Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dia Weeks. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Dia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
On April 5, 2018, I was laying in a hospital bed floating in and out of consciousness. My body was fighting for my life while my mind had already given up. My lab results had shown that I was dealing with metabolic acidosis. A condition that if not rectified quickly meant that my blood’s acidity levels would be the end of my vital organs. My liver and kidneys were fighting furiously to rid my body of the toxicity.
The doctors and nurses were desperate in trying to prevent my body from going into shock. I remember them rushing around the room. They had a million and one questions trying to understand what brought me to the hospital in this state. I was failing to comprehend the slew of words being hurled at me. My senses became overwhelmed – the beeping of the heart monitor, the bright lights, the inserting of IV’s into my arm, and then darkness… It would be a full three and a half days later before I would regain full consciousness and be able to fully understand what was going on.
Now, I have painted the scene of one of the most pivotal moments of my life. You are likely racking your brain on what could have possibly led to this traumatic spring day. However I guarantee you it is probably the last thing you would ever guess…
It was an overdose. A combination of over 50 different pills to create a perfect cocktail that would lead to a slumber I would never have to wake up from. About 24 hours prior to these exact moments, I had made the decision that I no longer wanted to live. And on that fateful Thursday, I acted on that decision.
The next question that enters your mind is what could have possibly caused me to make such a grave decision. It is actually quite a simple answer – 17 years of unwellness and a lack of self care. I had spent the last 17 years battling addiction, self harming, eating disorders, and abuse. I wanted to be free from the suffocating clutches of anxiety and depression. It felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel for me, just a never ending cavern of darkness.
There is only one reason that I am still here to tell you this story today. That reason is the God that I serve who knew better than I did that there was in fact a gloriously, brilliant light at the end of the tunnel. While I am thankfully and miraculously still with each and every single one of you today, there absolutely was a version of me who died on August 5, 2018. My attempt to take my life in turn did not end it, but was the birth of a new one.
This inflection point while traumatic and devastating was one of the most necessary moments in my life. It laid the trajectory of my destiny out right in front of me. There were two very distinct paths that I could take. One that acknowledged everything leading up to this point and deciding to do something about it. The other path leading me back into that never ending cavern of darkness. I thankfully chose the former.
As Your Wellness Homegirl, wellness is not something I am passionate about because it is something that I have always had and known well. Wellness is my passion because I know what the depths of unwellness look like. I know what pain, trauma, loneliness, and the loss of hope do to a person. I know what being so unwell that the only viable option appeared to be death feels like. I have had to fight tooth and nail for my wellness journey and still do every single day. While it has gotten easier over the years, it is still in fact a journey.
In knowing where I was to where I am now, I know that there are so many others who may be in the same or a similar cavern of darkness. I aim to let others know that they are not isolated in the cavern experience. I desire for those in the depths to know if I can navigate my way out so can they. My mission is to walk into those caverns and illuminate that there is indeed a way to get out and stay out.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My wellness journey and career began in the realm of physical fitness. Growing up, I was an elite level competitive swimmer from the age of 5. I knew what it meant to push your mind and body to the limits to achieve what seemed like impossible results. However, I ended up quitting the sport due to a lack of care to my mental health. I had no one to explain to me how connected not only my mind and body was to each other, but also to the world around me.
Reflecting back, this decision to quit the sport greatly impacted my college education. I could not wrap my head around how I could be nationally ranked to not even wanting to hop in the pool ever again. I began to pose questions like, “What could have prevented me from getting to a place of extreme level burnout and make life sustainable?”
I found the beginnings to the answers of these questions in my B.S. of Exercise and Sports Science from Temple University. Through my formal education and experiential learning through my various jobs and internships, I began to put together the puzzle pieces that could illustrate the answer.
Upon graduating, I had the opportunity to begin my career as an aquatics director heavily focused on client services and program development. Through working with hundreds of individuals, I began to understand that my experience was not an isolated occurrence. That while it may not have been in the pool like my story, everyone was impacted by the lack of sustainability in the lives we live.
Continuing my education, I acquired my personal training certification through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. In working with clients to engage in total lifestyle change to support their new fitness goals, I realized that it is impossible to cater to just a single dimension of wellness. All eight dimensions of wellness are so grossly intertwined that if one is unable to speak to all of them, true sustainability cannot be achieved.
In order to achieve a life of true wellness, one must engage in their physical, emotional, spiritual, social, intellectual, financial, occupational, and environmental aspects of life simultaneously. This has been my holistic approach to helping people live life well. Not only that, but I wanted to do so in an easily transferable, digestible way. Often times wellness professionals speak with such pretentious jargon, that it becomes unattainable for the average person. Furthermore, they are often extremely unrelatable and/or lack the level of vulnerability necessary for someone to see themselves in them.
