Writing While Moving: How Transformation Happens in the Margins

“Margins” LOL as if I’m really writing on paper. It’s 2025 y’all. I’m typing in my notes app on my iPhone LOL.

And my back screen is cracked up just like this front one. It’s only being held together by the phone case. Real life ok…

But, you get it right? And I do, write on paper 50% of the time. It’s just challenging getting that writing into the digital platform.

I’ll have to work on that tech peice to make that transition easier. I know there is a way. I just need to find the best way for me.

So…

I’m writing this as I’m moving around my house. Coffee cup in hand—well, it was in hand until it disappeared somewhere between the laundry basket and the memory of a relationship that shaped two decades of my life. I fold clothes. Words come. I stop to jot them down. I look around. Where did I put that coffee?

This is what transformative writing actually looks like.

Not the romanticized version where I sit at a pristine desk with perfect lighting, fingers poised over the keyboard, channeling wisdom in complete sentences. Not the Instagram-worthy aesthetic of the writer’s life.

This is me, mid-motion, mid-memory, mid-laundry, trying to catch the words before they evaporate like steam from that missing coffee cup.

The Body Remembers What the Mind Tries to Forget

There’s something about writing while moving that unlocks things sitting still cannot reach. My body knows this. When I stayed still after that first heartbreak years ago, when I couldn’t get out of bed, when I turned into the white walls of my apartment—that wasn’t healing. That was holding myself captive in a space that was supposed to be my sanctuary.

Writing while folding clothes. Writing between sips of coffee (when I can find it). Writing while walking from room to room. This movement is medicine.

The memories come because I’m moving. Each fold of fabric is a fold in time. Each step from one room to another mirrors the journey from who I was to who I’m becoming. The act of searching for my coffee cup becomes a metaphor for searching for myself in the aftermath of endings.

Writing for Me First

Here’s what I’m learning as I write this book: transformation has to be selfish first.

Not selfish in the way we’ve been taught to fear—the kind that neglects or harms others. But selfish in the sacred sense. Self-ish. Of the self. For the self. From the self.

I’m not writing 7 Dimensions of Wellness to be a good nurse, though I am one. I’m not writing it to prove my credentials, though I have them. I’m not even writing it primarily to help others, though I believe it will.

I’m writing this book because my spirit won’t let me not write it.

I’m writing it because I’m grieving a 21-year relationship and the only way through is to write about every agreement I’ve ever made with another spirit—romantic, platonic, familial, professional, spiritual.

I’m writing it because “hindsight is 20/20” isn’t just a clever title theme—it’s my actual life’s work of going back through every migration, every breakdown, every moment I wore my mother’s maroon heels to school or wrapped a t-shirt around my head pretending to be Rapunzel, and saying: Oh. That’s what that was about.

The transformation happening as I write isn’t in the future when the book helps someone. It’s happening now, in the present tense, as I fold these clothes and lose this coffee cup and remember and write and remember some more.

The Movement Between Worlds

You know what’s wild? I’m writing about the seven dimensions of health, and in the actual act of writing, I’m practicing all seven:

**Physical**: Moving my body. Making coffee (somewhere). Folding laundry. Not staying stuck.

**Emotional**: Letting myself feel the grief of that 21-year relationship while also feeling the joy of that friend’s daughter’s beautiful wedding.

**Mental**: Processing decades of experience through the framework of holistic wellness. Making connections. Building understanding.

**Spiritual**: Listening when my spirit says “write this down” even when I’m mid-fold. Trusting the process even when it looks chaotic.

**Social**: Writing about relationships, agreements, endings, beginnings. Even in solitude, I’m in conversation with every person who’s ever shaped me.

**Environmental**: Moving through my physical space. Interacting with my environment. The apartment that became a prison. The house I move through now as a sanctuary.

**Cultural**: Weaving together Jamaica and Ghana and the Bronx and South Florida. Patois and medical terminology. Ɔkɔmfoɔ and nurse.

The book isn’t separate from my life. The writing is the healing. The healing is the writing.

Transformation Is Messy

Here’s what they don’t tell you about transformation: it looks a lot like losing your coffee cup while folding laundry and crying and writing and laughing at yourself all at the same time.

Transformation isn’t linear. It doesn’t happen in neat chapters, though I’m writing it that way for you to digest.

