Day 19: Healing Is a Form of Labor.
Healers are not only doctors. They are herbalists, energy workers, massage therapists, mental health counselors, and kitchen witches. Their work restores what capitalism drains. Healing labor is often invisible and undervalued – but it keeps communities whole.
The Labor of Care, the Power of Healing
Not all work is waged, and not all healing comes in prescriptions. Around the world, healing is practiced in kitchens, gardens, temples, living rooms, sweat lodges, and circle gatherings. The hands that soothe, stir, and hold space often do so without recognition – but their labor is foundational to community survival.
Healing is work. It is energy-expending, wisdom-carrying, emotionally demanding work. In many cultures, healers carry centuries of ancestral knowledge while navigating contemporary trauma, systemic neglect, and cultural erasure.
Healing Traditions Around the World
Herbalists in Appalachia & the African Diaspora
Rootworkers and herbalists have long served as the medical backbone for rural and Black communities across the U.S. South and Caribbean. Using dandelion for liver health or ginger for digestion, these practices blend folk wisdom and spiritual care. Rootwork also served as resistance – preserving African traditions under colonial violence.
Curanderas and Kitchen Witches in Latinx Traditions
Latinx healers known as curanderas/os treat the body, mind, and spirit. Using herbs, prayer, massage (sobadas), and spiritual cleansings (limpias), they address illness as imbalance. Many curanderas are matriarchs whose remedies come from a blend of Indigenous, African, and Catholic practices – and whose kitchens are apothecaries of love.
Massage Therapists and Energy Workers
From Japanese Reiki to Thai bodywork to traditional Chinese acupressure, energy-based healing is global and diverse. These modalities treat stress and trauma not as isolated events but as embodied patterns – needing care, not just cure.
Mental Health Workers & Cultural Counselors
Especially in BIPOC and immigrant communities, therapists who speak the language of culture, family, and faith do profound labor. They dismantle stigma, reframe generational trauma, and offer sanctuary in a society that often denies both care and rest.
Words of Restoration
“Healing is the deepest form of justice.” – Dr. Joy DeGruy
“Rest is not a luxury. It’s a spiritual practice.” – Tricia Hersey, The Nap Ministry
“Healers are those who offer presence when there are no words, and solutions when there is no system.” – Anonymous community care worker
Learn More
- Decolonizing Trauma Work by Renee Linklater – Indigenous perspectives on community healing
- The Herbal Academy https://theherbalacademy.com/ Courses on plant medicine rooted in tradition and ecology
- Therapy for Black Girls – Mental health resources and directories for culturally competent care
- Latinx Parenting – Healing Intergenerational Trauma & Liberating Our Lineages .Culturally rooted parenting, healing, and intergenerational care programs
- Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey – A revolutionary look at rest as a form of reparations and resistance
Reflect & Recenter
- Who has offered you healing when systems failed?
- What healing practices live in your family or ancestral line?
- How can we collectively support and uplift the invisible labor of caregivers and community healers?
Congregational Idea: Host a “Healing Is Work” panel or event featuring herbalists, therapists, bodyworkers, and care workers in your community. Let them be heard, seen, and paid.
A Blessing for the Healers
To the hands that cradle grief,
the voices that calm spiraling thoughts,
the bodies that make medicine from weeds,
and the souls that never stop pouring love into the cracks –
we honor you.
You make the world whole again.
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