Dr Blossom O'Meally Nelson - How We Rewild
"People think it's a journey that's going somewhere. Well yes, it's a journey to yourself."
The people of Jamaica and the Caribbean know Dr Blossom O’Meally Nelson as the woman who created history when she became Jamaica's first female post master general. She also served as the chief executive officer of the Postal Corporation of Jamaica, where she spearheaded many initiatives aimed at transforming the island's postal services, among many other achievements.
I know her as Hauntie Bloss (said in my faltering Jamaican accent), one of my dad’s younger sisters. Yes, my Auntie Bloss happens to be one of Jamaica’s most well-known, pioneering business women. This is mainly because she’s done so much for the country, but I also think it has a lot to do with the fact that she is not only smart and entrepreneurial, but she’s also incredibly funny, charismatic, entertaining and a true crowd-pleaser. She’s someone I would describe as larger than life itself, commanding attention through the strength of her presence alone.
In our chat about her healing practices, she takes us on a unique, turbulent ride through her early years of dealing with personal challenges through huge, professional triumphs all the way through to the place she resides now of unapologetic self-love, radical self-acceptance and self-celebration. Her story is a true Hero’s Journey.
And throughout her story-telling, she weaves a robust road-map that, if followed closely, will provide you with the magic elixir to maintain youthful living in your older years. No exaggeration. This is from a woman who is not just surviving at 84, she is thriving. As she succinctly puts it,
“I turned 84 this month and I am in full flight, absolute full flight.”
The wisdom she shares needs to be saved and savoured for all the secrets to life that it nurtures. Her words imbue us with the power and permission to be unapologetically Black women and find our way to love and self-acceptance, no matter the obstacle, whether that is through embracing stylish clothing every day, wearing our natural hair in board meetings (she was ground-breaking in this endeavour) and creating a life-long, personal self-care plan that involves personal trainers, self-hypnosis, tattoos, bio regeneration and the need to deprogram ourselves from damaging self-talk and doctrines, while re-imagining new ways of being.
Intrigued? Yes, you absolutely should be. Read on to dive into the magic that is Auntie Bloss or listen below, if you prefer your content to be taken aurally.
Shot by Saskia Nelson, Port Royal, Jamaica.
Blossom O’Meally Nelson
Who and where are you in the world?
I was born in Jamaica and live here now. I've lived in the Turks and Caicos Islands and the US. I am one of these people that you call a multi-potential, because I think I've done everything.
You know, I started out as a librarian, and then I decided that there's no way I could work in a library, because I can't keep quiet. So I went into teaching, but I actually left teaching very early. Then I gave up my scholarship to read psychology and sociology at the University of Toronto and went as a missionary to the Turks and Caicos Islands and got married to a Baptist minister
My mother took to bed, of course, and my father had to console her. I got married and went off with my cat in a little tramp boat from Jamaica to Turks and Caicos Islands.
This is 1961 and there was no electricity in Turks and Caicos. We had air bases though. US air bases. As a matter of fact, this is where John Glenn came down from his first trip into space. And we had 13 churches on on six different islands, so there was always a sailing boat involved.
As for nutrition, we ate fresh food every six weeks when the Haitians came from Cape Haitian in a boat with food that they had been walking up and down on top of for three days.
Eventually, I came back to Jamaica and went to university, ending up with a doctorate in educational psychology. I worked in micro banking. I headed a small business bank. I actually became Post Master General at one point. I headed up the University of Technology, transitioning it from a polytechnic to a full fledged University. I spent 17 years at the helm of that and now I'm back into management consultancy and project management and I recently set up a data protection Institute.
I turned 84 this month, and I am in full flight, absolute full flight.
The journey has not been without difficulty. I suffered from serious depression for around 15 years. I took amitriptyline hydrochloride until I almost had cirrhosis of the liver. I was on valium for years and every kind of of psychotic drug that you can think of has been prescribed for me. Eventually, I found a psychiatrist who gave me six months to come off the medication or else he’d quit. So I knew that this was my last train out of the station.
I came out of my traditional religion, and I went to the New Thought movement, and I used that to reprogram all of those tapes in your head that just roll and roll, telling you that you're not good enough, you're not right enough and you're too tall. I was five foot 11, which is unheard of in my day, and everybody was making excuses for me. My mother used to call me Poor Bloss, because of it.
