Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

On Sunday February 2nd, as part of our commitment to building loving communities in Saint Louis for Saint Louis, our team held our first installation on the art of headwrap for mental wellness. Headwraps have always held a special place in my soul. My mother’s head is forever wrapped. Her mother’s head too. I remember growing up as a kid watching them intently wrap their heads up for every occasion and most importantly to church every Sunday. Interested in learning and teaching techniques, our team via Light for public health, set up space at the local museum to showcase how the simple art of headwraps can serve as keys to mental wellness.

To participants in attendance, we spoke of knots that hold us firmly rooted in space where healing may seem impossible. For some, these knots maybe family related, work related, life related, or just plain old everyday hassles of never ending stress and so we invited everyone to tie up the knots they currently experience and place them on their heads. Every participants knots were messy, disjointed and in disarray and so to is life. No two people deal with their mental health in the same way and so this first lesson teaches us to see the knots for what they are; life’s messy journey.

Next we invited participants to embrace their knots with empathy and kindness to themselves. Love their knots too. Life would be full of struggle, some big, others small, yet love your struggle anyways for what it brings and what it teaches. Next, we asked participants to tell us what they yearn for, what were their hearts desires. For me, a loving community where we all enter to learn, but depart to serve. For some of the teens in attendance, pride in their heritage, their identify. All of us have yearnings, so why not approach them with grace. Most of the participants agreed.

Finally, once you have seen your knots, once you have learned to embrace them with empathy, once you can describe for yourself what you yearn for, we asked participants to surrender it all for their highest potential. This idea of surrender is at the heart of a journey towards wellness. We cannot control how life enfolds. Many are here today and gone tomorrow, and so the least we can do is surrender all of our being to living our life to its fullest, with all our struggles. This to us is the keys to mental wellness, a journey we curate through the art of a headwrap, one we are also proud to continue to embark on in Saint Louis for Saint Louis and from a place of love. Stay tuned for our next installation, which I hope you can join us.

About The Art of a Headwrap.

The art of a headwrap is space of creativity and possibility with mental healing that seeks to engage audiences in the St. Louis region and beyond. Inspired by Nnem Nnem’s handmade adire headwraps from Lagos Nigeria and bell hook’s book all about love, this gathering is our attempt at love in action, with a firm desire to help all of us untie the knots within, to embrace them with empathy, to purse things we yearn for, while all the time surrendering to love’s serenity with wraps that inspire, excite and provoke creative insight. This to us is the keys to our mental healing. This notion that we do not work on our healing alone. Not when we see good, wrap good, be good. Additionally, when we use our hands to wrap our heads, we commit our hearts to love and give meaning to this wilderness called life. Every moment we wrap our head, enhances our well-being. We do all this too in communion with others knowing that self-love through headwraps is a foundation of our healing practice. By wrapping ourselves in love, we provide our head, our hands, our souls with an opportunity to have unconditional love we give and receive together.