Why Healers Are Always Broke!

Our world runs off the unpaid care work of women. Full stop.

And I'm not only talking about the mothering and the cooking and the cleaning and the scheduling of appointments and the holding of emotions — though that's a huge piece of it.

I'm talking about the bodyworkers, the breathwork practitioners, the yoga and movement teachers, the herbalists, the hair-cutters, the space holders. The people doing the work that actually helps others feel good. The work that helps people heal.

That work is chronically undervalued.

And when the culture doesn't value care work, we learn not to value it either.

I ran a wellness center for years. And there is this crazy irony that the practitioners who worked there — the ones who put every drop of themselves into their clients — are the most depleted people in the room.

A big piece of the ‘wellness industry’ looks like this:

💧 Depleted women pouring into other depleted women and calling it community.

And I say we because I do it too. I've been on both sides of it more times than I can count.

The system that created this is absolutely not our fault.

And also → we are the ones keeping it running.

Every time you ask a friend for a free session.
Every time you offer a discount without being asked.
Every time you roll your eyes at what another woman is charging

— you're spreading the belief that care work isn't valuable. 👀

Charging pennies for a session in the name of "being accessible" isn't solving anything. It's just adding yourself to the list of depleted women.

There are no individual solutions to systemic problems.

[↑ read that again]

In my bodywork practice, other women, other moms have said these things to me:

😤 That by not taking insurance I'm being exclusive.
😤 That my rates are not accessible to the people who actually need it.
😤 That I have the audacity to charge for the time it takes to write a letter to their doctor or insurance company.

I can't even count the number of times friends have asked for a "quick adjustment" when they're over for dinner. 🙃

It also isn't the whole story. I'm twenty years out of school and still paying student loans. I have three teenagers. I have a body that has been doing this work for two decades — through injury, through burnout, through surgeries, through a high-risk pregnancy, through every season of life — and my body is quite literally how I earn a living.

Women question my rates without ever asking:

→ What I pay every month for the licensing and continuing education and rent and utilities and tech that hold it together
→ How many hours of prep and follow-up surround every hour of care work
→ What it costs to hold space for people's hardest stuff without taking it home with you

And in full vulnerability— I've done it too. Scoffed at the cost of a yoga class. Rolled my eyes at the price of a program. Said yes to friends who asked for that quick adjustment because I felt like a jerk telling them to schedule an appointment.

(I love my work. I also don't want to work on my days off — for free. 😅)

We do it to ourselves and to each other. Constantly.

And let's be clear: charging enough to have stability is not the same as accumulating and hoarding wealth. [To know what enough is, you have to actually do the math]

Here's the thing we're not saying:

Charging what your work is worth — and paying others what their work is worth — is not the same as not caring about the people who can't afford it. Those are two very different conversations.

It sucks that some people will literally never be able to get a massage. 💔 That is a real truth. And it is a systemic failure — not a personal one.

The answer isn't for care workers to stay broke in solidarity.

Pouring from overflow is resourcing. Pouring from an empty cup is depleting. And we have spent a long time calling the second one generous.

When you're resourced — and not constantly scrambling and bracing for next month's rent — that's when you have real capacity to give. To offer the scholarship. To hold the free class. To show up for the person who genuinely can't pay.

Pouring from overflow. ✨

It's no single person's responsibility to make care work accessible. It's all of our responsibilities to advocate for the systems that would actually make that possible.

Start to notice it.

Ready to build something that actually sustains you?

…And your community. And the collective. And the planet.

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