Is Your Workplace Wellness Program Intersectional? The Case for Intersectiality in Workplace Wellness Programs
Quitting my job last year was one of the hardest decisions that I had ever made…And yet it was also the easiest. I was in a senior level position at a nonprofit consulting firm, earning a good salary and had a great title and position on paper. All the while, I was drowning in a sea of work and it felt increasingly more difficult to be able to show up as my best self both at work and in my personal life. I was miserable. I had already been down this road before. In 2019, I experienced extreme stress and anxiety related to overwork and overwhelm while running a youth program spurred by multiple days in a row of overtime, disordered eating, secondary trauma, and being a breastfeeding mom of my beautiful 6 month old. After almost hitting my breaking point of ignoring the needs of my body, mind, and spirit, I vowed to never again head down that road. In 2021, I felt myself getting dangerously close to breaking my vow. I always felt like I was “on.” Not only was I working full-time, but I was also running a company I had co-founded to support Black healers, being a mother, trying to take care of myself and heal my traumas, and have a social life. It all was just too much. Even on the days when I was sick, or needed to care for my child due to sporadic childcare caused by the pandemic, I felt this constant guilt for not working. This didn’t feel normal and something had to give. I knew my limits. I learned the hard way that overwork would only lead to a cycle of burnout and misery.
One day, after waking up and dreading logging onto work (yet again,) I decided to choose life instead of investing a majority of my energy into a role that no longer was feeding my spirit. That being said, the transition was hard. I left a job that I had invested a great deal of my value and self worth in, and I also stepped down from my role as company co-founder in order to invest more time in my personal healing journey. To heal from my toxic relationship with productivity, my wellness had to become my priority. I had spent so much of my adult life focused on proving my worth through my productivity, that I made the radical decision to forego my achievements for my self- care. I knew that I could no longer keep up with the grind any longer, and more importantly, I had no desire to.
There was only one problem, I quickly learned that my wellness journey was not going to be all peace, love, and stillness. I realized that in a society that is on constant autopilot, resting can seem outright dangerous. If you’re not busy, something is wrong with you, and without an abundance of things to do, you are somehow less of a person. I realized that the wellness industry was not designed for people who looked like me and lacked generational wealth. My desire to rest for purely the sake of my well-being and desire for leisure made me feel like an “other.” My situation wasn’t an anomaly. Black women are some of the most overworked people in our society and our overall quality of life has been hit quite hard since the pandemic. What made me so special that I got to rest when so many other Black women could not? And yet with knowing what I knew about how stress and overwork impacted my ancestors as well my current attitude towards productivity, how could I not at least try to slow down for my own health and well-being? Wellness is on the rise globally. Regardless of race, economic status, ability, gender, and sexual orientation, people are becoming increasingly more tired of the grind and are seeking greater well-being. The wellness industry is worth 1.5 trillion dollars as people are collectively making the shift to prioritize a well-rounded lifestyle. Research shows that mindfulness, yoga, and living an overall healthy lifestyle can do wonders to mitigate stress and anxiety, And yet, the further away you are from being wealthy and white, the harder these services are to access and consistently practice. Black and Latinx Americans have some of the worst sleep quality in the country, and Black people living below poverty are twice as likely to report serious psychological distress than those living 2x over the poverty level. Meanwhile racial disparities can cause increased stress and anxiety and negative health outcomes for people of color. Why is wellness so inaccessible to oppressed groups and how can we shift this dynamic? To answer this question, we need to examine our country's relationship with work and productivity.
Race, Capital, and The Need to Produce
The first slave ships landed in North America (aka Turtle Island) in 1619 and initiated the centuries-long travesty known as American chattel slavery. Psychologist and historian Dr. Joy Degruy describes American chattel slavery as “a case of human trauma not comparable in scope, duration, and consequence with any other incidence of human enslavement.” As I outline in my upcoming book, The Grind Culture Detox, the current corporate sales quotas that we’ve come to normalize as a common sense fact of life are rooted in chattel slavery. When we study the effects of American chattel slavery, we must consider the symbiotic relationship between land and labor. The United States would not have its level of power and positionality without chattel slavery. Shortly before the Civil War, the number one cash crop was cotton. As labor sped up, landowners and law makers needed to acquire land at much quicker rates to keep up with demand. New York Times’ 1619 Project podcast sheds light on how American chattel slavery created a system of management that can still be found in multinational corporations today. In order for the system of slavery to grow at such a rapid rate, it required intricate systems of control including hierarchical structures of multi-level management and streamlined structures of supervision and control. Enslaved Africans and slave masters had quotas to meet in order to feed this vicious system of capitalism.
