Wellbeing: What do We Choose?
This is a re-post with permission by Cheryl Whitelaw and Systemic Design eXchange (SDX). See the original post at SDX and follow SDX on Twitter.
I attended the most recent SDX 28 event, to learn about the RECOVER Wellbeing framework as part of Edmonton’s Urban Wellness Plan (#recover #urbanwellnessyeg). As a frequent participant in SDX community events, I like how these sessions pop me out of the familiar place where I tend to think and act. And even better is how my perspective can be shaped by the people who attend, people who care about our community and are invested in positive change.
Why does Wellbeing in my community matter to me? Isn’t wellbeing really just the choices I and others make that add up to some kind of concept of wellbeing?
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
One slide in the online session really jumped out for me:
“Wellness is relational: it’s about a connection within and beyond self.”
The wisdom of this statement is pretty easy to feel in 2020, when our connections to each other have been limited by constraints beyond our control. To some extent, we all had a taste this year of what it means to live, isolated and apart, from the people and places that matter to us.
Connection took extra effort in 2020.
With constraints, we got creative on how we connected. A neighbor connected through ducks on the lawn — a new scene each week.
What we did to connect with each other changed.
How we connected also changed.
We coped in the ways that we could — facing physical and economic challenges. For many, facing mental health, the lack of social connection. Many people I talked with last year described feeling touch-deprived, a kind of physical and inner shrivelling coming from a lack of actual contact with people, the part of us that knows ourselves through our interactions with others.
The Wellbeing Framework mapped out a perspective of wellbeing that goes beyond individual choices and hierarchical concepts of survival and fulfillment. We talked about the shifts in perspective:
This really resonates for me as a somatic coach. I help people recover from injuries, trauma, to regain their balance in movement and in life. When clients come to see me, mostly they want to meet a concrete need, (e.g., getting rid of pain in their knee). What I find matters more is understanding what that freedom from pain means to them, like going on their dream hiking trip or their ability to lift their granddaughter.
In case you didn’t see this ad over the holidays, here is a hanky ready example of how material and non-material needs can come together.
We live in a community with a history, originating with the Indigenous peoples who lived here with a sense of connection to this place we now call home. What does it mean when you have experienced (or inherited a legacy of) life altering experiences like poverty, addictions, cultural loss or dislocation from the people and places that you feel you belong to? What does well-being mean? What needs to be recovered? What connections might need to be created?
Digging into wellbeing, asks us to delve into what will create or re-embody our sense of identity, our sense of wholeness. As people, we tend to organize ourselves to protect ourselves from pain, from our wounds and the self-protecting, coping mechanisms we use can become part of our identity. A meal and a warm, secure place to sleep are needed when a person’s material need is poverty. What will also affirm this person’s sense of dignity? Of belonging to their community?
What does recovery look like? Physically, when a person has lived with a painful knee injury, when have they recovered? When the pain stops? What if their pain is chronic? Have they recovered when they can do the activities they did before the injury? Most people, tend to adjust, often in ways they are not fully conscious of, as they recover from an injury. They might have a shorter step when they walk on one side. They might tend to stand more fully on their uninjured leg (often causing more pain on the over-used, “healthy” leg). They might stop doing activities they used to do, or just move less. They re-organize themselves to function around their wound and the legacy of what that wound means to them.
In Edmonton we have many organizations who do valuable daily work to support people, connecting them with essential material needs — housing, food, security. Supporting people to survive, to function in our community.
So, what primary assumption or belief needs to change? In systems design methodologies, it is changing the beliefs at the tectonic level that set up shifts in systems, in our organizational bodies and ecologies.
By removing a hierarchical sense of material needs as more important than non-material needs, what shifts in how we could approach supporting the needs of people in our community? Until poverty is ended, until mental health issues are resolved, until historical, cultural legacies are reconciled, until we have a kind of balance in our communities, a balance we have not yet known, we need to keep providing material supports to people in our community. What might shift if the lifeblood of our community was about connection?
Diving into discussion of the Wellbeing framework drew my attention to this question,
“What if every act of service also contributed to creating a sense of connection?”
To ourselves, our bodies. To family, friends and community? To what we hold sacred, what brings us hope, wonder and solace. To culture, to the greater experience of being human and to the land that nourishes us.
How would our organizational bodies and ecologies shift if we also focused on building capabilities, in nourishing mutual respect. Of reflecting dignity back to the person who doesn’t feel that they belong, who doesn’t feel connected.
Two scenarios:
Scenario 1: It’s lunch time, a line has formed around the block. It’s minus 20 degrees. People wait for the doors to open, to get warm, a free meal, a respite from the streets. The meals are prepared and served by dedicated volunteers and hard-working staff. They recognize and talk to some of the regulars. There is the buzz of conversation and scrape of chairs as people come, eat and go. People leave, bellies full and preparations start to repeat this again tomorrow.
Scenario 2: It is lunch time, people coming for a meal are greeted at the door and ushered in to wait at a table — regulars are called by name; new visitors are welcomed. It’s minus 20 degrees outside and warm on the inside. The meals are prepared and served by dedicated volunteers and hard-working staff. There is music, played by a member of the community, and the buzz of conversation at shared tables. People leave, nourished by the warmth of welcome, the warmth of community and the warmth of a hot meal in a comfortable room. Preparations start to repeat this again tomorrow.
Conclusion
We face ongoing constraints in providing services to meet the material needs of people in our community who can not yet claim a sense wellbeing for their own. The Wellbeing Framework and our discussion calls us to look again both at what is provided and how it is provided. Why does this matter? I believe it makes a difference for the people who are served, the process of meeting material needs can also fill up their spirit. That as they are supported to function within our community, they also fill up their hearts.
My Mom lives in long term care — this was a long, difficult year, difficult to stay connected, with months of not being able to visit her in person. She phoned me before Christmas saying, “I am starved for family!” I was challenged this year to find creative ways to stay connected, to navigate the frustrating intersection of technology and her dementia, looking for ways to fill her “hug bank” when I couldn’t hug her myself.
Looking again at how we claim wellbeing as a community is important — it makes a difference for the kind of city we become. I believe that kindness on this scale can be powerful.
Cheryl Whitelaw is owner of Kind Power Coaching and Consulting.
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