As I sit back and observe a movement slowly bubbling throughout Roanoke around holistic health, nature, spirituality and wellness, I find it amazing to see so many people seeking different ways to better themselves and help others along their healing journey.
When I first started my wellness journey around 2005, it was a lonely road, especially within the Black community. I had very few people I could talk to about healthy eating, meditation, spirituality or holistic wellness.
I remember working at Brandon Oaks and meeting a white man named Bob who was very health-conscious. He would give me advice about eating healthier, meditation and taking better care of myself. He was always reading and would connect what he shared with the latest research he had come across.
Fast-forward to 2026 and things look much different. We now see herbal shops, yoga studios, meditation, breath-work, sound healing and other wellness practices becoming increasingly common. I am glad to see it, but it has also caused me to ask deeper questions.
What did our ancestors know about healing before colonization? How did they care for their minds, bodies and spirits before millions of African people were enslaved, displaced and separated from their languages, traditions and ways of understanding the world? And what knowledge survived?
Black American history did not begin with slavery. Our ancestors came from cultures that already had ways of understanding health, spirituality, plants, food, movement, family, community and our relationship with nature. In America, Black people continued preserving healing traditions through midwives, herbalists, root workers, farmers, spiritual leaders and elders.
When I speak about decolonizing healing, I am not talking about rejecting doctors, therapy, science or modern medicine. These things have value. I am talking about making the circle bigger.
What happens when healing also includes culture, history, spirituality, family, community and our relationship with the land?
A healing-centered perspective encourages us to move beyond simply asking, “What is wrong with you?” We can also ask, “What happened to you? What happened to your family and community? What did your people survive? And what strengths helped them survive it?”
An Indigenous perspective also reminds us that healing is not always an individual experience. Many Indigenous traditions understand human beings through relationships – with family, community, ancestors, land, water, plants and the spiritual world. Sometimes healing means restoring those relationships.
Over the years, I have explored New Age spirituality, Buddhism, Taoism, meditation, yoga and other traditions. I have learned something from all of them, but at times I still felt something was missing. Eventually, I started asking: What did my own ancestors know?
How did they pray? How did they use plants? How did they understand dreams? How did they mourn and celebrate? How did they use drums, songs, movement, food, fasting, water, storytelling and nature as part of healing?
Those questions led me toward African and ancestral traditions while also deepening my relationship with the mountains, rivers, plants and communities of the Blue Ridge. For me, this is where wellness becomes more than a trend. It becomes remembrance.
Many practices considered popular today are not necessarily new. Meditation, breath work, herbal medicine, fasting, communal healing and nature-based practices have existed across cultures for generations. Modern research can help us understand how these practices affect us, but science explaining something today does not necessarily mean humanity discovered it today. Sometimes we are finding new language for old wisdom.
Our ancestors were more than the trauma they experienced. They were farmers, healers, midwives, builders, musicians, storytellers, spiritual practitioners and keepers of knowledge.
As the wellness movement grows in Roanoke, I hope Black people will not only see ourselves as consumers of wellness but also as researchers, practitioners and keepers of our own healing traditions.
We can learn from science. We can go to therapy. We can learn from other cultures and embrace new discoveries. But we can also turn toward our elders, ancestors, communities and the land beneath our feet and ask: What did our people already know about healing?
Maybe some of the answers we are searching for have been with us all along.– Barbara Duerk, member; Colonel William Preston Chapter, NSDAR
