This is what I do
In case you don’t know me
Hi, I’m Dr. Rachel Kallem Whitman! I’m an educator, advocate, and writer who has been shacking up with bipolar disorder since 2000. The “Dr.” is silent. The bad jokes are loud.
In addition to posting here on Medium, I’m excited to start a sporadic newsletter called “see brightness. mental illness. humor. hope.” In this first edition we’re talking about health and how complicated it really is. Ignore that fat shaming BMI chart hanging in your doctor’s office, friends, because it’s totally bogus! (I’m not that kind of doctor so I understand if you don’t believe me, but I know you’ll trust NPR because all grown ups do! Also if you need a paper on educational pedagogy, I’m your Dr.) This is something that all medical professionals and health insurance companies know yet keep using anyway. I think we need to talk about this!
Health. Picture it: Thin people eating kale, wearing expensive athletic gear, going to yoga, and meeting their soulmate at a kombucha bar. Mental health. Picture it: Thin people eating kale, wearing expensive athletic gear, going to yoga, and meeting their soulmate at a kombucha bar without any psychiatric medication rattling around in their $68.00 yoga mat bag. Is this really what health is all about?
We often define health based on what we think it should look like and what we should work towards no matter the financial, emotional, and physical cost (yes, the pursuit of health can be damaging!). We’re taught that achieving these things makes us better people but we’re not taught that this definition of health is completely unattainable. Let’s break health down:
- Health determines who we value and who we don’t.
- Health is a tool. With righteous health on our side we think it’s justifiable to judge, label, and fix people who we deem broken based on our own criteria — often without their consent.
- Health is a form of oppression.
- Health as we know it is bullshit.
The purpose of this newsletter is to unpack how we understand health, mental illness, disability, and fat acceptance by sharing resources, getting people talking, and inspiring allyship. And don’t worry, I won’t bombard you with emails, but I will delight you with photos of my dogs.
I hope you are intrigued and interested to know more about how health is a social construct! Click here to sign up! Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter!
