On one hand, health is a right and it should be available to us all. This is the basis from which most healers practice. It’s even recognized in the UN Declaration on Human Rights. The World Health Organization Constitution “enshrines the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being.” Health is attainable and an inalienable right. We empower people to take charge of their own health.
But health privilege also exists. It lives in unexamined notions of health, disease, and shapes the meaning of these experiences. Much like racial, gender, or socioeconomic privilege, health privilege shames the individual for being ill, attributing illness to New Age judgements of spiritual impotency, or impure thoughts/actions. It rears its head when someone asks you if you’re “still taking those crazy medications?!” or tells you that daily consumption of bentonite clay would have prevented it. When you enjoy unexamined health privilege, you may think that someone is ill because they ate poorly, or haven’t learned a karmic lesson yet, possess stuck/suppressed emotions, lived dis-harmoniously with Nature, or lack chuztpah or spiritual willpower. And we pass judgement. In the clinic, this can disrupt the healing process. I think it can even cause harm.
Herbalists, specifically community-oriented ones, can better understand and serve our clients & communities if we examine the types of health privilege we enjoy. This way, we can be better allies and be more effective partners in the healing of people & planet by taking responsibility for our constructs of health & illness.
