This month, I’m inviting occupational therapists, assistants, students, and allies to join a special conversation and art-making circle:
🌿 “Reclaiming the Roots of Care: Witches, Midwives, and Nurses—Reviving the Feminine Lineage of Healing through Occupation.”
Together we’ll trace the story of how our field—and the U.S. medical system itself—was built on both the wisdom and the erasure of women, craftspeople, and community healers.
🔥 A Forgotten Lineage of Occupation
Before “occupational therapy” was a profession, it was a practice of communal survival.
Herbalists, weavers, potters, midwives, and caregivers used occupation—the everyday work of hands, heart, and imagination—to restore rhythm and balance in their communities. These were the first practitioners of holistic health. Their medicine was relational, cyclical, and often communal.
But as Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English so sharply remind us in Witches, Midwives, and Nurses, the rise of industrialized medicine and patriarchal institutions criminalized and professionalized care—pushing women, poor people, and folk practitioners out of authority.That legacy persists today in how our systems undervalue both the crafts of care and those who carry them.
🩺 The Occupational Therapy Connection
Occupational therapy was born from the same soil as these folk practices:the moral treatment movement, the arts and crafts movement, and the belief that doing—making, creating, and belonging—heals.
Yet, in today’s medical hierarchies, OT remains one of the most undervalued disciplines—our relational, craft-based, and psychosocial roots often sidelined in favor of “productivity metrics” and “efficiency scores.”We see it in the divestment from community programs, the burnout of first responders, and the shrinking access to care.
Just as women healers were once pushed out of medicine, today OTs, PTs, and nurses face systemic devaluation.It’s the same story—different century.
🌾 Why This Matters Now
We’re living through an era of healthcare collapse and collective burnout.Medicare cuts, staffing shortages, and inaccessible insurance structures are leaving entire communities without care.
When institutional medicine retracts, folk medicine revives.We’re already seeing this—through herbalism, creative arts, community mutual aid, and occupation-based micro-healing collectives.
Occupational therapists have the power to become the bridge between regulated healthcare and ancestral care:to hold dignity, skill, and accessibility where the system no longer reaches.
🌙 What We’ll Explore in This Gathering
In this 90-minute virtual reflection and collective art-making session, we’ll:
🕯️ Read and reflect on excerpts from Witches, Midwives, and Nurses (Ehrenreich & English, 1973).🎨 Create simple symbolic art—our “Window Between Worlds”—to honor the silenced healers in our lineages.🪶 Explore how OT’s founders carried forward folk-craft medicine under the language of “occupation.”💬 Share reflections on how today’s clinicians can reclaim and protect those roots amid healthcare divestment.🌱 Discuss how reviving folk practices—community weaving, kitchen herbalism, neighborhood arts—can complement and extend our scope of meaningful care.
💌 An Invitation to Remember
If you’ve ever felt the ache of doing too much in systems that care too little,or if you’re yearning to reconnect your professional role with your deeper lineage as a healer, maker, and witness—this space is for you.
Join us as we remember that the future of care may not lie in the systems we built, but in the occupations that built us.
On Sunday, November 2 (2:30–4:00 PM PT), I’m hosting a free virtual book circle exploring these roots through the lens of Witches, Midwives & Nurses — a short, powerful feminist classic that uncovers the haunting origins of U.S. healthcare and what they reveal about our present.
You can join live via Skool:
👉 Event link: https://www.skool.com/live/dJLMncrh6hX
🕯️ When: Sunday, Nov 2 | 2:30–4:00 PM PT
🇦🇺 Monday, Nov 3 | 9:30–11:00 AM AEDT
💻 Virtual on Skool
📖 Access the book (quick + free):
• Free PDF
* Text Without Pictures:
• Independent Publisher → https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/witches-midwives-nurses-second-edition
• Kindle/Audiobook → https://a.co/d/1oZu9zO
Come as you are — even if you haven’t read it all. Presence matters more than perfection.
Want to learn more about weaving intergenerational occupational histories! Make sure to check out this podcast episode!
Weaving the Threads of Our Occupational Histories: An Intergenerational Conversation with the Jarvis Family by Dr. Josie Jarvis OT
Read on Substack
References & Further Reading
* Ehrenreich, B., & English, D. (1973). Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Feminist Press.
✨ Closing Reflection
When systems collapse, it’s not the sterile rooms that survive—it’s the kitchens, the gardens, the song circles, and the hands that remember how to make.Occupational therapy has always been a revival movement disguised as a profession.Now is our time to remember.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
josiejarvisot.substack.com
