But folks, it’s a heavier question than we often realise.
Because wellness isn’t a checklist (surprisingly)
It isn’t a product (if only)
It isn’t something you either achieve or fail at.
Wellness is different things to different people, at different times.
Wellness is something that’s tended.
And like anything that keeps life flowing, it has a source.
The word well comes from the Old English wella — a spring, a source of water. It also meant good, sufficient, whole.
To be well was to be properly supplied.
Sustained.
Connected to what keeps life moving.
Not busy.
Not perfect.
Just… nourished.
Somewhere along the way, we forgot that.
Earlier this year, I attended a conference on trauma-informed care. One of the speakers, Dr Karen Treisman (who I’m a huge fan of — honestly, go and find her work), mentioned something in her talk.
The well women.
She spoke about how these women shaped the life of villages. How their work wasn’t loud or celebrated, but absolutely essential. How everything depended on them — whether people realised it or not.
I went home with the thoughts of these women ruminating through my mind, growing more and more curious.
As winter began to draw in, I found myself reflecting — on my year, my work, my practice, my relationships. On the quiet losses. The small rebuilds. The invisible labour of holding things together, of being “well” of being a “woman” of being a “mother”.
And again and again, my thoughts returned to the well women.
Sometimes, when we’re shedding old skins and stepping into new spaces, inspiration doesn’t arrive in the style of a comic book KACHOW! No, it’s often much duller. It arrives as a whisper. A pattern. A nagging feeling that won’t leave you alone.
For me, it arrived on a walk.
A familiar Welsh valley morning — grey, wet, deeply homely. The smell of damp earth. Wind moving across grass and rolling off the hills. These are the moments where my body feels safe enough for my mind to wander.
That morning, thinking about the well women, I took a different turning.
And there it was.
A sign.
For a well.
I stood there longer than necessary, smiling at the absurdity and the intimacy of it. Since then, the well women have followed me everywhere — literally everywhere.
Into conversations, decisions, moments of care.
When friends come to me needing a shoulder to cry on, I think of them.
When I hold space without fixing, I think of them.
When I feel depleted, I think of them too.
Well women appear across Celtic, British, Irish, and wider Indo-European traditions. They sat at the meeting point of myth, land, and survival.
Wells were not just water sources. They were understood as living beings — portals between worlds, wombs of the land, places of healing, prophecy, and continuity.
The women who tended them were known by many names: well keepers, well maidens, Bean an Tobair — woman of the well — Cailleachs, Völva-like figures in Norse regions.
Despite later romanticisation (and we can all quietly roll our eyes at who wrote those versions), they were rarely young maidens. They were usually older women. Widows. Healers. Midwives. Women who had crossed thresholds — birth, loss, menopause.
They were trusted because they understood cycles, not permanence.
The well woman was not married to a man.
She was married to the land.
Caring for a well was both practical and sacred.
Physically, they cleared leaves and debris, protected the water from contamination, managed access so it wasn’t depleted. This wasn’t symbolic. For many villages, it was the only clean water source.
But the deeper work was relational.
They spoke to the well.
Sang to it.
Left offerings — coins, cloth, milk, bread.
There were rules, too. Quiet ones. Firm ones.
Take only what you need.
Never draw water in anger.
Never take without thanks.
The well woman was a guardian of balance — between human need and the land’s limits.
This wasn’t sentimentality.
It was survival.
The well women knew the score.
And then, in the stories — always in the same way — something shifts.
The well is neglected.
Taken for granted.
Abused.
The woman who tends it is mocked, displaced, silenced.
And the water changes.
It dries up.
Turns foul.
Loses its healing properties.
Illness follows. Crops fail. Fertility — of land and people — suffers.
This wasn’t punishment.
It was cause and consequence.
If you don’t tend life, life withdraws.
Over time, the well woman herself is transformed in folklore — into a hag, a banshee, a warning figure. A reflection of what happened historically, as patriarchal systems reframed women’s wisdom as something eerie or dangerous.
But the land remembers, even when culture forgets.
I want to pause here and talk about motherhood.
Because the well woman was not separate from motherhood — she was its extension.
Not just biological motherhood, but the wider kind.
To mother is to notice.
To tend.
To regulate resources.
To set boundaries.
To know when enough is enough.
The same hands that cleared leaves from the well held babies.
The same fingers that knew how deep to reach without disturbing the silt knew how to soothe, to steady, to sustain.
When care is removed, collapse doesn’t arrive dramatically.
It arrives in subtle movements.
The water doesn’t rage.
It withdraws.
Like a mother who has given everything and finally has nothing left.
The wells didn’t disappear.
They changed form.
Look around. They’re everywhere.
They look like mothers.
Friends.
Carers.
Community organisers.
The ones who always show up.
The ones quietly rooting for you, even when you don’t follow the herd.
Ignore them long enough and they won’t scream.
They’ll simply stop.
And everyone will ask where the water went.