angular. Laced with.

One side of the wall wasn’t enough to hold my experience.

When We Disappear

I recently worked with participants processing experiences of racism in the workplace, and here’s something I noticed we - myself included - do in such uncomfortable situations:

We make ourselves disappear.

  • When we over-function to prove our worth and competence, we disappear.

  • When we contort and shrink our bodies to brush off an inappropriate comment, we disappear.

  • When we stand in the corner of the room at an event to scan bodies and stares we disappear.

  • When we trap our anger in our breath to avoid being ‘confrontational’ or ‘difficult’, we disappear.

When I disappear - for the comfort of the other - they remain fully intact,
while I’m now left to tend to my body and the harm that has landed upon it yet again. 


What can grow for us when we:

  • Stop apologising for the discomfort felt by the other when we bring up our own truth? 

  • Walk a little slower and more fully in our bodies to reclaim space, time and energy because: we deserve to be here.

  • Reflect the burden back to the other person for them to self-educate and do better - rather than us always reconfiguring ourselves?