We Actually Say What We Mean

Ever notice how the things we are uncomfortable saying get spun as "health?"

I think I was in fifth grade when my teachers sent home a permission slip for me to participate in "health" class. Health class turned out to be primarily a sex education class. Recently, my son also started his "health" class, which primarily dealt with sexual topics.

Neither my class nor my son's class had much to do with how the body and mind stay healthy, what health is, or how healing happens. Since when did we become so uncomfortable with the word sex that we have to call it health?

We used to talk about "mental illness" a lot. Remember that? Now it's not so comfortable a topic, so we get around it by talking about "mental health." Never mind the fact that we don't know what the mind actually is. We just would like to talk about it as healthy.

And then, of course, there's healthcare, which primarily cares for disease.

At Health Revolution, we're trying something different. We're saying what we mean. We're actually about... health. As in wholeness, healing, exploring what health is, and figuring out how to make this the new standard in society. Yes, we also inquire into disease, primarily to point out the pitfalls in our assumptions so that we continue advancing health.

I wonder what would happen if we actually talked about the things we are uncomfortable with and want to run away from, instead of using euphemisms that allow us to keep smiling on the outside.

P.S. When I was adding the hashtags below, LinkedIn gave me #mentalhealth as a suggestion but curiously omitted #mentalillness though I mentioned it above.