the triumvirate of the health crisis, the racial crisis, and the climate crisis
I’m a white woman and a healer and I want to talk about health and wellness in these times. I write these words to include all of us in the work it takes to reconnect to ourselves and to each other. To call everyone in, especially white people, from all their perspectives and corners, and be counted as present.
What I really want to talk about is our bodies,
yours
mine
‘theirs’.
• • •
Since the onset of this viral outbreak, our medical institutions have advised us to do
‘everything possible’ to not get this bug: social distance, self-isolate, wash hands, wear masks.
But something is missing from the conversation.
Where is the information about how to thrive?
Where is the information about how to prepare for the possibility of actually getting this virus?
Where is the empowered story that our bodies are wise & resilient, and with preventative care, can weather this storm – maybe even be stronger for it?
Where is the curiosity about what this virus can teach us?
As Teresa M. Heinichen-Owens RN, MS writes,
“It appears that this virus "sneaks" around slowly infecting each body system it can, at low levels, so as to not alert the immune system. This behavior appears to provoke a nonspecific immune response, which causes mild generalized inflammation that can manifest in subtle ways depending on what each person is prone to, hence the masked symptoms. When they reach critical mass, the replicated viruses all signal each other to"attack" at the same moment, which is when rapid onset of obvious symptoms, followed quickly by the cytokine storm and resultant crash, occur. Now it is a medical emergency of epic proportions which western medicine has no tools to combat.”
Again and again media has reinforced the narrative that traditional herbs, simple supplements and other immune supportive traditions are unproven and likely useless in the face of Covid-19.
This particular viral presence is offering us the opportunity to pay attention to the subtle body shifts in wellness, dis-ease, and respond…to remember that health is not a given, it is something to practice. We cannot rely on allopathic (western) medicine to save us. It’s built on the premise that: you aren’t deemed ill until an expert/a doctor tells you so; the path to health is framed as being at war with your own biology (antibiotics, antiseptics, antibacterials, anti-everything); the body is viewed as a machine, to be fixed when it is broken; it replaces traditional medicines and values of healthy living, well being and interconnectedness. Allopathic medicine was born out of whiteness and patriarchy and - blatantly or not - keeps systemic racism in working order.
To quote Dr. King,
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
• • •
Now I’d like to talk about race.
The way the coronavirus moves through the body is similar to the way racism moves through society.
In the same way that we need to be aware of the subtleties of our immune systems, we must be aware of the subtleties of racism.
Not one of us has escaped the threat of the coronavirus, nor the harm of whiteness, patriarchy, racism, allopathic belief systems, or the looming disasters foretold in regards to our earth. As I write this, the eruption of protests about police brutality on Black bodies, all over the world, are testament to how “done” we all are with sitting in these compliant & complicit roles and how ready we are for healing and living in the wholeness of our humanity.
Our collective heart is broken. This breaking is showing us where the wounds are, and how deep they run.
The description of the coronavirus above sounds a lot like the silent storm of racism that impacts all of us negatively, but Black bodies exponentially. In this global pandemic, Black people are suffering at a hugely disproportionate rate. A common response is to believe that it must be ‘their’ fault. Placing blame on Black (and brown, immigrant and indigenous) people for the lack of healthcare, underlying health conditions, crowded living situations, and remaining in the public workforce (“essential workers”) - is racism. This facet of racism is convenient for white people, because it keeps white people innocent and shielded from recognizing and acknowledging our own complicit role. We may talk about health as a “universal right”, but we first have to reckon with how our white culture wants certain bodies to disappear, while others stand in the light. We have to reckon with how we subconsciously view some bodies as “less” than equal - and how we consciously make legislation to reinforce these views. We have to reckon with how Black people experience a continuous knee upon their throats and ongoing erasure by white systems of power. Simply having a white body perpetuates racism, when we choose be silent about it, in the same way simply having a Black body means being discriminated against.
Black bodies
do not get to choose when
they want to acknowledge racism,
the way white bodies do.
This is not an issue for black people to address,
it is an issue for white people to wake up to.
I remember driving through a part of the Deep South that was once the epicenter of cotton plantations and the slave trade. I couldn’t get comfortable in that landscape – couldn’t stop wondering which majestic oak might have been a hanging tree. The land felt full of ghosts. But when I voiced this to someone, she quickly responded (as an older, white woman), “Well, I’ve made my peace with that history, and I love it here.”
