My Commitment to Wellness as a Lifelong Writer by Yolande House
Wellness for me means being the most vibrant, alert, grounded, and peaceful I can be in both body and mind.
When I think about what I want my ideal (but realistic) writing life to look like, it would include a routine and self-care strategies that respond to my needs and can be elastic when those needs change. It would include a support system, a sustainable way to support myself financially and materially, and an external environment that respects my body’s need to take it slow, or work all night, or whatever suits me best holistically in the moment within reason. This requires flexibility and patience from myself and the others in my life. It also means having strong boundaries with anyone who does not honour these needs.
Over the years, I’ve learned that honouring my needs each and every day is a part of what loving myself looks like. When I finally learned how to love myself, I learned it’s not a goal with an end. Rather, it’s a process of committing and being true to myself each and every day, even when (and especially when) it’s hard. When people in my life don’t respect and honour the needs I’ve expressed to them, it’s an act of self-love for me to limit their influence in whatever way is necessary for my mental and physical health.
Cultivating wellness could look like having a ‘healthy day’ routine and a ‘sick day’ routine, or having a ‘deadline day’ routine and a ‘it would be nice to get a few things done but I’m flexible about what that looks like day’ routine. Or perhaps a healthy and sick version of both a deadline and a more free-wheeling day.
Wellness also means eating right for my body and my personal goals—while being patient with myself because I know there are many external and internal barriers to this, especially in the midst of a two-plus year-long pandemic.
It’s about nourishing myself in many different ways: moving my body regularly in whatever ways I’m able, cultivating connections with chosen family and close friends, participating in communities that are meaningful to me, and regularly meeting new like-minded people. It also means setting life goals while being in a position to reasonably reach them, and speaking out about injustice in ways that have the greatest impact on the world with the least negative impact on my body, mind, and soul. For me right now, that can often mean making a donation to an organization or an individual, even if it’s only a few dollars.
Optimal wellness is effectively balancing all I want out of life while being realistic about what me and my body are able to achieve in a way that is rooted in hope and patience, gratitude and satisfaction. I’m certainly not there yet, but in the last number of years I’ve become much better at showing up for myself.
It’s also critical that I acknowledge the barriers I have as it brings me closer to truly defining wellness for myself. A few years ago, when my chronic Gastroesophageal reflux disease became acute for the second time in my life, I didn’t have friends and family around me to rely on for help. Months earlier I had left a teaching job abroad with six years of savings, but I didn’t really want to travel afterwards like most of my friends; I wanted to write. It took some time for me to sort out my conflicting goals, and I visited a few countries until my GERD became so extreme that I had to choose a place to settle to better take care of my body.
Just as my health issues became acute, I had settled into a cute AirBNB with the goal of finishing my childhood memoir in a month. Soon, I had to let go of that and be realistic about what I could reasonably do under the circumstances. If I was going to heal, I had to meet my body where it was at. In the midst of so much physical pain and grief, I grasped for meaning. That’s when I realized that illness had helped me finally choose writing as the top priority in my life. I moved to a city where I had made some good friends on my travels and lived there for the next two years. As my savings held out, I wrote in the few moments when my body allowed it before I found a teaching job.
I’ve since “recovered” enough that GERD and its related symptoms are no longer acute, but they still play a daily role in what I can get done and by when. I’ve had to learn how to become the caring parent I never had. I tell myself to rest, drink some water, or try again tomorrow, even when I really want to write. I’m still learning how to meet deadlines and get work done on a schedule while building in enough flex time to accommodate the hours and days my body needs to rest. Sometimes, when I feel well mentally but not physically, I find other things I can do, such as listening to writing-related audiobooks or other writing-adjacent tasks that can accommodate my physical needs at that moment.
For the last few years I’ve also been dealing with chronic repetitive strain injuries in my arms, so I’ve needed to take breaks throughout the day and build in two computer-free days each week. For months after these medical orders, I grieved my former writing life where writing was what I did to relax! I cried, I moped, I almost felt more helpless than when I was physically ill–when writing became a part of my medicine. But, slowly, I’ve figured out other things I can do on these “arm rest” days so I still feel like I’m progressing, like reading a book (carefully propped up on pillows or using an audiobook), brainstorming writing ideas, taking a walk, or caring for myself in other ways to help me be better prepared for the next day’s writing tasks. Usually a slow day is followed by a very full day, and I end up appreciating and benefiting from the downtime from the day before.
I realize now that taking care of my body and mind in these ways will establish a foundation for a sustainable writing life. To me, “writing forever” can be achieved if the level of wellness I described above is met, at least by 60-80%, keeping in mind that there are many circumstances outside of my control (and being patient with myself when those happen!).
For me, writing forever is also about seeing everything in life as writing-related. It is understanding that my writing life is my first priority and everything else must feed into that in some way.
In the future, I want to be more aware of what I truly want so I can skip this painful process, even if what I need ends up being different than what most of the people in my orbit (and even my younger self) had wanted. I’ve learned that it’s okay–and in fact, even healthy–to continually reassess based on my shifting needs and priorities.
Yolande House is a bisexual, disabled writer whose essays have appeared or are forthcoming in literary magazines such as The Rumpus, Grain, Joyland, and The Fiddlehead. Her writing has made it to the finalist round at Creative Nonfiction three times, and her Entropy essay was selected as one of the magazine’s “Best of 2018.” She can be found online at www.yolandehouse.com, Instagram (@healthruwriting), and Twitter (@herstorian). Currently, she’s polishing a completed childhood memoir.
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