Health and wellness is something that hasn’t always been prioritized by the Black community. Things like therapy were long considered taboo, especially by men of color. For the award-winning musician Common, that’s something he aims to challenge with the book, And Then We Rise: A Guide to Loving and Taking Care of Self.
In the new book, the Chicago native is sharing personal experiences, tips, and the many practices that he’s adopted on his wellness journey. Throughout its 224 pages, Common focuses on physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health to create a practical program, and provides readers with advice, recipes—and even playlists—to achieve overall well being on both the personal and professional level.
“I wanted this book to be about empowering the reader, because I’m just telling my story,” the author says. “Vegan might not be for you. Nor meditation; you might want to meditate in a different way. You might want to do physical exercise in a different way. But I laid these things out because these are simple methods that have worked for me.”
And Then We Rise was put together for whomever is looking to implement a wellness plan into their lives. Through his self-love and self-care approach, his book outlines easy changes you can make today to kick off the new year on a good note, and to lay the foundation for a better tomorrow.
To commemorate the release of his new book, Common spoke with ESSENCE about his own mental health journey, why decided to write the book, and what he hopes audiences will pull from it.
ESSENCE: Why did you decide to write the book, ‘And Then We Rise?’
Common: I wrote it as a letter to our people. And when I say “our people,” I mean specifically Black and Brown people that don’t have access to some of the wellness and health resources that I’ve been exposed to and been blessed to come across in life, that I really have felt benefited me on my journey in life, on my path. I feel like part of the change that I would like to see happen in our communities is going to start with us loving ourselves and taking care of ourselves. So part of my evolution in many ways is self-affirmation and self-love. My whole mind, whole body, whole soul connecting that and us being our best selves so that when we dealing with a lot of the nonsense and things that we come across in this country and in the world, that we are at our best selves and we actually don’t have to vibrate on that level that some of the negative and the dark energies that exist are on.
So I guess to put it in practical terms, I wanted this book to be a guide for people to live better lives. And I wanted to speak to our community. Health and wellness doesn’t have a color to it, but I know that a lot of people within our communities don’t have the information, the access. So this was to me that letter and I’m telling it in a way that’s like a conversation. It’s like steps. I actually have talks with people who have been my guides—my therapist, my trainer, and a chef that I use, a vegan chef and an integrative doctor.
I’m glad you brought up therapy just now. In the book you discuss physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health, which I think is very important. As a Black man, why do you think prioritizing ourselves and things like therapy have been so taboo in our community?
I think my belief is that for us to survive in many ways, we had to tell ourselves that, “Man, that’s weak if you respond in this way. Or you can’t feel these feelings and make it in this world as a Black man. You can’t feel these feelings. Or you can’t show vulnerability or that’s weak if you do cry or if you do feel hurt over these things.” And I understand why our generations probably felt that way because they were dealing with some really difficult situations. And you think if you go back to slavery and how to make it through and what that would be like, I can’t even think about how they had to figure out how to survive. So I think some of the actual emotional outlets weren’t allowed because it was a survival thing.
But I think we missed at some point, all that trauma, all that pain, and we carry it with us. It comes out in ways that’s just not helpful to ourselves or our communities, to our people. It’s not helpful to the world. If I’m carrying all that hurt, I might go out there and hurt somebody. Everybody, almost every person I meet when I go out and do talks with people that are incarcerated, every one of them could trace back their violence to something that hurt them when they were young. So if we don’t deal with those traumas and we don’t have mental health support, we can become destructive to ourselves and to our people and to our families.
So it’s something that we need to address just to be our best. We talk about being kings and queens and living in abundance and having all the things. Mental health is one of those keys to being your best self. And you got to deal with the issues. I was talking with some of my friends in Chicago, and three people in the circle had lost loved ones to violence. Now, three people. Do you know how traumatic it is to lose loved ones in that way? And you have to deal with that for you to move forward and be your best self and to heal it. So I look at mental health and wellness as a key component. It’s just as important as food or working out. It’s got to be in the pillars of what we do for our lives.