So, to manage my self-esteem, I literally had to read, research and reprogram my own thought processes and mental practices. I changed my whole approach to how I thought about myself. I have a little book, it's still in my library, called Thirty-day Mental Diet: The Way to a Better Life. And I went through that and learnt and practiced the self talk.
I see people in the next generation after me having all sorts of new medications and I say to them that they have it within them to change themselves, but they don't believe me, or it's too hard for them to reprogram themselves. But, for me, it’s been years now, I've not taken one tranquilizer. I don't need valium to sleep, I don't take any antidepressants. I'm buoyant. My morale is good. I'm getting into old age. It can be done but you have to have a thing called personal discipline and commitment, right? So it has not been easy but through all this, I've been conscious of my health practices and I've always taken supplements.
Shot by Saskia Nelson, Port Antonio, Jamaica.
How much of a priority in your day-to-day life do you place in looking after your whole self ie. mind, body, energy, soul. Can you share what kind of practices a typical day/week might include?
The first thing is I practice self hypnosis. So when I go to the dentist now, before I get in the chair, I basically hypnotize myself. I put myself out of it because it's something you can do. I do that before going to the dentist and any procedure that I may need to undergo, like an MRI or similar.
I've had several surgeries because I believe in fixing things. Things that are broken need surgery. I'm not going to drink Cerasee tea and hope my bunions are going to fall off. I don't think so. I take off the bunions and I strip the varicose veins, but then I do the exercises and the other lifestyle things that you need to maintain that.
Throughout my life I've been a gym person, because we're a sports family. (*Her two sons set up and led the legendary Jamaican National Bobsled Team which made headlines around the world at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games, and are the inspiration behind the hugely successful box-office movie, Cool Runnings). So yes, we're a sports family but I can't play any games at all. It's like I have three right hands and two left ones. I’m just all over the place, I invented awkwardness.
But as I entered my later years, my family raised hell, you know, that I wasn’t doing enough of this and I had to do more of that. So they found me a personal trainer and I work out with him twice a week. I do hydrotherapy twice a week, which is fantastic in building your flexibility and your muscle mass. That's four days. And then the acupressure person comes once a week, so that's five days of the week.
And I'm torturing my body with the physiotherapist and that’s down to once a month now. They’re helping me straighten the top part of my spine. I have to build the muscle there so it doesn't get any worse.
As for internal matters, my son Chris put me on a program of bio regeneration. I went to breakfast with him and his wife one morning and they caught me in a bad mood and they decided that I was deteriorating. And so the next thing I know, I'm going to Doctor Fisher's bio regeneration clinic. That is a new, high powered thing.
So I did a program of amino acids and peptides and human growth hormones, which I was sure was going to kill me and give me all kind of things. But in reality the impact has been fantastic. It slows down the ageing process.
My muscles weren’t absorbing the nutrients, like magnesium, potassium and oxygen and all the things that you need for your muscles to function positively. So I was kind of in metabolic decline. That's what they call it. They say, ‘Oh, part of aging is metabolic decline. Your metabolism is not going to work, so your muscles are going to get flabby and that is old age’. But the amino acids and peptides are really fantastic. I'm not saying they’re for everybody. You’d need to go to a doctor and get a program, sometimes these things have contraindications, and you need to know what you're doing. I'm on a fairly complicated program.
Also I do a little cleanse and take probiotics, of course, because your gut health is so important. I take vitamin C and don't tell me that you eat oranges every day because you’d have to eat a barrel of oranges or something to get the Vitamin C that you need. And I take Vitamin E for the skin.
My blood pressure is normal throughout all of this. I think I'm the only person in our family of my generation, and also the next, who doesn’t have hypertension. And that has got to be because of my lifestyle, in fact I know it's because of my lifestyle.
Now let’s talk about hair. I always said that a Black woman's mission is to make peace with her hair. So I processed my hair for years upon years. And the next thing is that you start to see the sky through the top of it. So I stopped and decided I had to find a natural program that is stylish. So, I settled on Sisterlocks. I did Jheri curls for something like 17 years. But I’ve had Sisterlocks since 2003.
