WTF does wellness really mean?

Rants

A Personal Take (Or, What I’m Starting to Believe)

I’ve tried a lot of versions of wellness. The expensive ones.
 The aesthetic ones.
 The ones that look really good on Instagram but don’t actually feel like anything when you’re living them. And somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t trying to be well—
I was trying to get it right.

Right routine.
 Right products.
 Right morning.

As if wellness was something you could win if you just followed the formula closely enough. What formula? Where did it come from?

I’m not exactly sure where we decided that we were not the expert of ourselves and there is a larger article here for sure but what I do know is what wellness is and is not to me now.

Wellness to me is: walking down to the ocean without tracking it.
 Eating food that feels good, not just food that is good (holler to Seaside cake counter and Broad Street Donuts).
 Knowing when I need to push myself—and when I really, really don’t. When to sit and watch the birds vs turn on Apple TV. When to run the coastal trail or walk it. When to make it a Hamburger Hut night or a salad from the garden night. When to call my friends on the phone or send them an Instagram meme. All of that counts as long as I’m running the show.

Wellness should be less about optimization and more about attention. It’s getting messy and not getting things “right”.


Counting wellness is noting what gives you energy AND simultaneously what quietly drains it. Write it down. Notice this only requires you and your feelings or your own discernment. No need to hop on google or instagram. No books…. Just you deciding.

Some days wellness might look like a workout, a green juice, and an early night. Other days it looks like a glass of wine, a late dinner with friends, and sleeping in. Both count.

Living in North County, it’s easy to think wellness has to look a certain way. I always felt like I SHOULD put my feet in the ocean everyday or get outside because it’s sunny (275 days a year sunny), visit a wellness spa, or live only in a bathing suit, own a van or work out at F45 (which I do highly recommend trying this). There’s a version of wellness everywhere you turn—perfect routines, perfect bodies, perfect balance - that is being pushed on us. Sometimes the push comes from a positive place. No need to turn away from trying new things and looking for something. Just as long as you recognize that being alive is already correct. And your moments you choose are yours.

The version of wellness I’m starting to trust doesn’t look perfect. It looks like trusting yourself well enough to choose what you need—even when it doesn’t match what everyone else is doing.

Written by Summer Kellogg.

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