Fariha Roisin

The multi-disciplinary artist and author of Like a Bird and How to Cure a Ghost explores the commodification and appropriation of wellness through the lens of social justice, providing resources to help anyone participate in self-care, regardless of race, identity, socioeconomic status or able-bodiedness. Growing up in Australia, Fariha Róisín, a Bangladeshi Muslim, struggled to fit in. In attempts to assimilate, she distanced herself from her South Asian heritage and identity. Years later, living in the United States, she realized that the customs, practices, and even food of her native culture that had once made her different—everything from ashwagandha to prayer—were now being homogenized and marketed for good health, often at a premium by white people to white people. In this thought-provoking book, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, the acclaimed writer and poet explores the way in which the progressive health industry has appropriated and commodified global healing traditions. She reveals how wellness culture has become a luxury good built on the wisdom of Black, brown, and Indigenous people—while ignoring and excluding them. Who Is Wellness For? is divided into four sections, beginning with The Mind, in which Fariha examines the art of meditation and the importance of intuition. In part two, The Body, she investigates the physiology of trauma, detailing her own journey with fatphobia and gender dysmorphia, as well as her own chronic illness. In part three, Self-Care, she argues against the self-care industrial complex but cautious us against abandoning care completely and offers practical advice. She ends with Justice, arguing that if we truly want to be well, we must be invested in everyone’s well being and shift toward nurturance culture. Deeply intimate and revelatory, Who Is Wellness For? forces us to confront the imbalance in health and healing and carves a path towards self-care that is inclusionary for all.

An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind

Who Is Wellness For?

Laura Mei

True healing means that, at some point, you're willing to die, cyclically, only to be resurrected as your truest self; it's an understanding that the journey doesn't end, you don't just one day find enlightenment, much like how you don't 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 arrive at happiness. It's not a destination as much as it is a state of being that needs consistency as well as a desire to adapt. To 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 again and again and again, this state of unraveling is the nexus point for change.

I became ashamed of needing anything, ever, as I felt that it was admirable to be a person who wanted nothing, and accepted nothing, who was just a keeper for others, a container for their pain and desires. I saw myself as a giver, never the receiver. I saw myself as a savior, never the saved... This obsession to be perfect, to be good, to be everything my mother needed, neutered my own sense of knowing what I needed at all times. The idea that someone could just love me as I am is quite a wild concept. I presumed I had to have a function in a relationship.  This role prescribed to me as a "caretaker" doesn't need to be a life sentence. I can choose my own destiny, in all the ways.

Meditation is a perfect entry point into looking at how something becomes taken, diluted, and then decontextualized and sold back to rich white people at a steep price.

Mindfulness is not a one-sum game, because who are you being mindful of, and who and what are you being mindful 𝘧𝘰𝘳, if you don't know what you're practicing is rooted in? Our position has to shift in order to start thinking of wellness as something larger, more robust than just a movement for the rich and wealthy. We have to shift toward a more united care, one that is inherently without greed.

Amelia

 I'm asking us to question all the things we think we are, and to go deeper into who we can be. To make a commitment toward the collective good, I'm asking all of us to participate on a global level.

 Working with my trauma therapist to "locate my rage" has been something I find extremely hard to do. Sometimes it takes years, but when I finally synthesize my anger, like everything in my life, I turn bad feelings into gold, I alchemize shit into magic. While I celebrate this quality in me, my ability to alchemize shit into magic- believing it's what's enabled me to achieve anything-I've also begun to understand that forgiveness is not always the answer. Sometimes it's necessary to feel anger, to validate the fire within. 

To pursue one's own evolution, you have to understand it's a concerted process that demands your regular participation. In order to meditate, you should know the history, and you should also think of why youve never had to think of this before.

 When we gather all the bits we deleted and strayed from, the parts of us that our ancestors were killed for and were forced to forget, the parts we purposely discarded as an act of survivalwith thoughtful consideration, mindfulness and meditation become a reckoning of those parts, too. It's not about not using these practices, it's about not profiting off of them for individual gain. 

 So, what happens when that very system lies to you, subjugates you, imprisons you, steals from you? There's a two-parter here: (1) We have to begin to understand that these systems that we've been told think about us, care about us, provide services to safeguard us, don't actually. Because foundationally they can't. I think about this in an energetic sense-when something is built on lies, how could that house of cards not eventually collapse? And (2) That it's time to accept that we can demand more, but only when we identify the problem. 

Healing is an everyday practice that requires personal resolve and diligence. The mind is such a deep and cavernous space, but our liberation from our struggle, from pain, relies on reworking, reweaving, and reimagining what it looks like to feel safe and at ease with oneself. If I wasn't on this journey, I wouldnt believe it was possible. It's weary and dark navigating and forming new neural pathways as you relinquish yourself from the bind of trauma and Victimization. 

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