Who gets to define wellness?
Who gets to define wellness? How do we get there? Once we’re there, how do we know?
Often circulated is some form of lifestyle branding, an aesthetic that looks like journaling, green smoothies, meditation apps, and yoga classes.
Taking time for yourself, bubble baths, candles, skincare, retreats, gratitude, optimism, and good vibes. Take the walk. Buy yourself the goddamn latte.
Much of it is commodified. Pitched as universal, these standards and practices often require time, money, and resources.
Or they collapse into some acquired self-soothing techniques. Which is fine but probably not what you paid for.
And if it's commodified, the messaging will do its best to convince you you’re not yet well, content, or satisfied. The design is no mistake.
The pitch is sound, and they know how to sell it, but a healthier mind is never something you can purchase your way into.
I believe in the benefits of mindfulness for mental health and day-to-day living, but by its very nature the practice is an immediate and accessible skill, in some manifestations as simple as watching—breathing, thoughts, emotions, or traffic.
““We are all more simply human than otherwise.””
And yet, we still pay monthly fees for meditation apps. Still worse are corporate attitudes that espouse the value of mental wellness and resilience without offering substantive support—adequate staffing, benefits, and sick leave.
Then there’s the added misunderstanding that once you are there, and only once you’re there, will you be able to breathe, thrive, self-actualize, flourish and belong.
As if it is a place to move into and make a home. I’ll get there as soon as… and once I do, once I obtain this thing I’m grasping for, I’ll be okay. I’ll feel it!
And what is it? That place we want to move into? To get out of this—this heartbreak, challenge, and pain—and into there, calm, content, and grateful?
Mental health as the absence of pathology or addiction? Have you seen it in real life? Have you met them? The ones, the images of wholeness?
There’s always more wellness.
As there’s always more home. As there’s always more growth.
What am I going to do with my life? will always be a question. After each development, each hurdle overcome, each success sought and won, each milestone, the question arises, what now? How do I spend the time I have left?
When developments go unseen and changes unacknowledged, the days crawl by in monotony, floating on the boat of dissociation, and growth is cut off by neglect, trauma, or abuse.
Your life is being lived, but it doesn’t feel like it’s you who is doing it. Caught in demands of making it work and keeping it together. For ends to meet, we’ll go to great lengths.
And we get lost.
Or feel lost, and wellness as a blend of self-care, therapy culture, holistic health models, and lifestyle choices, filtered through consumerism and social media aesthetics, eludes and alienates us.
Though there is overlap with psychological schools, we can tend to emphasize feeling good in the moment more than long-term processes of integration, growth, adaptation, and meaning.
Healthcare models, originally providing distance from illness vs. health, take a broad approach. Wellness is physical, mental, and social well-being (WHO).
Or, the interaction between them is inseparable from one’s environment (Engel, 1977).
Or, formulated as a hexagon, wellness includes physical (nutrition, exercise, sleep, health behaviours), emotional (awareness, expression, emotional regulation), intellectual (curiosity, learning, creativity), social (relationships, support networks, belonging), spiritual (meaning, values, purpose), and occupational (satisfaction, balance, sense of contribution) health (Hettler, 1976).
This was later formulated as a wheel, and the environmental (surroundings, sustainability, safety) and financial (stability, budgeting, security) domains were added.
Because it’s a wheel, it suggests movement and change over time.
Wellness isn’t a static state—it shifts, and imbalance is normal and addressable. Therapy can help restore balance.
And yes, Indigenous wellness traditions did it first.
FIELD NOTES FROM GREENFIELD COUNSELLINGThis is where you’ll find reflections on the kinds of struggles that bring people to therapy — anxiety, burnout, grief, transitions, and the quiet disconnection that makes life feel less like your own.