Transformation happens in the margins. In the movement. In the moment you realize you’re turning into white walls and you say “that’s enough, get out the house.” In the moment you go to your friend’s daughter’s wedding while grieving your own relationship and you see sacred rituals and pure love and you think: *Yes. That’s what agreements between spirits can look like.*

Why This Will Transform You Too

Now, here’s the thing about selfish transformation—the sacred kind, the self-ish kind: when you do the work for yourself first, really do it, not perform it but live it, it creates ripples.

When I write about migration trauma and you read it, you won’t just understand immigrant children better (though you will). You’ll recognize the parts of yourself you’ve had to hide. The code-switching you’ve done. The fragmentation you’ve carried.

When I write about cutting people off versus letting people go, you won’t just learn a concept (though you will). You’ll feel the difference in your body. You’ll remember your own forest fire emotions. You’ll recognize the baseline you’re still trying to find.

When I write about being both ɔkɔmfoɔ and nurse, you won’t just appreciate cultural integration (though you will). You’ll see the parts of yourself you’ve been told are incompatible. The worlds you’ve been trying to straddle. The wholeness you’ve been denying yourself.

The transformation I’m experiencing as I write—moving through my house, losing coffee cups, folding clothes, catching memories—that transformation becomes yours when you read it because I’m not writing at you. I’m writing with you. I’m inviting you into the mess and the movement and the medicine of it all.

The Power in the Words

As I wrote today, grieving and remembering and folding and moving, these words came through:

“Cutting people off became letting people go. Hindsight still becomes 20/20 but definitely more intentional and introspective.”

That shift—from cutting off to letting go—that’s not something that happened once and now I’m done. That’s the work. Daily. Sometimes moment to moment.

When I write about the seven dimensions of wellness, when I talk about emotional health and spiritual health and all the rest, people might think: She figured it out. She’s teaching from the other side of the struggle.

But that’s not true.

Finding the Rhythm in the Breaking

I’ve been trying to find my rhythm with this writing for a while now. Trying to capture it. Trying to organize it. Trying to make it make sense.

And then life happened. A 21-year relationship ending. Grief that demanded movement. Memories that refused to stay contained in neat chapters.

It took a life event to help me dig deep enough to add enriched perspectives. Not because I was avoiding depth before—but because some truths only reveal themselves when you’re broken open enough to see them.

That’s what I want you to know as you read this, as you engage with this book, as you consider your own wellness journey:

My intention is for this writing to spark the beginning of deep revolutionary perspectives for your own spirit.

Not to give you answers. Not to hand you a formula. But to crack something open in you the way this grief cracked something open in me. To help you find your rhythm, even if it takes a life event to dig deep enough. To show you that the enriched perspectives come through the breaking, not after it.

Found It

I just found my coffee cup. It was in the sink. Empty.

I stood there staring at it for a moment, trying to remember drinking it. Did I finish it without noticing? Did the writing consume me so completely that I drank an entire cup of coffee unconsciously?

And then I did something I don’t usually do. I made another cup.

I’m a one-cup-in-the-morning person. That’s my rule. That’s my routine. But today? Today I’m allowing myself to do something different.

Because holistic health isn’t something I did. It’s not past tense. It’s not a chapter I’m writing about.

It’s happening right now. This moment. This second cup of coffee. This choice to break my own rule because my spirit needs it. This permission to be different today than I was yesterday.

Holistic health is a lifestyle that elevates everything I do. Not something I achieved and now I’m telling you about it. It’s active. Present tense. Every day, all day.

This book. This writing. This transformation. It’s all like that.

I set things down. I do the work. I search. I find. I write it all down so you can see it’s possible. So you can know that healing isn’t pretty and linear and Instagram-worthy.

Healing is writing while moving. Losing coffee cups. Folding laundry. Remembering. Grieving. Laughing. Dancing. Going to weddings while your own relationship ends. It’s all of it. All seven dimensions. All at once.

And the most beautiful part? The transformation isn’t waiting for me at the end of this book.

The transformation is the book.

And when you read it? The transformation won’t be waiting for you at the end either.

The transformation will be the reading. The remembering. The recognition. The movement. The second cup of coffee you don’t usually make. The permission you give yourself to be different today.

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I’m sitting here with my second cup now. Still writing. Still moving. Still becoming.