It’s been a hot minute!
For those of you who have no idea who I am, my name is Nani Lawrence (pronounced a la “hey nonny nonny”). I used to have a blog years ago also called In Good Health that I was very proud of. Unsurprisingly it was full of rantings about health-related topics, ranging from fad diets to health insurance, from the absolute “convenient” sham of body mass index to the wonders of a bayou culture creating its own language called Gullah-Geechee.
If that last part feels like a word question asking you to identify the odd one out, worry not! I’ll explain later in this intro.
First, to me!
I became disabled at the ripe age of 8-years-old after a month-long coma left me with a myriad of permanent conditions. Most of my childhood was spent dealing with social othering from my albeit also mostly young peers and jumping through hoops to try to acquire the accommodations I needed just to get through basic schooling. However, in high school, I finally started to take an interest in moving this trembly body in ways that were safe, actually felt good, and potentially even resulted in some weight loss, something I’ve struggled with ever since they fed me via G-tube while I was incapacitated.
This kind of fast tracked a hyperfixation into health and fitness that has served a bit as self-imposed physical therapy. Even now, with more disabling age-related stress and a “post” Covid slump, I still am technically licensed as a group fitness instructor.
Armed with the tips and tricks and very general knowledge that I’ve picked up throughout the past 2 decades, tbh the disdain I now have for the industry thanks to experience, and my journalistic training/instincts that basically have turned me into a professional buzzkill (including in regards to mainstream media/media consolidation), I hoped to share some of that with my audience.
However, the more I did basic research into these health topics, the more I realized the concept of health is almost treated as if it’s a completely separate entity from the human bodies that are supposed to perform it.
I think nowadays it’s definitely getting better, but even popular opinion ebbs and flows against what I think of as well-established fact. When I was more in the stages of growing up as a chronically online millennial, mental health in general was way more considered than it had ever been.
The only thing that has really confused instead of intrigued me is how the physical body somehow falls distinctly under medical “hard” science, yet the mind and all the thought patterns that can either hinder or support how someone moves through the world are a “soft” science. Last I checked, the brain contains the mind, which is literally an organ contained in our physical bodies. Why the separation?
I could go on and on about how mindfulness practices have been found to improve heart health, how the same cells are found in both the gut and the brain, and how stress continues to be a significant factor in how disease manifests in the body, and I absolutely will until I’m blue in the face. However, I feel like pointing out how science has been alluding to these conclusions needs to only be a small part of the conversation.
I was and will continue trying to prove that physical health is mental health. To go along with that, though, we need to acknowledge that there are plenty of factors affecting our mental well being that are very much out of our control.
I know not everyone likes to believe that our individualist society could possibly be built up in a way that heavily favors certain people over others, because it’s much more comfortable to believe you’re in the driver’s seat. I guess you do you? However, it also surprises me that those of us who understand systemic marginalizations don’t also conclude that the mental toll of being marginalized is a pretty big factor in health disparities between different ethnicities/races/whatever you want to divide us based on this week.
So, what are we to do, if things we don’t have direct control over is making us unhealthy in every way imaginable? That’s a bit bleak, yeah?
I’ll never try to convince you this world isn’t hot garbage for the most part. There are ways to still give ourselves a chance though. They can be very difficult mentally and a bit laborious, but we have each other.
Part 2 of this intro will dive into how my idea of personal health has evolved past the personal and what I now hope to accomplish with this blog and how I hope to support my community of Alamogordo.
If the last few paragraphs made you feel a bit more seen in this laughably conservative town, know that I returned to blogging for you. We’ve got this! Until Thursday,
Salud
One response
You’re sucha a beautiful soul 💜