On the Dangers of Treating Health Like a Moral Report Card

Minerva in one of her electric wheelchairs, holding tarot decks she spotted for sale at a shop.

“You’re a witch, shouldn’t you be able to woo-woo yourself healthy?”

Spirituality and health are often conflated in modern witchy spaces. Spiritual gurus like to give the impression of being bastions of health and wellness, implying (or even stating outright) that their perceived health is proof of their spiritual alignment and strong connection with divinity.

That’s nonsense. More than that, it’s harmful. Disability is not a punishment. It’s not a sign that I’m spiritually misaligned. I now know that my body is neither a curse nor moral report card, though my own religious family imposed religious ableist beliefs on me growing up.

I was born with deeply faulty genetics. My father taught me from a very early age that my poor health is the result of his sins; that his state of sin at my conception created a cursed baby. Me. Rather than that belief inspiring him to take good care of me and love me (love as an apology is still love; I would’ve been grateful for it), he bullied and very vocally hated me. My earliest memories are of him screaming at me and calling me abusive names I was too young and innocent to know the meanings of. No child deserves to grow up being told they’re spiritually cursed or damned.

My great-grandmother was another victim of spiritual ableist beliefs—her own. She was diagnosed with an operable brain tumor. Instead of accepting medical care, she decided to pray the tumor away. She was up on Evangelical megachurch stages every opportunity she could be, being blessed by ostentatious preachers in designer suits, their fingers heavy with fat, golden rings, their bleached smiles just a little too wide. She asked everyone she knew to fill out prayer cards for her. She donated heavily to televangelists and called into their shows asking for prayer. She sang gospel songs praising God as she went about her days, and she watched Christian programs every night on TV. She was so sure she’d be saved by prayer. Accepting medical care, she thought, would mean spiritual failure.

The tumor overtook her brain and became inoperable. She died slowly in a care facility, confused and abandoned by the preachers and churches she’d sought help from and donated to. Family and friends looted her home in Chicago before she’d taken her final breath. Her story is another reminder of the dangers of conflating health with spiritual wellness.

As Hunter S. Thompson penned, “Pray to God, but row away from the rocks.” Seek spiritual help, but put in the work. Help yourself, take action, be sensible.

I have several rare disabilities, but, if anything, I think they’ve improved my spiritual state simply because I can’t do many things that others can. I can’t hike mountains, go to concerts, cheer in the stands at sports games. I can’t work a 9-5 job. I can’t travel the world, I can’t go to the beach, work out, build a treehouse, keep chickens.

But! My physical/neurological limitations have led me to create a very deep, rich internal world. They’ve given me time for spiritual development. There are so many things I can’t do, but I can think. I can turn on my lighted magnifying lens and get lost in books by Jules Verne, Charles Bukowski, Simone Weil, Jane Austen. Audre Lorde, Jonathan Safran Foer. I can write, and write well. I can take Harvard classes online. I can manifest energy with crystal grids made using sacred geometry, explore the future and get guidance from tarot, and use meditation to transcend my physical limits. I can don cute pyjamas, break out a Royal Albert fine bone china set, and have Zoom teatime dates with friends all over the world. I can learn Japanese and Welsh, enjoy films and television; I can quote Withnail and I, Miyazaki films, Leslie Howard films. I can lower a needle onto a spinning record and listen to Courtney Love, Laura Marling, Jeff Mangum. Edith Piaf, Django Reinhardt, Fats Domino.

I think a big part of why people exclude, other, and demonize the Disabled is because they fear us. They fear becoming disabled and will stop at nothing to maintain the self-delusion that they control their own health implicitly, exclusively. Disability can happen to anyone at any time, no matter how healthy one’s diet is and no matter how hard one prays, as my own nonna proved. Our bodies are complex and fragile, that’s just the nature of life. It’s temporary. Our bodies are impermanent. They change, grow old, stop working properly. They’re susceptible to accidents, illnesses.

My vascular system may be fragile and faulty, my immune system may be perpetually waging war against itself, but I’m loved. My bones may have died from spontaneous lack of bloodflow, but I have friends, I’m married, I have a bunch of rescue dogs. I have meningiomas and blood clots in my brain, but I have purpose and value in my own way. Disabled people can have full worlds, meaningful lives, rewarding careers, and lots of love even if we can’t do all the things others can. We need to stop excluding, othering, and demonizing the disabled, even in spiritual spaces. Moralizing disability is wrong.