Can you pinpoint the time in your life when your wellness journey began?
Yeah. I think I started around 24, 25 years old. I was listening to hip hop and a lot of the artists—some of the artists, not a lot—would talk about different things that dealt with wellness without even framing it as wellness. KRS-One was talking about being a vegetarian and not eating certain things. He had a song called “Beef” and just broke it down to us in a fresh way about why beef wasn’t good for us. And though I didn’t stop eating beef immediately, it sparked a thought and then I would listen to Rakim talking about fish and all that. Cats were just doing it naturally and it was seeping into me and caused curiosity. Then I was around different people who were studying Islam and they were telling me about these foods and then I started getting a hold of different books that would teach me.
So in that mid-20s, I was starting to think about, “Oh, I grew up this way and this is just the way we lived.” But it is another alternative. It’s an option out there and it’s something that might benefit my life more because I wanted to just be better. I wanted my career to be better, so I was looking at ways to be a better me. It started with me spiritually seeking out more things to find God. But then also at the same token, I started figuring out what foods that I wanted to eat and I started to feel the difference. And when I felt the difference, that’s all I needed to know. I didn’t need to read too many more books at that point, things started feeling clear. I started feeling more powerful. And even my vocals were sounding better on my records as far as clarity.
So I just continued on that quest and surrounded myself with people who were into health and wellness just naturally when I came to New York. The therapy didn’t come in until maybe six years later when I was dealing with something. I kept repeating the cycle in my life in relationships. For me to repeat something, that’s like walking down the street and stepping in the same hole every time. I’m smarter than that. So I’m like, “What can I do to improve myself?”
So I tried therapy. My acting coach suggested it. I tried it and started feeling like I was becoming better by going to therapy and learning about me. It’s always a path, brother. Now, there are still days where I’m frustrated. I have to figure out what’s going to center me. What is the thing that’s going to center me? It’s not like I’m saying, “Okay, when you start your path to wellness, everything just turns sunny.” But you do start feeling the sun from within. You start feeling that life from within. And when you’re dealing with different issues that the world gives you, you have better power to deal with it.
So as an active musician and author, how have you been able to implement a consistent wellness regime? What advice would you give to someone that may want to prioritize their health but may have a busy schedule?
I would say above work, above some of the obligations that we do daily, the most significant thing is taking care of yourself and making sure you nurture yourself. That allows you to go into your work and be your full self. That allows you to be even with your family members. I know parents, we have a tendency to just be like, “I got to give it all to my kid.” But yo, if you’re depleted, you can’t. You ain’t giving it all. So my advice is to make sure you allot sometime in your day, usually the beginning of the day. It could be just 5 to 10 minutes of just prayer at the beginning of the day, or even if it’s just thanking God for the day at the beginning and then moving on to putting something good in your body.
For breakfast, I usually have a coffee, and I add some fruit to it, or I might even do a green drink as well. Then do a workout or a walk or whatever it is that you could do physically. It’s worth getting up earlier. You will feel more energy. There’s days where I have to start work at 8:00 a.m. doing something. I’m still going to get up at 6:00 and do my routine; and if I have to get my workout in a little later, I will. But those things help me to be my best self. You have to take charge of your day by saying, “I’m going to take this amount of time.” You could start with small increments, but just those things. During the pandemic, I just would do push-ups. It was only five minutes, but I felt good. Push-ups and some sit-ups. And I was eating well and I had way more time to read—I would read and pray.
But if you can get the combination of the spiritual with some physical movement and just a healthy start, something good in your beginning of the day, your days will go better. That’s why they call it a lifestyle because it becomes you at a certain point. We can look and see that it’s not hard to train the mind after a minute.
Thinking about when the pandemic came, I was like, “Man, how are we going to do this and that?” But within that time period, we adjusted and people just got used to doing the things that we had to do during the pandemic. Think about if you started practicing the prayer in the morning, practicing a light workout in the morning and just starting eating foods—even if it doesn’t feel good yet, just do it. It eventually starts to become you and you will see the difference. And that’s what I want people to do, to just take a little time out of their day.
