I used to think that my mental health would be something that I always struggled with to some extent. I came to the conclusion that existing in the world as a Black queer and trans person meant that poor metal health is part and parcel of that experience. I had resigned myself to this fallacy that spouts of depression, extended periods of burnout, chronic stress and anxiety were the cost I would have to pay to live in this world and do this type of work I most longed to do. However, over the past year I have been more and more interested in the ways that conditions like chronic stress literally etch years away of your life, as demonstrated by numerous studies.
For those of you less familiar with my work, it is important for me to note that I have been steeped in social justice work for the past decade or so of my life. Work that I have believed in with my whole body, mind, and soul, work that I have given everything within to push forward. However, when I look around at this space what I consistently witness is chronically stressed, chronically burnt-out people, people developing long term illnesses as a product of this stress. Some that have symptoms, but for others it can be a silent killer. I had to question what is the worth of building movements if we are inadvertently killing ourselves in the process. Is the only other option to lay down and allow the State to harm us? No. This journey has made we think deeply about health and wellness as a resistant practice. This does not mean a quick self-care get away when things get too hard and heavy, this is only a plaster over a far deeper problem. This instead means a complete overhaul of the ways we are living. An overhaul with our relationship to the food industry. An overhaul of our relationship to movement practices. Leaning into the discomfort of discipline and taking the focus of accountability not only to the systems outside of us causing us harm, but to ourselves and the ways we negate our wellness in the pursuit of transforming the world.
I say we here, but perhaps I am making an assumption that this is a problem that others too struggle with, so let me speak of the I. I admit fully that I have in ways made myself a martyr over the years, I have dishonoured my own wellness in the pursuit of building more just futures for the collective. This then becomes the work that I am celebrated for, perpetuating quite a vicious cycle that can further lead to the dishonouring of my wellness. If you are being celebrated for the fruits of a chronically stressed lifestyle, what is the incentive to change? Often it is too late. I have read too many stories of diagnoses being given to people within social justice movements and it is hard to consider these as being divorced from the chronic stress of such work.
Still, it is important to remember that our work can only ever be as well as we are. Thus, it is often a fallacy to actually believe that chronic stress can take us towards liberation. For me, the means must justify the ends. This is something I discuss more fully in my upcoming book Undisciplined: Reclaiming the Right to Imagine set to be published later this year.
At my last birthday I decided to make a change. Many of you haven’t heard from me much over this year because I have been focussed on my wellbeing. I recognised that 30 was on the horizon and I need to start taking my holistic health more seriously and commit to the radical work of my wellness just as much as I have committed to change in the social world. However, this meant I had to re-evaluate my relationship to my work and how I was living, this meant navigating a lot of guilt around not showing up in the ways I felt I had to. But it has also ushered in a way of me now desiring to show up differently, in a way that is in deeper alignment with all of me. Not fuelled by a culture of urgency, but rather an embodied approach to life where I put myself first and build a politic with it’s foundations in a gracious and loving acceptance and profound care for myself, as opposed to beginning with a politic and witnessing care for myself as either a reward or an addition.
So, to care for myself and my overall wellness I made these critical changes:
- Committed to a 90% wholefoods diet
- Quit Alcohol
- Consistently strength trained 3-4 days a week
- Enhanced my spiritual life through a deeper commitment to meditation and slowness in my days
- Stepped away from activism and the public eye
These changes have transformed my life in so many ways. I have never felt more physically nor mentally well than I do in this present moment. The dives into depression have not reoccurred, my list starts with food because I have become obsessed with the link between what we consume and our mental wellbeing. I genuinely think that this shift along with quitting alcohol has been what has had the most profound impact on my mental health. This also does not mean simply not eating junk food and sweets, this is a part of it, or at least limiting the amount we consume. But it has more so been a journey of becoming more conscious of food labelling and packaging, reading the ingredients before I buy. The food industrial complex is committed to making us addicted to its products, and so they will label items as ‘healthy’ though if we are to read the ingredients, we will see just how harmful they are. Even in transforming my diet, I was able to witness just how addicted I was to certain foods and drinks. Self-mastery over my desires in life is generally a quality I value, and it was only when I focussed in on my diet that I realised how out of alignment I was with this value in this area of my life.
My activism became my physical and spiritual wellbeing. It is my belief that when each of us care for ourselves that it sends a vibration out into the universe so powerful it has the energy to transform the world. It is a Western logic that teaches us that things have to be so linear, that we have to go about justice in a direct way. But no, there is nothing selfish about caring deeply for yourself, I have come to understand you offer so much more to the word both literally and energetically when this becomes your primary focus.
This is not to say that this work of deeply caring for oneself is easy. Discipline is one of my core values, and these changes certainly took a great deal of discipline, but a discipline that has its roots in a fierce love and protection of self. Again, my work is only as well as I am. So, I committed to be fiercely disciplined in my approach to life not for an external source like a workplace or a commitment to another. But to offer that discipline to myself. I genuinely think this form of discipline can be one of the most loving things one can do for self. In this discipline I am telling myself that I love myself. That I care for myself enough to reject foods that make me feel good right now but in the long term harm me, that I love myself enough to go to the gym even when I don’t feel like it, that I love myself enough to reject that social invitation because my spirit needs quietude today and to sit with my soul.
I cannot believe it took me this long to realise that mental unwellness is not my destiny. Nor does it have to be yours. I have not struggled with my mental health in over a year now, yes I have some low days and a bit of anxiety here and there but the burn out and chronic stress I once witnessed as my norm has since evaporated. I am happier, healthier, stronger, and feel more purposeful than I have ever felt in my life.
I am convinced that quite paradoxically the ways we approach changing the world become service to the dominant culture. So, in a way, we inadvertently do the work we are so ardently trying to fight against. We end up working ourselves to the bone, and to take the edge off of the daily challenges we turn to what is collectively considered ‘fun’ or ‘pleasure’ be that processed foods, alcohol, or numbing our minds through social media. All of which I still engage with to some extent, though now more consciously, as the goal is not perfection. However, a less conscious engagement with these things, leads to us fundamentally harming ourselves. This is not written to find indictment with oneself. Instead, it is written to share with you the power that I found within myself to transform my life and my conditions. That I am not a perpetual victim of, nor fighter against, the harms beset upon me. Instead, in ways I have untold power to create my own life and set the standard of my own reality in the here and now.