There comes a point when you’ve just got to be that change, you know the one that Ghandi talked about, Be The Change You Wish to See in The World.  My vision post-global pandemic is a world in which we talk about how we can heal each other, how therapists can support each other, share knowledge and wisdom and get people talking about the wonderful world of healing that is out there.  I do not want to live in a world in which fear and panic around illness is the default setting!

So I went slightly mad and decided I’d create a campaign to get people talking about how we can Heal The Nation.  My Goal – to blitz social media for the whole month of September with wellbeing tips and advice from therapists I know to be hugely resilient, excellent in their field and good people with a vision similar to mine.  You see it’s f**king hard doing what we do, we’ve got to be in a good place to heal others, we’ve got to be able to live with uncertainty around income being self-employed and we’ve got the emotional baggage of a lot of wonderful souls to support.  We are resilient!

I had a bit of a rage over the summer when therapists were all lumped together as ‘spa’ workers by our government.  How is a homeopath similar to a reiki master, a massage therapist the same as a beauty therapist, a kinesiologist the same as a nutritional therapist?  Does our Ministry for Health actually have wellbeing as one of it’s central tenets?  Obviously not.  We are a nation led by an obese Prime Minister who got Covid19 and thinks therefore losing weight and tackling diabetes is the only answer to good health.  And by good health they mean not catching Covid19.  What about the chronic symptoms that blight the population?  Do they not think they are important?  Do they also not realise that many larger people are actually in good health?  It’s not as black and white as you think.  My good friends and colleagues – the women you will see featured in this campaign all know about how treating symptoms like mental health, skin complaints, asthma, menstrual issues, insomnia, digestive complaints, etc, etc all affect our immunity and can drag us down if we do not stay on top of them.  But oh no, we were told to not work, or just ignored as an industry.  Yes – the wellbeing industry was ignored at a time when wellbeing was it’s priority.  WHAAATTT!!!

I don’t know where this campaign will go, but I hope that you will share the shit out of it.  In an industry that is largely female and has a high proportion of mums as therapists, we have been sidelined, disregarded and laughed at in the House of Commons.  MP Caroline Nokes had our back and for that I am grateful, but we need to raise the profile of what we do, how we do it and not be intimidated by narratives that are out there trying to berate what we do.

Therapists I salute you!  Follow @resilienttherapists  and the hashtags #projecthealthenation and #resilienttherapists and interact, engage and support the wonderful work of my beautiful colleagues.

Jo x