Chattel slavery is over and yet it’s spirit haunts and permeates our society on a variety of levels, and our attitude around work and productivity is no exception. Grind culture refers to the false belief that to be considered valuable or worthy in our society, one must be productive. Lurking in the shadow of capitalism, grind culture is accepted as normal, even necessary, and most people aren’t even aware of the harmful ways it impacts us. One of grind culture’s side effects is that it has conditioned us to view work as our most significant accomplishment. The more productive we are, the more worthy we are seen in society. A few years ago, I had the honor of hearing Dr. Joy Degruy speak about her extensive research on Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. One thing that she noted was once the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, no therapy was offered for people to heal from the horrors of slavery. There was a great deal of planning around how the country would recover economically after slavery was abolished, but no thought was given over the mental and emotional well-being of the victims of slavery, along with its perpetrators. . Instead, the U.S. government chose to grind it out, and we the people continued to work. There was no time for healing, because if we didn’t work, we wouldn’t eat. At some point though, you must treat healing like your life depends on it, because it does.
Licette Montejano is a Latinx identified early childhood policy leader in San Francisco who attended my workplace wellness coaching program to reimagine her relationship with grind culture and toxic productivity. Much of her journey began when she reflected on her childhood conditioning around productivity:
My father hung drywall in construction for 45 years. He started working in the fields when he was eight years old. As a child, I started learning about the struggles of work and labor. Both of my parents engaged in laborious work. Now I'm seeing the physical repercussions of how hard they worked and its impact on their health. Growing up, when I would see them return home from a hard day's work I could see their physical exhaustion. I remember watching moms and dads on television and comparing them to my mom and dad and how they came home from work. On TV, the mom was home and the dad came home with his briefcase. That's when I started noticing the differences and seeing that white people or, or people of color with higher education have the opportunity to come home and be active and then play the dad role and change into a sweater…But all dads came home the same way in my neighborhood: Tired. Even though I didn’t want to work that way, I still believe that I modeled those patterns.
Licette was able to re-examine and re-evaluate her inherited values around work and productivity particularly at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Licette notes,
Growing up, the way I was programmed, was, if you're working as hard as you possibly can, you'll be okay. At the beginning of COVID, that's what I was reverting to, which was working really long hours, and just trying to prove my worth. Then I hit a wall of burnout. I burned out within the first five months, and then I had to do some self reflection, about what I was doing to myself, and how it was affecting my home life, which was literally my workplace because it was all in one space. . That's when I started really honing in on my self worth and recognizing the parts of myself that had been functioning for a long time in the shadows.
The Tough Task of Slowing Down
In our fast paced society, it feels like there's not enough time to invest in healing and wellness, and this is by structural design. Taking time for self reflection and stillness can seem downright ludicrous amidst all of the things to do. However, when you don’t take the time to check in with yourself and process your emotions, it can lead to greater emotional strain over time. A lot of times we’re conditioned to put our emotions aside in the workplace in order to be as productive as possible, however this reaction only fuels systems of oppression by disregarding our humanity. Bypassing our humanity in the name of productivity, leads to perpetuating some of the same practices of chattel slavery-level productivity at the expense of our well-being. . The United States is the most overworked industrialized nation in the world. We’re not lazy, we’re just tired. Now it's time to initiate the process of collectively reclaiming our humanity-Even at work.
Why an Intersectional Approach is Needed
The American workforce is changing. The rise of technology and worldwide communication on social media platforms have called for increased accountability from institutions. Statistics show that companies who are not choosing to invest in diversity, equity, and inclusion are economically suffering. People don’t want to just be valued by what they can produce, we want to be valued for our overall humanity. Diversity Equity and Inclusion(DEI) is not just about hiring more people from marginalized groups (although it’s a great start). It also means taking a moment to analyze how your personal and organizational practices might be contributing to systems of oppression and taking small steps towards a just future of work.