I was coloring it blonde and having a good time. And then my hair said to me one morning, ‘when are you going to stop doing this to me?.’ It was thinning, so I found a lady who's a trichologist. Actually I’m now her brand ambassador and I didn't even know I was going to be a brand ambassador. I saw posters and then the next thing I see is I’m on TV. I am game though. I'll help people. She said everybody flocked to her door when I started wearing Sisterlocks.
Actually I was the first professional woman that chaired a board meeting with this hair style. Let me tell you, everybody was totally scandalised the first time I did it. I freaked out a little at first. My head looked like when you’re going to bake a ham and you stick cloves in the little squares on the ham. I told my daughter, Terri, ‘I have to buy a wig’, and she looked at it and said it didn’t look that bad. And you know what I did? I put on some eyeshadow, some blush, my lipstick and dressed up and stepped out. The next thing I know, all the women start doing this.
Back in 2003, I was the first professional woman stepping out in public like this. I was on TV, making speeches, and everyone is saying, ‘what’s that in your hair?’ But no matter what you do with your hair, it’ll probably get thinner because anything you do to your hair is stress. I found a lady who has the most marvellous products, called Restore, which I started using it and I got new growth and the edges back and of course, everybody beat a path to her door.
My skin is 84 years old and I don't have any wrinkles. I have a regime. I believe in collagen, elastin, Vitamin E serum, hyaluronic acids, just make sure it's clean. People are putting this oil and that oil, but all they're doing is clogging up the pores. Because the thing about skin is that it is growing new skin underneath. So cellular replacement is important. You need to take off the dead skin and reveal new skin underneath. Not continually moisturise and preserve the wrinkled, aged skin on top. People have old skin on their body, and them oiling it to kingdom come with all sorts of things and it's not going to work.
Body scrubs are important too because they energise your whole lymphatic system, so that your lymphatic system is circulating, and not just sitting there and piling up all sorts of of toxins.
And I have a very dear girlfriend, and she's forever oiling with the thickest oil, and I can't get her to understand that she's just preserving the old dead skin and she really needs a new skin. She need to shed it like a lizard and come up with something new.
And the thing about exercise, my mother - your grandmother - would not do any exercise. She lived to 91 but she used to sweep our house. She'd walk up and down sweeping the house. And she kept going up the stairs. So don't discount walking, because that is what kept her living to 91.
I'm not one of these people that likes food, though. Let me tell you, if you come to my house, which you have, you're likely to starve if I don't have a helper. Because cooking is not a thing that interests me. In my world, cooking is a waste of time. I would much prefer to go and plant a tree, hike up a mountain or build a chicken coop. So therefore I'm not going to be eating a whole heap of food. Some people love food and you have to sympathize with them. When they love food, they think about it a lot. So fortunately for me, I am a light eater. But I will tend to take too many sweet things, so I have to hold back on that and tell myself you're getting one cookie a day, because there's no such thing as me not eating any cookies.
With eating, it's all about your portion size and when you eat. So I'm now at a point where, if I'm working at home, I don't eat breakfast, because I get up and I have my lime juice and a fruit. Then I'll have egg or tuna or similar with greens, a lot of callaloo and broccoli for example, and then in the evening I try and eat before six o'clock. It makes a great difference.
But this morning, my helper was here. So I had a big, bad breakfast you know. I had okra, codfish fritters and green banana but then I don’t need much for the rest of the day.
What influence, if any, does your ethnicity and/or culture have in your healing and how does it show up?
Black people are prone to a lot of things. We're prone to high blood pressure, which goes with stroke and heart attack. So, you end up being prone to diseases of the arteries. Then often, we tend to be heavier, and that cascades down into diabetes. And Black women have fibroids which, you can actually cure via diet. And a lot of black women have to have hysterectomies. They should investigate that because it's almost like an epidemic of fibroids among black women which is connected to fertility as well. So you find that our fertility is down. And then there is sickle cell and lupus, which affects our community more.
So it’s important to know that you're prone to those things and take your self-care seriously.
Are there any meaningful healing rituals that you embrace that were gifted to you from your ancestors (including past or future ancestors) that you’d be happy to share?
I would like a ritual that allows women to come together as sisters to support each other. I feel sisterhood is not functional anymore in the Western world. We’re encouraged to compete with one another whereas what we really need is to go down to the river or go into the forest and strengthen our spiritual selves. We all have a spirit, regardless of how you want to align it.
