Wellness Wednesdays

I am currently reading the NY Times Bestseller Untamed by Glennon Doyle. In this book, Glennon talks about how women are tamed from birth into a set of social rules and regulations that ‘cage’ them from becoming their true selves. She uses a powerful metaphor of a cheetah at the zoo who has been born in captivity, raised with dogs and behaves like a dog to perform a ‘cheetah run’ for zoo visitors. In this sense, she explains, we too as humans are taught to perform c ertain roles to meet the expectations of society and these can become our own personal cages. From a sociological perspective, role socialisation is necessary for society to function. We need boundaries, rules and regulations to keep society ordered and economically productive. Untamed has really made me think about how as individuals, it can be helpful to examine the roles and expectations society holds for us and that we place on ourselves which aren’t always helpful. These might relate to gender, race, wealth, education...

This week I feel that I need to move away from my usual tips for wellness and acknowledge the challenging times we are facing. Please note that I am writing this from a position of white privilege, as a person who has never experienced racism and thus I welcome feedback and discussion relating to this article. As human beings we cannot ignore the collective pain and suffering that we are experiencing and/or witnessing both locally and globally in response to toxic racism in our society. The tragic death of George Floyd through police violence cannot be minimised in a larger debate around racism and inequality, however we also cannot ignore the long history of oppression and injustice in health, wealth and opportunity that BAME citizens face; the high exclusion rates of Black boys from schools, inequality in the criminal justice system, the Windrush scandal and the high Covid-19 death rates in the BAME population, to name but a few. The current protests are a turning point towards the n...