Intersectionality was developed by Kimberlee Crenshaw as a more expansive lens for viewing identity. According to the Center of Intersectional Justice, “Intersectionality describes the ways in which systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class and other forms of discrimination “intersect” to create unique dynamics and effects.” Intersectionality makes the case for creating structures and programs that cultivate the thriving of multiple identities instead of choosing a “one-size fits all” approach. For example, when I enter a professional space, I come with multiple identities. I am an able-bodied, CIS gendered, light-skinned, married Black mother. These identities are full of societal privileges and disadvantages. Being able to name my identities, and understand how they intersect in the workplace helps me know when to step up in order to reclaim my voice in systems of oppression, and when it’s time to step back in order to amplify the voices of less privileged identities. Intersectionality honors multiple identities at once by acknowledging that if we are multifaceted, then our diversity programs should be as well.
Defining Intersectional Wellness
Intersectional wellness views wellness not as a luxury- But as a human right, because when we're well, so are our communities. It is a framework to for living, being,and dreaming outside of the dehumanizing system of grind culture- a web of systemic oppression which negatively impacts the spiritual, mental, and physical wellness of people of color, female-identified, queer, and disabled folks. Intersectional wellness uplifts that oppressed groups should have greater access to health and wellness services to service their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being in order to heal from systemic oppression. It reimagines justice as a pathway towards promoting rest, reflection, healing, and joy for vibrant and diverse communities.
Intersectional Wellness Principles
Wellness is a Human Right. The people who have experienced the most structural violence have affordable and easy access to wellness programs for the body, mind, and spirit.
Representation Matters. Marginalized voices are brought to the front within the wellness field in honor of our ancestors who have made large contributions to contemporary wellness practices.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All. Wellness programs honor both the collective and individual experience and leads to personal and systemic healing.
A More Liberated Existence. Workplace wellness programs should support a just transition out of the system of grind culture and into liberatory ways of working and being.
Reparations and Land Back. Centers economic well being through the promotion of reparations to African and indigenous communities impacted by systematic disenfranchisement.
Non-Western Healing Methodologies are Honored. Healing and wellness programs are inclusive of but not exclusive to traditional Western medicine. Wellness programs can honor the culture of the people they are serving and reclaim ancestral wisdom.
Targeted Universalism. All marginalized identities to the front. When we focus on creating programming that uplifts our most vulnerable populations, we create a container for a better quality of life for the entire collective.
Intersectional wellness takes a decolonial approach because , if grind culture is no longer viable, or sustainable for the working world, it makes sense to unlearn and look outside of colonial paradigms when dreaming towards the evolution of work and productivity. White voices have been the dominant storytellers in the contemporary wellness world and this dynamic has led to our most marginalized populations not seeing wellness as something that’s possible for them to access. The white dominated demographics of the wellness field only perpetuates racial oppression and cultural appropriation since. There's a great deal of documentation to suggest that people of African descent have been pioneers within the fields of holistic spirituality since the beginning of human history. Africans have pioneered forms of yoga, chakra healing, and hypnotherapy. Meanwhile indigenous communities have pioneered sweat lodges, and plant medicine.
Intersectional wellness asserts that the more impacted you are by societal traumas, the more access you should have to wellness resources.
Examples of Intersectional Wellness in the Workplace:
Medical and Dental Insurance
Professional Development Resources
Mental Health Days
Team Building Retreats
Food Stipends
Flexible Time Off
Child Care Subsidies
Investment in wellness coaching
Acupuncture,
Massage
Talk therapy
Alternative healing services (i.e. yoga, meditation, sound healing)
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training
Racial Affinity groups.
To reimagine the future of work, we will need to be daring and pioneer some new avenues in the professional sphere. Workplace wellness programs need to center individual and institutional change, because when these programs fail to do so, they maintain the same systems of oppression that are causing people to quit the workplace at a rapid rate. There is a fallacy that we hold in our society which says that wellness strategies are reserved for wealthy and/or white folks and this simply is not the case. For many Black women, wellness came to us as a last resort because if we grinded any harder, we would have completely lost ourselves in the system of grind culture at the expense of our well-being.
It’s time to normalize non-white voices in wellness. It’s time to connect back to the African, Indigenous, Femme, Disabled, and Queer voices that have seeded their wisdom into the wellness world. It’s time to slow down and rest for our ancestors who didn't have the luxury to do so. It’s time to re-educate ourselves so that we may reimagine and co-create systems of labor that exist outside of the realm of grind culture. Wellness ain’t wellness if it ain’t intersectional.
Heather Archer is an author, workplace wellness coach, and sound healer who helps others achieve liberation through reimagining their relationship with work and productivity. Learn more about her online workshops, book, curriculum materials, speaking engagements, and sound healing sessions at www.thrivingwithheather.com.