I would like to see rituals like this, like there were in the past. In cases of rape, for example, I would love to see a group of women get together with that rape victim. Perhaps you go down to the river, you cut various herbs, you light a fire and you chant. You wash her, you support her and let her know that you're there and she's renewed. We don't do that kind of ritual anymore, we take antibiotics instead. But that kind of spiritual ritual is something that I personally miss.
We need a sisterhood that rejects the current foolishness of competition, and encourages us to come together in mutual support. And we should forget about competing with men in the work place. We have our own magic, we don’t need to try to be men, copying their male energy. So many women in Jamaica, in the workplace are doing this and end up as surrogates. It makes me think of that quote written during the women’s liberation movement, “There’s nothing a man does, that I want to be better at.” (*editor’s note, I’m high-fiving at this point).
I’ve managed organisations with 2,000 or 3,000 employees and I’ll bring a completely different energy to the place to get done what needs to be done. As a woman, I don’t need to try and be a man. I have my own magical energy.
I think women need places of community rooted in positive reinforcement, rather than competition.
What I aim for in life is to be completely transformed through any experience and come out on the other side a different person. The challenges you face never cease, you’ll always have them. Life can be very difficult. And it's a journey. And I want to commend you that you have been on this journey. And it's all a journey to yourself. People think it's a journey that's going somewhere. Well yes, but it's a journey to yourself.
Who or what has had a major impact on your personal healing journey and why?
Religion has had a huge impact on my journey. Most of my healing experience is centred around religion. I really got religion as a teenager, got it very seriously. I wanted to be worthy. I wanted to make sure that people would see me as a Christian. I got into all of that. I even became a missionary and got married to a minister. Then I found out that the world inside there was not what I thought it would be and and I had to unprogram myself from it all.
I turned my back on my faith and then came back around the other side. So I had to refashion that whole experience. There have been people who have supported me, mainly after the divorce. Because when I was married, I was not a person. So therefore I didn't have any friends of my own or any expression of my own. Fortunately for me, I was still teaching, so I had an outlet. I always work, so I could relate to my students. But as for another life, you don't have it, you don't know who you are. A minister's wife is a non-person.
So this whole thing has been a religious journey of self-inquiry, trying to understand how I can express my faith and still be myself? Because, trust me, I am not an average person. Whatever that is. I am a person who breaks boundaries. I will climb mountains. I will dive into deep pools. And I'm very frank, forthright and fearless, and as a woman, that is a recipe for total disaster. I've been fired many times and rehired and moulded and flattened. People have run over me and back up and run over me again and then I get back up, like a road runner.
But it has been an amazing journey and it's my son, Tal, who tells me, “Mom, happiness is very subjective and it is cast about by the wind. Morale is what you need to have.” And he's right, you know, because at this stage of life, there are so many of my peers that are looking for happiness, and they can't be happy because the children are all grown and gone about their business. They live by themselves. Their spouse is gone. The dog died. The cat is not paying you any mind, you don't have as much money as you had.
So happiness is not a a worthy pursuit at that point in time, but morale is. You get up every day and decide to love what is in front of you. Even if I'm losing my memory, I can still see the pot. I can still see the kettle. And I'm going to say, what a wonderful pot and a wonderful kettle. And love what is in front of you. That is the key. In my case, of course, I go further and I'm still creating. I recently set up my animal welfare advocacy group, so I'm into animal rights laws right now. But then that is me. Working brings me joy. It’s fun for me. Other people don't like work. It’s finding what brings you joy and doing more of that, whatever it may be.
How, and how often, do you celebrate and love yourself unabashedly?
I do a regular healing meditation where I meditate on my body and celebrate my immune system, my circulatory system, my lungs. I breathe the breath of life through my lungs and my heart beats with the rhythm of life. I meditate on cleansing my liver, my pancreas, all my organs. I celebrate my skin which helps renew itself and removes toxins from the body. I celebrate my kidney, my bladder, the glands and my limbic system. I believe all our cells have intelligence so I speak to the cells in my body.
And I recently got a tattoo, which is a form of celebration, I think. It’s on my forearm and it’s an image of three hearts and a black pearl. The three hearts are my three children, and the Black Pearl are their spouses and my grandchildren.
I had a butterfly on the outside of my ankle that I could never see and I realised it didn’t make sense to have a tattoo that I can't see. So I decided I'm going to have one I can see.
