Healing at the intersections through lyric, beat and rhyme

Abstract

The voices and experiences of diverse people and communities are systemically marginalised and neglected from mental health literature, policy and practice; this is a time of need, and we must move with the times. Taking a critical, intersectional lens to mental health focusing especially on eating disorders, this piece offers an imaginative commentary on healing and recovery experiences that lie alongside, and often outside of, traditional frameworks which remain White, hyper-medicalised and restrictive. I make a case for centring selfhood and belonging at the core of recovery, and explicate how identification, connectedness and healing processes can be facilitated through art. I reference several musical works by Black and Brown female artists as sources of personal resonance, presenting avenues for mirroring, cultural connection, hope and homecoming essential to healing and wellbeing. I conclude that intersectional experiences of eating disorders require intersectional approaches that honour the complexity, tenacity and strength of all people, kin and communities. This piece implores readers to think deep and wide about being, helping and healing beyond bounds.

I’m a bad bitch, and I got bad anxiety

Anxiety, Megan Thee Stallion, 2022 [1]

Mental health is one of our biggest, oldest public health issues yet continues to be muddied by the stigma and shame imbued within systems and structures around us. Generation after generation, many of us fall through the cracks, and just keep falling. This is particularly true when it comes to eating disorders; we do not do enough for those they most affect [2–7]. As I sit here writing, I feel a sorrow for my Bla(c)k, Brown and Latina sisters.

We must understand that eating disorders emerge from, exist and persist within strained sociocultural milieus [8–12]; they are foremost an illness of the intersections. As living, breathing beings, our wellness/illness is tied to the world that embeds us. And this world continues to objectify and other certain bodies and minds – Black bodies, Brown bodies, big bodies, female bodies, disabled bodies, trans bodies. Rules ooze through all cracks and crevices of our society, ossifying what is normal, what is beautiful and what is worthy.

Yet our models of understanding, treating and healing eating disorders are predominantly Western and highly medicalised [2, 12, 13]. This means that there is only so far diverse folk can go in the hospital or therapy room – a lonely and disheartening realisation. As a public health issue on the rise [14], what is needed are new ways of thinking and doing that account for the diversity, immensity and complexity of what it means to experience distress around the self, body and eating, and importantly, what helps us to heal. Where should this come from? From those that have lived it.

To me, ‘recovery’ is a subjective, immersive, dynamic experience of healing through connection, meaning-making and change. It is a coming together of different parts of oneself, and oneself with one’s culture, community and kin. This implicates a deep, gut sense of identity, belonging and worth [11]. While therapeutic relationships may provide a sense of relational safety, containment and guidance, it is critically important that people’s own connections to body, mind, spirit, place, kin, community and culture(s) be nurtured. In this way, recovery is a reclination, reconciliation and reclamation. It is becoming, being and been.

The constellation of existential [11] and bodily tenacity required to shift deeply entrenched patterns within an entrenching, stigmatising world seems, to me, extraterrestrial. Much like what happens in the cosmos, the experience of healing feels silent, otherworldly, hard to explain. Something so abstract makes it apt to turn to the arts.

Art offers an abyss in which to see one’s own experiences reflected – it helps us feel, learn, grieve and grow. When in freefall, what do you do? Me, I closed my eyes and felt. I listened…

Song, specifically those by women of colour, offered me a pacifying path forward, sideways and back home. This held a power that talk therapy could not. Through lyric, beat and rhyme, singular stories became shared. Dots joined. Pathways met. Otherness engendered pride. Timbres upon textures, spirits upon souls.

There was mirroring and mimicry:

My days have grown so lonely.

Body and Soul, Billie Holiday, 1957 [15]

Paper-thin.

If you’re trying to lose, you’ll never win.

It’s your life.

But you’re not the only one suffering.

Paper Thin, Lianne La Havas, 2020 [16]

Honest accounts:

Never thought a bitch like me would ever hit rock bottom.

Cobra, Megan Thee Stallion, 2023 [17]

I played a losing game.

But life goes on just the same.

Life Goes On, Big Mama Thornton, 1966 [18]

And tender reassurances:

Say what’s on your mind and you’ll find in time.

That all the negative energy will all decease.

And you’ll be at peace with yourself.

You won’t really need no one else.

My Life, Mary J. Blige, 1994 [19]

Kaleidoscopic musical pourings of hurt, bliss, pain, sorrow, grit, fun, strength and love expressed what it meant to be feeling, healing and alive. Mary J. Blige’s wails of despair, Big Mama Thornton’s guttural roars, Megan Thee Stallion’s catty scats, and the sweet sorrow of my very own mother as she would hum old hymns in Hindi – all weaving a musical tapestry into my heart, melding feeling, culture and time.

Something special began to burgeon and bloom within having heard it, felt it. An honour started to burn within me of my sisters who continue to rise [20], instilling a guttural sense of hope and homecoming. Slowly, surely, I started to come back together. Life felt melodic, rhythmic and deep. I am reminded of a lyric heard on repeat:

What a joy it is to be alive.

To get another chance.

Everyday’s another chance.

I Gotta Find Peace of Mind, Lauryn Hill, 2002 [21]

Healing at the intersections is a brute and beautiful thing. Art plays a key role in constructing, locating and healing selfhood within a complex and constraining world. It spurs conversations and connectedness beyond the bounds of traditional treatment methods that stammer so heavily in the face of complexity. Art helps make the non-sensical make just a little more sense.

Music has long been used therapeutically [22], and perhaps it has a home in the eating disorder world [23]. Yet whatever, whichever the form, the goal should be to help people find a home within and beyond themselves in a rich, deep and enduring manner, in particular those too long othered, unheard and unseen. To heal and live their/our way. And to sing our own songs, and keep on singing.

Author contributions

As the sole contributor, SV was responsible for the conceptualisation, preparation and editing.

Funding

There was no funding received in the.

Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

There are no financial/non-financial interests to declare. All views are the authors’ own.