What "Holistic" Actually Means to Us

The word "holistic" has been borrowed by the wellness industry and stretched so far from its original meaning that it now conjures images of crystals, cold plunges, and expensive supplements. In the maternity and parenting space, this looks like organic ingredients, postpartum herbal teas and overpriced minimalist wooden toys.

For many parents of colour who have watched mainstream perinatal care consistently exclude them while appropriating the very traditions their cultures originated, it can feel like a word that was never really meant for them.

At Awêkind, we use it anyway. Because the original meaning is exactly what we're here to do.

Holistic postnatal care, as we define it, means treating the whole person. Not a checklist or set of symptoms to be monitored, but a human being moving through one of the most significant transitions of their life, shaped by biology, culture, community, identity, and history.

In practice, that means:

Physical health: providing honest education about what the postnatal period actually involves for both parents and their newborn baby.

Mental health: postnatal depression, anxiety, birth trauma, and identity shift are named clearly and without stigma. With particular attention to the ways these present differently across cultures, and the barriers, systemic and social, that prevent Black and Asian women from accessing support.

Cultural identity: honouring the traditions, foods, rituals, and community structures that generations of families have used to hold new mothers. Not as an add-on. As a foundation.

Community: because isolation in the fourth trimester is not a personal failing. It is a structural problem, particularly for diaspora families. And because healing, historically and evidentially, happens in community.

Practical support: the real, specific, actionable information that helps parents navigate the postnatal period with more confidence and less crisis.

This is what holistic means to us. Not a lifestyle aesthetic. A genuine commitment to the full picture of what new parents, particularly parents of colour actually need.