Bearing the Weight of Wellness

Are we sure that we want to be well?

I keep going back to Toni Cade Bambara’s award-winning book, The Salt Eaters, flipping through its pages as if it’s a reference book rather than the fictional tale of a Black community in Claybourne, Georgia, in the 1970s.

The book follows multiple characters in various settings, but it is the scene taking place at the Southwest Community Infirmary that captivates me. The infirmary is not just any clinic. It has the usual cadre of healthcare providers – physicians, interns, nurses, and technicians – but it also has Minnie Ransom, a spiritual healer whose gifts are admired even by traditional healthcare providers. During her healing sessions, she lays hands on patients who have been resistant to traditional medicine, surrounded by a prayer circle of twelve community members dubbed “The Masters Mind” while an audience of infirmary staff and patients watch from the corners of the room.

Bambara’s novel moves across time, space, and character to tell the story of what leads up to this healing session, whose subject is Velma Henry, who is in a near catatonic state after attempting suicide. Velma embodies the StrongBlackWoman. She is a community activist who has borne both the weight of the movement and of integration. While surrounded by people (including her partner), she is afraid of intimacy and vulnerability. Instead, she stuffs her pain, anxiety, and depression behind a mask of control.

In the opening line of the book, Minnie asks Velma, “Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?” As Velma remains unresponsive under Minnie’s healing hands and the prayer circle’s intercession, Minnie keeps echoing the question that Jesus asked the chronically ill man in John’s gospel.

In Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate in the north city wall is a pool with the Aramaic name Bethsaida. It had five covered porches, and a crowd of people who were sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed sat there. A certain man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, knowing that he had already been there a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:2-6, CEB).

The crowd of onlookers wonders why Minnie is stalling as she asks the question again and again. It is obvious to them, after all, that anyone would want to be released from the anguish that Velma is suffering. But Minnie knows that all too often, wellness is the heavier burden.

“I like to caution folks, that’s all…No sense us wasting each other’s time, sweetheart…A lot of weight when you’re well. Now you just hold that thought.”

Then, in the line that inspired the name of this Substack:

“Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.”

For over twenty years now, wellness has been an important motivator for my self-care journey. But as I enter this third decade of practicing intentional self-care, something is shifting. Wellness is not just a priority; it is the priority.

I’ve spent years trying to play the mind over matter game with chronic pain and fatigue. I have tried countless medications, complementary therapies, and alternative treatments, enough for me to finally accept the reality of my multiple diagnoses. Acceptance is not a giving up, but it is a form of surrender. Surrender to the reality that wellness does not look like conquering chronic illness for once and for all. Instead, wellness looks like having the courage to drastically alter my life so that I can both minimize the severity of flare-ups AND maintain the spaciousness that I need to rest when flare-ups inevitably happen. Wellness means reversing the way that I’ve thought about health and vocation. Instead of asking what self-care I need to support my vocational productivity, I am asking what work is necessary to support my health and well-being. A subtle but seismic shift. “A lot of weight when you’re well.”

Wellness requires us to swim against the tide, to let go of some things that we’ve turned into crutches. And sometimes we’re not ready for that. It’s why Minnie keeps asking.

“Are you sure, sweetheart? I’m just asking is all…Take away the miseries and you take away some folks’ reason for living. Their conversation piece anyway…I can feel, sweetheart, that you’re not quite ready to dump the shit…got to give it all up, the pain, the hurt, the anger and make room for lovely things to rush in and fill you full. Nature abhors a so-called vacuum, don’t you know?”

I’m working at dumping the shit. In my case, the shit isn’t pain, hurt, and anger. Instead, it is:

• academic pressure to always have an answer ready for the question, “So what’s your next project?”;

• missional gaslighting used by institutional leaders to coerce us to violate our boundaries and work beyond our limits;

• self-defeating comparison and competition with peers;

• belief that my worth is dependent upon my productivity and my participation in things that don’t even matter to me;

• guilt that my body requires more rest and care than other people’s bodies seem to need;

• stress over trying to “accomplish” self-care without inconveniencing others;

• anxiety about whether requesting accommodations will make me seem like a bad team player;

• the good Christian girl mentality that entices me to say yes to sitting at other people’s tables when I’d rather be lounging at my own; and

• feeling that I still have to prove myself through overwork after doing it for three decades.

There’s always going to be shit, but it doesn’t have to be mine. I’m working to dump it all. I’m learning instead to create space and margin in my life. I’m learning to resist the tendency to fill the vacuum by replacing it with activities and obligations that are not life-giving. I’m learning to experience ease in order to invite in the lovely things that make living worthwhile. It may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, harder than putting myself through college, than getting a doctorate, than earning tenure. It’s a lot of weight to be well. I’m learning how to bear the weight.

What do you need to dump in order to pursue wellness? What makes it hard? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.