Well together: Community as medicine 

Healing works best when we do it together. Our families, churches, salons and neighborhoods are some of the most powerful health tools we have. Being connected to a safe community nourishes us down to the soul and helps us feel grounded and whole. A healthy community feeds us emotionally, spiritually and physically, and when our community is healthy, we all thrive.

Public health researchers have used the term “weathering” since the early 1990s to describe what chronic stress does to the body over time. Think about what weathering does to a house: faded paint, leaky roofs, warped wood. Nothing was wrong with the house to begin with. The damage came from standing up to the elements for decades.

The same thing happens to people. Over the years, that wear and tear contributes to chronic conditions we hear about every day, including high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and cancer.

For a house, weathering means wind, rain and extreme temperatures. For many of us in Black and brown communities, it means the constant strain of racism, microaggressions, financial pressure and always having to be the “strong one.” That is one reason chronic health conditions tend to show up earlier in Black and Hispanic populations, sometimes in our 30s and 40s rather than our 60s and 70s.

The good news is that connection interrupts weathering. Weathering happens because the body’s stress response stays switched on. Connection helps switch it off and reduces how often it gets switched on in the first place. The stressors may still come, but the body can recover instead of staying revved up. Pushing through alone carries its own physical cost, which is why “together” is such an important part of healing.

The numbers back this up. A 2023 U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory found that people with poor social relationships face a 29% higher risk of heart disease and a 32% higher risk of stroke. On the other side, people with a strong sense of belonging in their community are 2.6 times more likely to report good or excellent health.

So much of the stress behind weathering comes from real-life demands, and sharing the load is one way community pushes back. People who have a supportive person with them during a stressful moment show lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and less strain on the heart than people who face it alone. Connecting with family, friends and loved ones is vital not only for our social and emotional well-being but also for our physical health.

Here are some ways to build community and connection:

• Bring back Sunday dinner. Maybe it looks different now, or maybe it happens on Tuesday. Try to protect at least one shared meal a week with no TV and no phones, just quality time with loved ones. Bonus points for ending the evening with a family walk.
• Rotate one caregiving or household task that currently falls on one person. Share the load and work together.
• Start a group text for health check-ins where you share screening dates, blood pressure numbers and appointment wins.
• Learn your family’s health history and what runs in your family, and talk about it regularly with different relatives.

Community healing also looks like what our elders made sure to prioritize. Even when time was short, they gathered, prayed, sang, told stories and checked on one another. These traditions are cornerstones of our culture and part of how we heal and stay well together.

Don’t forget the emotional work. Grief, anger, stress, trauma and fear are more than feelings. They live in the body, can be passed down through generations and keep the stress system switched on. Unaddressed emotional pain can show up years later as problems with blood pressure, blood sugar and sleep.

We have been praised for our strength for so long that our endurance is sometimes celebrated. But emotional distress doesn’t always look like sadness or depression. It can show up as irritability, a short fuse, exhaustion, back pain, headaches, working more or pulling away from people. Too often, those signs get read as a bad attitude instead of a sign that someone is struggling.

Finding a provider who understands your experience makes a difference. Free directories such as Psychology Today, Therapy for Black Girls, Therapy for Black Men and the Association of Black Psychologists let you filter by identity, specialty and insurance to find the right fit.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.

Your challenge this month: Find one way to build community and connection. Have a family health conversation, share a meal and a walk, or help someone with a chore they usually do alone.

We truly are stronger and well together.

Take care, Nurse Felicia

Felicia Permenter, APRN, NBC-HWC, is a family nurse practitioner at Right Spot Wellness in Roseville. For questions or comments, contact her at 651.313.5857, admin@rightspotwellness.com or www.rightspotwellness.com.