As I’m getting older, I realise I’m running out of places where I could put a tattoo. Originally I was going to have one on the scar on my knee following surgery there, but it would have had to be an accordion, trust me.
Everybody was quite scandalised when I got a tattoo at the age of 83. But I'm satisfied now and I'm not going to do another one. I still want a navel ring, though. I have three piercings in my ears already.
When it comes to style and fashion, then I love to celebrate myself. I love wearing bold, stylish clothes and I’m happy to show skin.
And during Covid, once I realised that I’m going to be working at home, I got rid of that category of clothes you call ‘yard’ clothes, you know, the kind of comfy clothes you wear at home. I realised that's not going to work for me. So I bagged them and sent them to the Salvation Army. And I've started wearing clothes that you could wear to work, but at home.
I like to tell people that I don't go to the post office on a Thursday, because that is when all the pensioners go to get their checks. And I like to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, a pair of long pants that you cut off at the knee is not a proper pair of pants. It's not a pair of long pants.”
And it doesn't have anything to do with money, because you don't have to have more than one or two pieces. It's just making the effort to put yourself together properly. It’s having self-awareness, which itself brings self-confidence. Just because we’re not going out all the time, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get dressed up for ourselves. It’s such a great way to celebrate ourselves.
Yes, this has been fun for me actually, because I got a chance to really explore myself and what I think about these things.
And then the final thing is this. So my girlfriend said she puts on her perfume before she goes to bed alone. And so I've started doing that because I have some perfumes that I have collected from all over the world, and they're just sitting there. So I decided I'm going to wear perfume, although I'm working at home alone. The dog appreciates it, you know.
What does freedom look like to you? How often do you make time for it?
Right now, freedom looks to me like not being married, but I'm not going to say that, because there are a lot of people who are married and still have their personal freedom.
Freedom, to me is simply the ability to make your own choices.
There are times in your life when you defer your choices. I did that when I was raising children, building a community of family. I deferred my choices because I had a mission, I had something that I needed to do and I needed to be a certain way and be at a certain place to achieve that.
But there will come a time in life when you are done with that, and then you decide what choices you need to make so that you can give expression to that thing inside you that is imploding. I can give expression to it now. Before, I didn't know I was a great person, trust me, I amaze myself every day. Now I'm one of the most well-known household names in Jamaica and the Caribbean. I've made an impact on the country at all levels and I still do. So freedom; it's the ability to make your own choices.
Please share your Mini Manifesto for Self-Care – ie. your 3 rules you live by in order to root and rise.
1. Serve other people. Be of service. I can't leave service out of my life. Helping others is an integral part of who I am, almost to the point of interfering with people. And my family asks me all the time why can't I leave people alone.
2. Look after your spiritual health. I have to remain connected to the divine mind and divine entity. I don't tangle up myself with doctrine, because I'm not going to get very far down the road with that. But I pay attention to my personal relationship with the divine entity. Yes pay attention to health of mind and spirit.
3. Be useful. I always say I don't want to outlive my utility. You know, you must be doing something that is useful, even if it's just encouraging somebody, even if it's just picking up a phone and being who you are. That’s still inspirational.
This week I can’t stop thinking about….
+ REVOLT has curated a list of eight museums across the United States with must-see art exhibits highlighting the incredible contributions of Black artists. Anti-Black sentiment is high at the moment on TV and social media, so I, personally, love to turn to art as a powerful form of healing. If you’re in the US right now, perhaps take a break from it and allow yourself be inspired as you explore these powerful expressions of culture and identity.
+ A new exhibition in Liverpool (UK), called Conversations. It’s The Walker Gallery’s new landmark show that features more than 40 Black female and non-binary artists. The Walker gallery only had two artworks by Black women out of a 13,000-strong collection, so this new exhibition marks the beginning of an attempt to redress the balance.
+ This short film, Of Us, which honours the legacy of the UK’s Black diaspora through movement and song. It’s a visually stunning, meditative experience that allows us to retreat into 3 minutes and 33 seconds of rippling, undulating Black bodies moving in and around the Atlantic Ocean, connecting ancestral legacies and the thread between body and memory. Worth taking a pause in your day to immerse yourself in the sheer beauty of sound and vision coming together creating indescribable moments of magic.