Wellness Was Never Meant to Be a Luxury: Discrimination by Design & the Work of Healing

By Heather Rogers – See Life as a Muse

There’s a kind of quiet pain that comes from growing up inside systems that were never designed for you. You may not have had the words for it, but maybe, like me, you felt it anyway.

I felt it in the guilt that came with rest, in the fear that came with asking for help, and in the silence that met my voice, sometimes from others, sometimes from myself.

It wasn’t until I began this path of healing that I started to see the truth: What we often call “wellness” wasn’t created for all of us. It was curated, packaged, and sold, but it didn’t always touch the parts of me that needed the most care.

If you’ve ever felt like healing wasn’t designed with you in mind, this is for you.

What Is Discrimination by Design?

Discrimination by design occurs when the very systems we’re told to rely on, education, healthcare, housing, and safety, are structured from the start to benefit some while leaving others behind.

We’re talking about:

• Redlining in housing

• Unequal access to schools

• Racial and gender-based health disparities

• Policing strategies that target specific communities

• Voter suppression tactics

• Inaccessible buildings, tools, and services

  
  

These aren’t glitches in the system. They’re patterns.

And when you live inside them day after day, they shape everything: your nervous system, outlook, and sense of worth.

Sometimes it’s not that you’re unmotivated. Sometimes you’re just exhausted from surviving a world that never planned for your thriving.

I’ve been there. Some days, I’m still there.

When Systems Drain the Soul

For years, I thought something was wrong with me because I always felt tired. Or anxious. Or like I couldn’t keep up no matter how hard I tried.

But the truth is that many of us respond completely naturally to unnatural systems.

You can’t meditate your way out of poverty. You can’t journal your way out of trauma that’s still actively happening. And you can’t deep-breathe through injustice without also naming it.

Wellness is not just about our habits, it’s about our conditions.

Ignoring the world around us doesn’t make us more spiritual. It keeps us disconnected from ourselves and from each other.

Where Wellness Meets the Real World

Wellness isn’t just about how you move your body or what you eat, though those matter. It’s also about:

• Whether you feel safe walking in your neighborhood

• Whether a doctor believes your pain

• Whether you have access to clean water and safe housing

• Whether your body and story are met with care or with suspicion

• Whether you’re allowed to rest without having to earn it first

  
  

I’ve had seasons in my life where “wellness” meant simply making it through the day without falling apart. And that counts, too.

Energy Healing as Quiet Resistance

This is why energy work can be revolutionary when it’s rooted in awareness.

When we tap, breathe, stretch, cry, journal, shake, or soften, we disrupt the systems that were designed to keep us small, disconnected, and silent.

Every time I work with my root chakra, I come back to the question:

What would it feel like to truly belong to myself?

Every time I soften into my heart space, I peel away one more layer of the armor I had to build just to survive.

And every time I connect to my throat chakra, I remember:

My voice was never too much. It just needed a safe place to land.

Energy work isn’t about escaping it’s about returning. Returning to what is true. What is yours? What has always been sacred inside of you?

Community as a Living Practice

For a long time, I thought healing meant disappearing into the woods and figuring everything out alone.

And while solitude has its wisdom, I’ve learned that real transformation often happens in community.

Whether it’s in-person, online, or just energetically, healing is amplified when it’s witnessed.

The real medicine shows up when someone hears you and says:

“Me too.” “I see that.” “You’re not too much.” “You’re not alone.”

We’re meant to heal with each other, not despite each other.

So… What Now?

Wellness isn’t separate from the world, it's woven into it.

It’s in the way we hold ourselves in chaos. In this way, we say no to cycles of burnout. In the way we grieve together. In the way we whisper “maybe” to joy again.

This is your reminder:

• You are not broken.

• You are not behind.

• You do not have to be more productive to be more worthy.

  
  

Let your healing be yours. Not a performance. Not a checklist. Not a race.

Let it be soft. Let it be slow. Let it be real.

Because your healing is not a luxury, it’s your birthright.