Changemaker Spotlight: Patrilie Hernandez & Embody Lib
How a deep understanding of body liberation can change health and wellbeing for marginalized communities.
“Wellbeing is multifactorial and multi-dimensional. We understand that these dimensions are interconnected, one dimension building on another.”
Patrilie Hernandez (they/she) describes themself as a culture examiner, knowledge sharer, and weaver of relationships and ideas.
For over 15 years, Patrilie navigated the health and nutrition world as an educator, advocate, and policy analyst. This journey unveiled the complex dance between "health," the built environment, and social justice. But it wasn't until December 2017, with an eating disorder diagnosis, that they discovered how deeply ingrained societal pressures had shaped their own relationship with food, body image, and overall well-being.
As a result, Patrilie has embarked on a path of recovery and healing, addressing their eating disorder, internalized oppression, and negative body image. Their identity – a higher-weight, neuroatypical, Queer, multiracial femme of Puerto Rican descent – fuels their passion to disrupt the status quo in health and wellness spaces. They champion a weight-inclusive approach that prioritizes the social determinants of health, particularly for historically marginalized communities.
Drawing on their diverse academic background and interests, Patrilie founded Embody Lib. Embody Lib collaborates with healthcare providers to infuse multi-dimensional, weight-inclusive strategies into the fields of nutrition, medicine, and wellness to ultimately empower People of the Global Majority and historically marginalized communities.
What is Embody Lib?
Embody Lib is a community and consulting firm that provides targeted expertise to organizations and institutions that need help navigating the challenges marginalized communities face in achieving optimal health and wellbeing.
After 6 years and partnering with over 40 organizations in developing and delivering learning experiences, consulting on a variety of programs, and managing projects, Embody Lib is launching the Body Liberation Learning Portal. The BLLP is a library of digital courses for providers and professionals in the food and nutrition, health, medical, and wellness sectors looking to integrate body liberation into their policies, practices, and programs.
What is Body Liberation?
Body Liberation is a concept that shares some similarities to body positivity and body acceptance, with some key differences. Embody Lib defines Body Liberation as the journey process of examining the systems in which we politicize the body WHILE embodying liberatory praxis aimed at freeing BOTH the individual and the collective. It explicitly centers the voices and experiences of higher weight queer People of the Global Majority in deconstructing, reclaiming, and rebuilding the concept of health, wellbeing, and liberation.
BLLP courses are designed using evidence-based pedagogy and andragogy to facilitate self-paced adult learning, high levels of engagement, knowledge retention, and real-world application. Each course comes with slides paired with audio recordings, video recordings with closed captions, supplemental digital worksheet activities, subject matter expert interviews, and more. Additionally, we are working on offering continuing education credits to nutrition and mental health providers that complete the course.
What issues does Embody Lib address?
The inequities we see in US health outcomes show us that Black, brown, and Indigenous people of color (BBIPOC) bear the brunt of untreated chronic disease, poor physical and mental health status, and living in environments that hinder overall wellbeing.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic once again highlighted the severity of these health inequities, where BBIPOC fared worse in terms of hospitalizations, long-term symptoms, and access to treatment than non-BBIPOC counterparts.
Despite these stark inequities, the public health, nutrition, and wellness-focused sectors place the blame on personal behaviors and choices that BBIPOC make as the reason these disparities exist.
As a person of color, this is what I hear most often as the reasons why fellow BBIPOC are in poorer health:
We aren't eating the “right” foods.
We are too sedentary and need to exercise more.
We miss medical appointments and aren't taking our medications.
We aren't managing our stress correctly.
We are blamed for our poor health and wellbeing. There aren't nearly enough conversations moving upstream beyond personal behaviors and decisions and working to address root causes, including unpacking the way that supremacist ideology, colonization, ongoing colonialism, and anti-Black racism drive the state of public health and healthcare today.
The unfortunate truth is that current structures and systems are set up for us to fail, and then we are faulted when we don't reach this notion of health prescribed to us, but we have no say in defining and taking ownership of it. Black, brown, Indigenous People of Color, otherwise known as People of the Global Majority, never really have a fair shot at equitably pursuing a state of health defined by our lived experiences, cultural values, and beliefs, one that truly benefits our wellbeing and helps communities thrive.
