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WELLNESS in the face of WARFARE

Esther Armah

Wellness is a trillion-dollar economy driven by rich white women. It’s time for a reframing of this entire economy, from an individual one of privilege to an institutionalized economy of progress.

That means shifting from a market to a movement, one that becomes, wellness in the face of warfare.


Here’s why.

The US and the UK are navigating global political landscapes that make choice a weapon, diversity a battlefield, and equity the enemy.

This political landscape is fragmented and fractured and society will be navigating targeted attacks across justice landscapes over the next five years. This is a political landscape that is at war with the kind of progress that serves a global humanity.


Let’s break this down.

WARFARE

Noun

The waging of armed conflict against an enemy.

The ‘enemy’ within this political landscape has been named as a progressive multi-racial, multi-cultural world

– one in which refuge, repair and resources are not restricted to the few, but are home and owed to millions.

The enemy’ has been named as knowledge.

– the nuanced, whole kind that serves deeper understanding of a history of horror, progress and resistance leading to a healthier future for all.


The ‘armed’ is the weaponizing and politicizing of emotions and information to shape how the world is seen, and specifically, how we see each other. The primary emotion being weaponized is fear. The secondary emotion is threat. This breaks down as: who should you fear? Who threatens your future, your safety, your life, your living, your opportunity? After the weaponization of the fear, comes the identification of who or what should be feared, and who poses a threat.

The ‘enemy’ is the focus of your fear; that focus has been named as Black and Brown people.

The ‘enemy’ has been named as progress, specifically a progress that includes Black and Brown people’s thriving. Their thriving is one that limits opportunity, possibility and visibility for white people. Justice has been named as the ‘enemy’


With this reality, this is indeed warfare. What that means is we must find a way to be and sustain our wellness, even as the work is being done to reframe the wellness economy.


Here’s why.

The guiding focus of reframing this economy is healing harm, heeding history. You cannot heal a harm you don’t name, nor heed a history you don’t know.

It is the interconnection and the intersection that roots the reframing of this wellness economy. In this case the history we must heed is, survival and global Black folk. Survival has been the mantra of global Black people. It is the Gloria Gaynor anthem: ‘I WILL SURVIVE. So, what does wellness mean through this frame?


Let’s break this down.

WELLNESS

Noun

The state of being well especially as an actively pursued goal


Wellness has four forms: Spiritual, Physical, Environmental, Emotional. My focus is emotional wellness, and to resource this active pursuit of sustaining wellness as our world navigates this time.


Why Emotional Wellness? You’ve heard of emotional eating, right? It’s the kind of eating that feeds your emotions, or comforts and soothes you. This is ‘emotional nutrition’. Emotional nutrition is fuel, it is fire, and it is fertile.

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I resonate with this message and will play my part as a Black African owned healing and wellness space.

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