On The Deep Yes Podcast: Self-tending with Susan Wardell
Susan Wardell
In July we recorded and aired Episode 3 of The Deep Yes, in conversation with Susan Wardell. Susan is an academic, writer, mother, and artistic dabbler from Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her PhD was about burnout, and her current work circles around medical crowdfunding, climate emotion, and moss.
Susan is also a poet, and her creativity practice has been a big part of her own healing journey. For a deeply delightful experience, listen to Susan reading her poem “Radishes”.
This was one of those conversations that just keeps reverberating, long after it is over. We talked about how “wellness” and “wellbeing” can take on a moralising quality — which means we are “good” when we are well, and “bad” when we are not. This is all kinds of problematic — it pretends that our wellbeing is entirely in our control, it ignores inequitable and systemic factors that create barriers to wellbeing, it tends to reduce wellbeing to how we look (with thin/muscular/lean=good and everything else=bad), and it also ignores the potential to experience wellbeing even in the midst of illness or disability.
The concept of self-tending is an alternative, enabling metaphor, where we are both the gardener and the garden. We observe what is present, and ask what is needed. We may need soothing in the present with perhaps a bath or a hug or a walk, sow the seeds for a future harvest by lifting weights or decreasing alcohol, or do some major path readjustments by for instance embarking on a new career. The garden may experience a drought year, or be blooming in abundance, and we can practice this same noticing / accepting / tending / composting.
As I progress in my coaching practice, I’m adjusting my language more and more to include what helps us to expand our ability to recognise and amplify the healing potential even within difficult experiences, that enable us to make the most of our lives along our whole life and healthspan, and exclude concepts that sort us into “good” and “bad”.
Thank you Susan for your generous spirit.
