WHAT'S LACKING IN MISSISSIPPI WELLNESS?
Structure and fuel we have, it's regenerative methods we need
Mississippi is a highly social culture where politeness and hospitality are etched in our DNA . . . Facebook fits us like a glove. Family and close friends are highly valued, they are the social capital that fuels the richness of community life.
Our gift of sociability, however, is also one reason why putting health first here in the South is currently so hard to do - family, friends, church, work and social occasions come first, before selfcare, before prevention, and before making the changes that wellness requires.
Yet, as we propose in this post, the Mississippi’s gift of sociability can also become our greatest gift to wellness. Let’s explore.
When sickness comes or accidents happen, we trust God to heal us, our friends to pray for us, and our doctors to guide the process. It’s not a bad plan, but for some reason we are still among the sickest and most obese people in America.
So, what’s missing from this picture? Why is wellness so hard for us to achieve? We have the infrastructure (home and family), we have the fuel (sociability), and we surely have the need. And when healing fails to happen, we also have the ultimate mindset: an attitude of gratitude and acceptance. We accept the authority of our doctors, we accept whatever happens to us as God’s will, and we tend to be grateful in all things, even sickness.
So, again, what is missing? Why is wellness happening elsewhere but has only a toehold here in the South?
Could it be our methods? Could it be that our doctors are operating in a belief system that says treating symptoms is enough and drug therapies are the best medicine? Could it be that we are not hearing enough from health authorities about how the toxins that surround us - in homes and fields, in air and water and food - are making us sick? Could it be that taking control of our health is not in our DNA and not encouraged by physicians?
Even when we know that certain things - like sweet desserts - are harmful, we accept them because it is impolite to refuse food. It might hurt the feelings of the one who offers or, heaven forbid, embarrass someone. Refusing food or eating differently can be isolating and threatening to social acceptance.
In highly social cultures where wellness has not yet taken root, achieving personal health goals can be difficult. Finding social support can be illusive when sociability so often revolves around polite conversation and the sharing of meals.
Mississippi currently lacks the ‘culture of health’ that supports wellness-centered living. We have the needed focus on home and family that wellness requires, but not the healing methods of holistic and lifestyle-based medicine. We have rural lives but we’ve lost the local food systems of our grandparents. We have functional skills in gardening and cooking but not the regenerative growing methods that produce healing foods. We have the great engine of sociability that fuels connection and community support but we lack awareness and understanding of why we are sick and what really creates health. We have a perfect storm of need but lack the experience of what life feels like when we are truly well.
As a home-and-family centered, a rural and social culture, Mississippians can grasp ‘living locally’ more readily than most. What we need is to add in wellness.
The first step will be awareness. We need to know that poor health - from acid reflux to heart disease and dementia - can be fundamentally changed with clean environments, healthy lifestyles, social support, and well-grown, real food.
The second step is realizing where we are. Raising awareness and finding time to act on what we learn will not be easy. Our homes and families currently face stressful challenges: poor health, low wages, food deserts, addictions (including to processed foods), and loss of fulltime home tenders. Adding wellness to overly stressed homes and families will not be easy. Yet, we are a culture that knows struggle, we know how to do hard things, especially when we can do them together.
The third step is vision. Living Well Locally points to what is possible, to what is already happening beyond our borders. Mississippi already has a few early adopters of lifestyle medicine and regenerative farming but we need our state’s medical school and agricultural colleges to teach our next generations of clinicians and farmers why method matters and to affirm that ‘real food is good medicine’ . . . so that our families can too.
When Mississippi’s clinics, homes, and fields are empowered with regenerative practices, our cultural gift of sociability can become the perfect engine and fuel for creating place-based wellness, for building the cultures of health that empower everyone to live well locally.