How I Keep Writing About Healing When the World Refuses to Heal.
Every week, I try to write something hopeful. Something that reminds people they’re still in control of their lives, their joy, their peace. But lately, it doesn't feel very ethical.
Because how do you write about mindfulness when the world is on fire?
How do you talk about “inner peace” when people are being slaughtered for existing? How do you say “protect your energy” when the air itself feels poisoned by hate?
Every headline reads like a warning label for the end of empathy.
Books are being banned. Teachers are being silenced. Women’s bodies are being legislated. People are losing jobs for saying the wrong truth out loud. It’s giving 1930s Germany but with Wi-Fi and influencer marketing.
And the worst part? We’re getting used to it.
The feed scrolls on. The outrage lasts 24 hours. Then comes a new tragedy, a new viral post, a new excuse to look away. Hate has become ambient noise buzzing beneath brunch photos, work emails, and wellness quotes about “choosing joy.”
No algorithm will save you from the fact that if you stop feeling, you stop being human.
That’s what I remind myself on the days when it all feels too heavy (it’s every day now), when I question the point of writing about wellness in a world that refuses to be well. I see something most people don’t.
I work for a foundation. I spend my days walking into nonprofit offices, food pantries, after-school programs, and community centers, the places the cameras skip over. I see women running diaper banks out of their garages. I meet men who use their retirement checks to feed kids who don’t have lunch money. I talk to teenagers who are tutoring younger kids because their schools are understaffed, but their hearts are not.
I read applications from people who don’t have much, but still find a way to serve someone else. People who are exhausted, underpaid, unseen and still showing up anyway.
That’s the only reason I can keep going. Because I see good in motion. Real, unglamorous good.
And it hits me every time. That goodness hasn’t vanished, it’s just been pushed out of view. The loudest people are often the worst representatives of who we actually are.
Yes, the world is unbearable. But you’re not supposed to bear it all at once. You’re supposed to witness it. You’re supposed to care. You’re supposed to let the grief harden into conviction, not apathy.
Self-help is finding small ways to stay human when everything around you is trying to make you numb.
So keep lighting candles. Keep holding babies. Keep feeding people. Keep showing up at your local school board meeting. Keep writing, painting, praying, screaming, voting, loving.
Because healing isn’t escaping the world, it’s refusing to surrender your humanity in it.
— Shaunté
If this piece spoke to you, you’ll probably love my latest book, Spiritual-ish a real-world guide to finding peace without pretending everything’s okay. It’s for anyone who believes spirituality can be soulful, a bit chaotic, and still sacred.