Health is a Commons
In this time of unraveling—ecological collapse, political erosion, social fraying—health has become one of the most contested, manipulated, and misunderstood concepts.
It is spoken of in campaigns, sold in products, measured in data points.
It is wielded as a justification for control, exclusion, and surveillance.
It is used to divide: the "deserving" healthy versus the "irresponsible" sick.
But beneath all the noise, another truth pulses:
Health is not an individual achievement. It is a relational condition.
It is not earned by discipline or consumption.
It is not guaranteed by wealth or effort.
It does not begin and end at the boundary of the human skin.
Health is the quality of our relationships:
To our bodies
To our ancestors
To our communities
To our foodsheds and watersheds
To our democracies and ecologies
To the unseen, the unborn, the more-than-human world
The Lie of Separation
Modernity taught us that health was personal:
A number on a scale. A set of lab results. A lifestyle brand.
But the truth is:
You cannot "out-exercise" poisoned soil.
You cannot "willpower" your way through a collapsing democracy.
You cannot "biohack" your nervous system into wholeness while your neighbors are hungry and the rivers are dying.
Health is a commons. A web. A metabolism. A memory. A prayer.
And when we forget this, we create the conditions for anthropogenic disease—the illnesses born not of personal failure, but of collective disconnection.
Diseases like metabolic dysfunction, autoimmune disorders, depression, and ecological collapse itself are symptoms of severed relationships—between human beings and the soils that feed them, the waters that nourish them, the communities that hold them, the stories that remind them who they are.
Anthropogenic disease is not simply a health crisis.
It is a relational crisis.
It is the body telling the truth of a system out of rhythm with life.
The Danger of Partial Solutions
Today, we see many well-meaning efforts to "fix" the food system, "end" chronic disease, or "get back to health."
But when these efforts are severed from relational accountability—when they focus solely on removing "bad" foods, punishing "bad" choices, or saving only the "deserving"—they risk becoming new forms of domination.
Health campaigns that ignore food sovereignty, justice, ecological repair, and community resilience are not healing.
They are renovations built atop the same crumbling foundation of extraction and control.
We cannot "heal" without healing the relationships that govern what we eat, how we live, and who we belong to.
A Different Call: Reweaving Health
Reclaiming health now means remembering:
That nourishment is relational.
That healing is not purity, but practice.
That resilience is not built at the center of collapsing empires, but at the edges where life reweaves itself.
It means asking not just what will optimize my lifespan but what will nurture the conditions for flourishing for all beings?
It means seeing school gardens, local farm partnerships, community meals, and bioregional organizing not as quaint distractions, but as legitimate acts of resistance and remembering.
It means daring to live the truth that care is revolutionary.
An Invitation
At this threshold time, I choose to reclaim health as:
🌿 The body breathing with the forest.
🌿 The child eating food grown by their neighbor’s hands.
🌿 The mother and father planting seeds not only for calories but for belonging.
🌿 The elder teaching the memory of wild medicines.
🌿 The community gathering not just to "solve problems" but to remember how to be woven together.
Health is not a destination.
It is a relational practice in a living, breathing world.
In these days of fracture, I offer my hands, heart, and work to reweaving the conditions for life to thrive—one meal, one conversation, one small act of care at a time.
