The following is the article we wrote for the iLumn8 Women blog and Goddess Living Members community this week. We loved it SO much I decided to share it with the entire iLumn8 community !
When we talk about learning to care for ourselves, we often focus on the personal work—setting boundaries, prioritizing our needs, recognizing our inherent worth. But what happens when the world around us systematically devalues the very concept of care itself?
Read on to hear what Robyn has to say this week... It REALLY hits home.
What is Happening?
What The Recent Nursing Declassification Reveals About How We Value Our Own Care...
Did you know the United States Department of Education recently excluded nursing from its official list of "professional degree" programs as part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." While this might sound like bureaucratic minutiae, it's actually a powerful mirror reflecting back something we at Goddess Living grapple with every day: the radical devaluation of care work—including the care we give ourselves.
The Pattern We know Too Well
Here's what the research shows: fields dominated by women are consistently evaluated as less important and less rigorous than male-dominated fields, regardless of the actual skill or impact required. Teaching, nursing, and social work were once male-dominated professions that commanded respect and good pay. As women entered these fields, wages dropped and prestige evaporated. The work didn't change—the gender composition did.
Sound familiar? This is the same pattern many of us experience internally. We've been taught that our needs matter less. That caring for ourselves is "selfish." That the emotional labor we perform daily—for our families, our workplaces, our communities—is somehow less valuable than other forms of work.
What This Policy Really Tells Us
Consider this: theology qualifies as a professional degree worthy of enhanced educational support, but nursing does not. Veterinary medicine—the care of animals—receives professional designation, while the advanced practice nursing required to deliver babies and serve as primary care providers does not.
These decisions aren't neutral. They tell us that caring for human beings in their most vulnerable moments is worth less than other forms of specialized knowledge. And when 87% of nurses are women, this becomes a statement about whose expertise, whose labor, and whose contributions truly matter.
Ancient Wisdom, Modern Relevance
Here's something powerful to remember: it hasn't always been this way, and it doesn't have to be this way now.
Modern matriarchal studies reveal that societies organized around maternal values—equality, consensus-building, gift-giving, and peacemaking—demonstrate that the devaluation of care work is not natural or inevitable. In gender-egalitarian societies like the Mbendjele BaYaka of Congo and the Agta of the Philippines, care work is recognized as foundational to community survival and flourishing. The artificial divide between "important work" and "women's work" simply doesn't exist.
The lesson? The devaluation of care is a feature of patriarchal social organization, not of human nature itself.
Connecting to Your Personal Journey |
At Goddess Living, we practice reclaiming our worth. We believe that our needs matter, that rest is productive, that caring for ourselves isn't indulgent—it's essential. But this internal work exists within a larger cultural context that constantly undermines it.
Every time you struggle to prioritize your own wellbeing without guilt, you're pushing against centuries of conditioning that says care work—whether for ourselves or others—doesn't really count. Every time you hesitate to invest in your own growth, education, or healing because it feels "too much," you're absorbing the same message this policy sends to nurses: your care doesn't matter as much.
What We Can Do
Individually: Continue your practice of radical self-care with the understanding that it's not just personal healing—it's political resistance. When you honor your needs, you're challenging the belief system that says care work is less valuable.
Collectively: Recognize that when we advocate for policies that value care work—whether it's nursing, childcare, elder care, or mental health services—we're not just helping others. We're changing the cultural narrative that affects how we see ourselves and our own worthiness of care.
Culturally: Demand that emotional labor, empathy, and the ability to manage complex human relationships be recognized not as "innate feminine qualities" but as sophisticated skills developed through education and experience.
The Mirror and the Choice |
The nursing declassification is a mirror held up to our society, reflecting what we truly value—and what, or whom, we do not. It reveals the same devaluation of care that makes it so hard for us to care for ourselves without guilt.
But here's our power: we can reject that reflection. We can remember that other ways of organizing society have existed and continue to exist. We can choose to believe that the work of sustaining life, healing, and maintaining community bonds is not "lesser" work—and that includes the work of sustaining and healing ourselves.
The women doing this sacred work—whether as professional nurses or as women learning to nurture themselves—deserve recognition, respect, and resources.
We deserve nothing less.
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