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.

The Role of Rebellion

Imagination plays a significant role in the therapeutic process.

To construct a different way of being means to break away from what may be a corrosive present while daring to move into an expansive vision of our future selves and lives.

It's a process that needs rebellion to be nurtured within us.

A push back against the stories we tell ourselves - sometimes the voices of others - that stifle the transformations we need and are capable of. The therapeutic relationship formed over time creates space for this imagination to breathe.

Your preferred way of being has a chance to be practiced, adjusted, supported and strengthened before you bring it into relationships outside the therapy room.