Why I ugly-cried in public for the first time since childhood
I had decided none of that wellness 'stuff' was for me, but then I actually experienced it (and, spoiler alert: Bawled my lamps out)
Before I start, can I just say hello and welcome to the new subscribers who have signed up this week. I’m so glad you’re here, supporting unbiased media that isn’t just bleeding you dry for your clicks and your eyeballs. Thank you for valuing the work that’s important to you and for allowing yourself the time and headspace to engage it longer-form writing for the sheer joy of it.
Also, just to say: Please excuse the lack of audio version this week – I’m on holiday in Portugal and it was either my travel microphone or a second swimsuit. I went for the swimmies. Audio will resume after the 29th of the month when I’m home.
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I’ve always been a bit eye-rolly about the whole ‘wellness’ thing. And by that I mean it’s lucky my eyeballs are secure in their sockets.
Upon further examination of my internal self (who am I, Deepak Chopra?) that feeling of dismissal might be because I felt very excluded from the whole wellness world.
As someone who doesn’t look like a yoga instructor or eat like a vegan monk or know anything about chakras, I felt like the world of wellness had all but left me behind, so I started to gently (and internally, I’m not a total d*ckhead) rail against it.
“That’s a bit woo-woo, isn’t it?” I would say.
“Who can *actually* clear their mind though? I mean, come on?”
“Cacao seems like it would taste like boiled p*ss.”
As an aside; I was 100% correct on that last one, but more on that later.
I never, ever went so far as to judge anyone who believed it was helpful – like I said, I’m not a total d*ck – and I would never, ever get in the way of something that a person finds helps them navigate the raging trash fire that is life in 2023, but something about it felt weird for me. I’d see people talking about ‘holding space’ and I’d practically turn inside out from the sheer cringe of it all, and the closest I ever got to meditation was one time my phone died while I was on a plane and I had to just exist for an hour in my own brain (terror ensued, of course).