🌑 Wellness is Not Worth

it's a new moon in sagittarius 🌑

Hi friends

It’s been a very long while. I missed connecting in this way, and I’m glad to be back. Your attention is extremely precious, and I appreciate you being here.

As some of you know from the InterWebs (and/or the InnerWebs), during the summer I was rediagnosed with metastatic cancer. In some of my last newsletters, I mentioned dealing with chronic pain. Well, heeeeello(!), that pain was very extensive metastasis in multiple bones & lymph nodes as well as my lungs (including a collapsed left one). The past many months have been the most physically and existentially challenging period of my life. Also, the most emotionally and spiritually rewarding. No lie, I cried a lot (like, A LOT a lot). AND I experienced great clarity and peace. I underwent a huge transformation! I will share much about it in this space, over time.

For now, I want you to know I am doing much better. With an incredibly immense amount of love and support, I’ve completed the biggest climbs. And, there are no doubt some hills ahead (I’m descending one right now! 😮‍💨). Although I’m committed to connecting here on a regular basis, I will not be as active with teaching for a while (but I do have some things planned for the spring and summer, so stay tuned).

I fully welcome your good energy and blessings. My one ask: Do not send me suggestions, advice, links or resources. I know you mean well. And I have been navigating cancer for over fifteen years. I am very well resourced and continue to find the best ways that work for me. Please honor that. Thank you.

For this new moon and solar eclipse in Sagittarius (my rising sign), I’d like to leave you with just one of the insights from this perilous period (many more to come!).

Some of my favorite quotes are from bell hooks. When I read the one below years ago, it revealed to me a pernicious pattern I had not recognized before in myself, exposing a subtle but corrosive attitude from our culture that I had unconsciously adopted in my own life. She said this in an interview:  "One of the mighty illusions that is constructed in the dailiness of life in our culture is that all pain is a negation of worthiness, that the real chosen people, the real worthy people, are the people that are most free from pain."

For a number of years, my BFF, Naomi, worked for the City of Santa Monica’s Wellbeing Project (now defunded/defunct - RIP Office of Civic Wellbeing). She once explained to me the distinction they made between wellness and wellbeing. Wellness focuses primarily on physical health while wellbeing encompasses a holistic alignment that is not contingent on our bodies being perfect or even pain-free.

This resonated for me because I had begun to connect bell hooks' quote with the marketing of wellness where there was and continues to be a focus on physical health as a marker of worth. Wellness is now called an “industry” and, in true industrial mode, success is sought. Eat/fast//breathe/meditate/buy your way to physical robustness! As if there is a static condition of forever young and pain-free. As if being in a human body can be got right. If physical health signals success, then illness, disability, aging and pain are failures. Failure implies fault. Rarely is there an examination of the many differently distributed causes and conditions of wellness/illness (e.g. youth, genetic lotteries, access to resources). 

A remedy for confusing wellness for worth? Meeting each moment of pain as an opportunity for wellbeing.

One current side effect of my recent treatment is intense joint and muscle/nerve pain that requires tender care every morning. When the pain first started, I noticed myself falling into the trap of making it a problem complete with (completely imagined) stories about my eventual decline and permanent disability. I fell into “a negation of worthiness" where the pain was imbued with failure and fault: I shouldn't have walked so far the other day – I caused this. If only I had been more committed to my yoga practice all these years, these side effects wouldn't be this bad. I shouldn't have stopped taking _____ [fill in the blank] supplements. Breathwork/plant medicine/long retreats/you-name-it… I should be doing that.

On a fundamental level, pain (physical or psychic) is simply a signal. I layered meaning on top of the signal — I packed the pain with judgement and reactivity, with doubt and dismay. I was letting my lack of wellness decrease my wellbeing. 

The other morning, before dawn, I was deep in a moment of embodied presence. With lights low to mimic the winter mood, gentle music guiding my conscious movements – I settled into the experience, became attuned to exactly what my body craved as the breath guided me into a sense of connectedness. The slowness and surrender brought not just relief but a real sense of peace. I began to appreciate the opportunity bestowed by discomfort. It was precisely the aches upon waking that drew me into this attentiveness, into a somatic practice I don't often prioritize, into movements I rarely explore, into the joy of sensation. The pain itself was an opening to wellbeing. I was filled with wonder at the possible intimacy between pain and gratitude.

This is not about glorifying or over-identifying with my pain (nor fetishizing the pain of others). It's simply acknowledging a pain that is already present and allowing it to bring me into deeper awareness. Pain – whether it is dull or acute, minimal or critical – often requires I slow down, rest, recuperate. This is true on micro and macro levels. Both personal and collective pain invite me to pay attention and be present, fully available and solidly embodied – neither avoiding pain within or around me, nor becoming flooded to the point of uselessness – simply ready to respond as needed.

Pain is a plea for presence, a call for compassion.

In this northern hemisphere season of long nights and less light, may I listen deeply in the silence. May the messenger of pain summon me to presence, to tenderness, to care, to kindness, to wellbeing.

May you be well.

With love,

Sebene