I understand this. I do it every day that I don’t acknowledge that I live and love this ancestral land of the Pomo and Miwok people, nearly eradicated by genocide in the name of colonialism.
But when a white person forgets that past, it serves as a strong force to keep those stories erased, and keep Black people invisible in real time. Racism doesn’t want the Black person to think their body matters, or even exists. White people still sit in the place of power, and hold the top down structure of patriarchy with a tight fist. White people need to step down, back up, and make space for something else to emerge. Not to become invisible, or replaced (as if another’s existence is a threat), but to do the work of repair after centuries of oppression and slow genocide. It’s time for invisible bodies to become visible – to be afforded the space to breathe and exist, and for their existence to matter not just to themselves, but to white people.
. . .
Maybe the coronavirus can show us, on a fractal level, how white people (as a majority) have let systemic racism fester for far too long, and for some even assuming it’s no longer there. I don’t know a single Black person who tells that story.
Could it be that we are now at the point of the cytokine storm - but the storm is in the streets in the form of protests against this viral racism?
Could it be that we are replicating the immune response necessary to lay bare these wounds?
What comes after the hurricane, and how do we survive it?
• • •
the best way I know how to weather this storm is to remember the body.
(Now I’m gonna use the word we. Not we as in all of our experience is the same. But we in that we all have a sensing, breathing, body.)
As a human being, engaging with our body’s wellness can be a force that keeps our conscience intact and our eye trained on vitality - for ourselves, our fellow humans, even for our life-giving earth. When we humans practice using our senses and trusting our gut to navigate our paths, we are waking up from the inside out…waking up the complex technology of the body. We can practice turning towards and residing within, so as to listen to the subtle (and loud) messages our bodies are continuously, generously, communicating to us.
When we come home to our sensing bodies, we begin the healing work of not seeing ourselves as separate from each other, or the planet. I don’t think we can assume that coming into our body is something that happens once and for all. Each breath is an opportunity to be with the constancy of becoming, like watching a wave arise and dissolve, infinitely.
Our individual’s wellbeing is intrinsically linked to each other's.
Your breath is also my breath.
Your life is as important as my life.
And my life is dependent on yours.
Try replacing the word “your” in the sentences above with the name of your mother, the tree closest to you, or the Black person who (still) lives on the other side of town.
• • •
I don’t mean to make this sound easy. I know first hand what a constant, arduous task it is to swim upstream from the status quo and acknowledge that my body exists, that my body is speaking to me, that it is vital for me to treat my body well, and that my own health is important. When we view something as vital, we no longer try to destroy it, be it our land, our community, or ourselves. If the ship is vital (earth), if the other passengers are vital (people we consider different), and if our own presence is vital (you), there’s no way we are going to try and sink that ship. This is how these three issues overlap, why the climate crisis, the racial justice crisis, and the health crisis are all the same crisis.
To pursue embodiment using our highest forms of intelligence, is to acknowledge that our bodies hold wisdom, that our bodies are our own, and that life is a gift.
Barry Lopez writes about the collective higher intelligence of a murmuration:
“Take a flock of starlings. The flock is carving open space up into the most complex geometrical volumes, and you have to ask yourself, “how do they do that?” The answer is: no one’s giving anyone else instructions. You look to the four or five birds immediately around you. You coordinate with them. The intricacy of the lattice means that one of the birds you’re using as a guide for your own maneuvering is itself watching the birds around it to coordinate its movement. No leader, no driver. It is an aggregate of birds.
Before a starling can join the flock, it first has to know it has wings. Once it takes flight, feeling the wind whisper to each feather, it can become one of many, where emergent wisdom unfolds. Where no one is giving directions, there is no leader, no hero. Everyone is using every sense to it’s fullest capacity to ensure a successful migration. As Lopez writes, “Maintaining direction is something that can only happen as a community.”
This is why I think that approaching health as a practice of embodiment is a subversive political act that could dissolve inequality and racism, at it’s root.
• • •
As a friend recently shared,
“these are the words I say to myself everyday:
Feel the pain. Be in the hope. Keep your heart open. Do something.”
References to media: New York Times, Healthline.com. For more reading on this topic, Slate.com
Gratitude for Ellah Ray, Marielle Amrhein, and Jesse Olsen Bay for contributions and edits.