Hello, and welcome to the fresh faces around here, and the ones who’ve been around a while, too—I’m so glad you’re here and I can’t wait to get to know you. I’m a writer and photographer working to democratize wellness and empower womxn through storytelling, accessible practices for inner and outer nourishment, and revolutionary acts of self-care within our earth and human communities. I’ve been (lovingly, I think?) called the “anti-goop,” wrote a bestselling memoir-cookbook, helped spearhead the #influencerinclusionrider, and am co-host and co-author of the What’s Your Story? podcast and forthcoming interactive journal (December!) with beloved friend and mentor Rebecca Walker. After a decade in San Francisco and Los Angeles, I now live in the place I grew up, Maui, Hawai’i, on occupied native Hawaiian land.
My work in food and wellness is informed by two decades of study, teaching, and critical thought in meditation, yoga, and psychosomatic therapies. I hold a degree in literature and performance studies (the performance of human behavior, not acting) from Yale University. As a cis-hetero, able-bodied, well-educated, safely-housed white woman, I hold a number of privileges. I am powerfully aware of these implications as I enter into conversations and co-conspiratorship around intersectional (versus white) feminism, white supremacy, and systemic inequities. I practice deep listening and self-interrogation at every opportunity.
I love the heartbeat of human stories, scientific rigor, unlearning internalized systems of hegemonic oppression, and dismantling white supremacy as much as I enjoy spirulina and honey face washing. If you want to get my pulse racing, talk to me about what I can do to get all of us free, not just myself. I have no tolerance for spiritual bypassing (when you start teaching yoga at 19 you get a free masterclass in yoga fuccbois and “gurus”) or culturally appropriated New Age thought, and (wow, I might get Insta-banned for saying this, please love me still!) I’m not a huge fan of astrology.
Considering how I might best serve our community now, I thought a recap of central values would be a perfect entry point to the work we do together here. Swipe through above to get caught up and on board. Please say hi below, and tell me one thing you learned over the past week, and who you learned it from! We do a lot of learning here, and I look forward to learning from you, too.
WELCOME
This is a space to interrogate your assumptions, privileges, and practices around the ways that you care for yourself (your body, your mind, your heart), what you call wellness and self-care, the food that you eat, and your relationship to your community. Food, wellness, and self-care are not perfectly styled plates of dishes you’d never make, expensive supplements, or always out-of-reach experiences, classes, goals. They are not the performative use of buzzwords—not superfoods, yoni steams, or face masks—nor are they the commodification of basic birthrights we distanced ourselves from when we forgot how to live in steady relationship with the earth and our fellow humans.
Food and wellness are political.
Let’s dive in.
FOOD IS POLITICAL
Many of us never see the farms where our food is grown or get to know the people who grow our food, most of whom are Black and Indigenous People of Color. These farms, whether in the United States or abroad, are often owned by corporations whose decision-making is influenced by political lobbies. Many of us have the privilege to choose whether we want to maintain—or disrupt—a fantasy (perpetuated by a culture designed to keep white people comfortable: hello white supremacy) that the food we eat comes from a magical place called a grocery store, rather than from the sweat and toil of farmers, field workers, truck drivers, and grocery store employees. As of 2020, we know these workers to be “essential,” yet their wages, benefits, and job securities have yet to reflect this nomenclature.
At the same time, more than 23 million people in the U.S. experience food apartheid—a lack of access to fresh, healthy food due to systemic inequities. I have the privilege to choose what I see and what I look away from, as well as the privilege to choose what I eat. If I choose to see where my food comes from, I understand it is inextricable from the politics of labor, climate change, race, immigration, and foreign trade.
Food. Is. Political.
Explore: SÜPRMARKT, Krystal C. Mack, Racist Sandwich, Equity At The Table, and Soul Fire Farm.
WELLNESS IS POLITICAL
Wellness is not jade face rollers, $180 serums I could make at home for $5, or “shamanic” “yoga” “healings”. Face rolling, overpriced serums, and culturally appropriated healing practices are products (literally) of the commodification of self-care. In its most essential form, self-care is free. Self-care is learning to be right with your mind, self-care is cultivating an equitable relationship with the earth, self-care is studying your breath, self-care is opening your eyes to your community to see who is hurting around you, self-care is healing the parts of yourself that are in denial and shame. By Black lesbian writer and activist Audre Lorde’s definition, self-care—and specifically self-care for Black and Indigenous Womxn of Color and those who identify as LGBTQ+—is an act of political warfare; it means claiming agency over a right to wellbeing often denied to those who identify as such.
If we want to create change in ourselves and our communities, if we (especially liberal, feminist white womxn) want to be co-conspirators in wellness to BIPOC friends, if we want lasting systemic transformation, we must take off our blinders. We must see and work to transform the spaces in which many people are denied access to these basic human rights—that racism is now an officially declared a public health crisis, that BIPOC have had up to 6 times the rate of COVID-related deaths as white people and are more likely to receive worse care, that BIWOC are 3-4 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes, that simply walking on the street as a BIPOC or LGBTQ+ individual can be a matter of risking one’s life. If I choose to interrogate what wellness actually is, I understand it is inextricable from the politics of privilege, race, capitalism, gender and sexuality, and health care.
Wellness. Is. Political.
Follow: Dive In Well, Naaya, Loom, Erica Chidi, Latham Thomas, Kailea Sonrisa of Earth Is ʻOhana, and Queer Nature
Make no mistake: What you eat and how you care for yourself are political.
Assess and acknowledge the privileges you hold (see mine in the post caption below).
Educate yourself, and don’t make assumptions or unnecessary judgments.
Investigate the companies you spend money on and demand that they do better.
Buy food from sources that treat their employees with respect, that do not make use of prison labor.
And maybe, instead of buying that jade face roller or condemning yourself for not having the money to go on that fancy retreat, slather some honey on your face and donate some time (and/or money) to an organization or individual working to dismantle systems of oppression in your community.