Photo credit: Patrilie Hernandez
What is unique about Embody Lib’s approach to changing the conversation around health and wellness for BBIPOC folks?
With the ultimate goal of helping People of the Global Majority reclaim their health and wellbeing, Embody Lib seeks to help organizations and institutions understand how the pursuit of health cannot be separated from broader societal structures of power and oppression. And at the intersection of these various forms of systemic oppression and power dynamics lies the status quo of the public health, nutrition, and wellness fields.
One of the ways we do this is through our learning experiences, targeted towards nutrition, medical, health, and wellness providers who want to go beyond surface-level discussions of diversity and inclusion to conduct a deep structural analysis of the ways anti-Black racism, anti-fatness, ableism, colonization, ongoing colonialism, and white supremacy manifest in practices, policies, and processes. Understanding this is key to co-creating solutions incorporating interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional, and weight-inclusive strategies, which can play a part in improving the health and wellbeing of historically marginalized communities.
Why have you decided to use these strategies?
We need to come out of our thought silos and incorporate theories and frameworks across a variety of disciplines into our analysis and practice, namely those rooted in anthropology, sociology, women's studies, and more.
We recognize that health is more than the absence or onset of disease and illness. Wellbeing is multifactorial and multi-dimensional. We understand that these dimensions are interconnected, one dimension building on another.
We reject the idea that a person's health status depends on their weight and that health can only be achieved if you are a specific body size. The disdain for large bodies predates the medicalization of fatness, and we understand that weight stigma, weight cycling, and inadequate health care play a significant role in the health disparities between large and smaller-bodied people.
Photo credit: Patrilie Hernandez
Why have you created a venture to help People of the Global Majority reclaim their health and wellbeing?
I have been able to design and deliver dozens of learning experiences over the years for a wide range of audiences, but they have only been available to organizations and clients who have contracted me for my services. Many individual providers, professionals, and community members have asked when I was going to make these learning experiences available and accessible to the general public. Thus the Learning Portal was born!
How has the Changemakers Circle supported you?
Changemakers helped me gain more clarity in the value I bring to the field, and that my subject matter expertise and lived experience makes a difference. The Changemakers Circle curated a consistent space where I felt heard, seen, and supported. As a queer femme of color, it's sometimes challenging to find groups like this that are inclusive of both my race/ethnic background AND my gender identity, and Changemakers delivered.
The gentle nudges I have gotten from Changemakers has helped me be more proactive in the development process and has helped me set deadlines for myself
This notion of “nurturing accountability” is what I needed to push through my doubts and self-imposed limitations.
What have you learned about yourself through the Changemakers Circle?
What have you learned about yourself through the Changemakers Circle?
That it’s totally ok to celebrate my wins, no matter how small. As a person of color socialized as a woman, we are taught that taking the time to focus on the good things distracts you from the things that can always be improved upon. We strive for perfection because anything less than that puts us at risk for exclusion and further marginalization.
What are you taking away from your time in the Changemakers Circle?
The community! Everyone that participated in my cohort was so special and brought various forms of medicine that really contributed to a space of healing. It was magical.
What do you know now about entrepreneurship that you wish you could tell your past self?
Expertise is all around you! If you find yourself not knowing how to do something or needing help getting a project off the ground, more likely than not, there is someone right in your community that has the expertise you need. It can be as simple as posting on your personal social media page. People nowadays are well-versed in a variety of undermarketed skills and utilize them as their “side hustles” or even as hobbies.
What advice do you have for other women and nonbinary folks who are seeking to use their gifts for good?
I always close my sessions with this: “It’s ok not to have all the answers. Lean on each other. Build community. Community is the catalyst for change.”
These words came to me in the middle of the night years ago, but were affirmed by the words of the prophetic writer Octavia Butler. “All that you touch you change. All that you change, changes you.”
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To stay in touch with Patrilie and Embody Lib, join her mailing list and visit her website to learn more about Body Liberation and her offerings.
Inspired by Patrilie’s journey? Learn more about the Changemakers Circle, a peer-supported incubator for the seed of an idea you're growing, and apply today.
Join the Realize Change mailing list to read more interviews with changemakers and hear about upcoming workshops, free community gatherings, and other opportunities.
Thank you to Becky Guldin of In Bloom Communications (another Changemakers Circle alum!) for helping to tell this story.