That is what I aspire to do differently. I have shed the shame attached to my story so that when I speak others can see highlights of their own journey in mine. My testimony allows me to not only sympathize with others, but authentically empathize with the things they are dealing with.
Now as a Certified Professional Life Coach, I operate in a variety of ways. Firstly, I create wellness lifestyle content through my Instagram and Facebook. My goal with this content is to utilize vulnerability as my superpower through empowerment, education, and entertainment. I also have my podcast — Unprecedented Wellness — available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts which is focused on illuminating that wellness and self care is not a luxury but a necessity for quality of life.
In conjunction with content creation, I operate in ministry, motivational speaking, and event curation. I give all glory to God that He gives me the opportunity to share His goodness in my life to help others do the same. I have had several speaking engagements where I not only tell my story, but illustrate how others can achieve the same wellness I am constantly striving towards. Additionally, I LOVE curating events. I have been curating culture shocking events since 2018 in varying capacities. I am now at a point where I will not just help and facilitate events for other organizations, but will also produce several Your Wellness Homegirl events in 2024 that help us to live our best lives together.
Bottom line, I love to serve individuals, organizations, and communities by helping them understand and equipping them with the tools to be well. I see myself as a wellness visionary on the front lines of radical change through not just a city, not just a state, not just a country, but the world. I have faith that we will one day live in a world that prioritizes self care and wellness above all else. I would love to connect with you so that we can stand on the front lines together!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The biggest lesson that I had to learn was that asking for help is not a weakness and failing is not pathetic. Growing up under the trope of needing to be a strong independent Black woman, there was very little room for either of these things.
I grew up in an environment of where the love I had around me was received in a conditional manner. I only felt loved, encouraged, supported, when I did things well. When I failed, it was as if my efforts and attempts never existed in comparison to the results they yielded. I felt only as good as what I could produce. This made me develop an extremely toxic relationship with failure — striving to avoid it at all costs. Not only did I fear failure itself, but also the perspective of others that I could fail. I correlated asking for help as demonstrating that I was on the course of failure.
This lead me down a dark and lonely path. Because I always put on the facade of perfection, no one would ever check in on me. It was as if I was Superman with a piece of kryptonite in my back no one could see because they were blinded by the “S” on my chest. This profoundly impacted not only my mental health, but my first attempt at entrepreneurship. This way of living became a breeding ground for anxiety and depression. Both of which led to the demise of my first business endeavor.
Now at my second run of entrepreneurship, I have learned that being able to ask for help actually demonstrates immense strength. It demonstrates that I am secure enough in my capabilities to be humble enough to admit what I do not know or are incapable of doing. Failing is not pathetic, but a beautifully necessary part of life. You learn more from your failures than you do your successes. Failures just teaches you what did not work and what needs to be changed. It is not something to be taken personal and equated to me inherently being a failure.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I love this question because I believe I have taken a rather radical approach to social media. I used to absolutely detest social media. I hated the idea that people were only supposed to show the highlight reel, aesthetic parts of their lives. Only seeing the wins in life, creates this facade that takes the humanity out of the content that we consume. This reproachable take on social media breeds a culture of shame, comparison, and inadequacy for the typical consumer.
Why does the content we post on social media not reflect the life we actually live? The good with the bad, the beautiful with the ugly? This is how I have built my audience on social media by being as real, raw, and transparent as I possibly can. I want my followers to KNOW me, not just know of me. I want them to see my failures just as much as my successes. I want people to see themselves in me and know they are not alone in their human experience.
My biggest piece of advice for someone just starting social media and content creation is to make content that makes your heart feel like it’s going to burst. What I mean by that is content creation is more than a little bit to say the least. So if you are not creating content that pours into your own cup as opposed to draining from it, it becomes unsustainable especially at the beginning when there’s no compensation for doing it. I used to make content I thought other people wanted as opposed to creating what made my heart full. I have seen a HUGE difference in the engagement with my content because it makes me that much more relatable to others.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yourwellnesshomegirl.com/
- Instagram: @your_wellness_homegirl — https://www.instagram.com/your_wellness_homegirl?igsh=MTRibmhsaXRvZzcyYw%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: Badia Weeks — https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100006303674961&mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Youtube: @UnprecedentedWellness — https://youtube.com/@UnprecedentedWellness?si=aSzcwDekYwNeDDLJ
- Other: Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/1kj7xPvI8ARY0v6IwD5W3Q?si=s6d5rhRnTfywMc4gfPAeIQ