Endless Compassion: The Unspoken Burden of Women in Plant Medicine

In the world of plant medicine, women carry an invisible weight—a perpetual expectation of boundless compassion that stretches far beyond the typical emotional labour demanded by society. Here, amidst ceremonies, healing circles, and sacred spaces, women are silently pressured to be everything: healer, listener, nurturer, and emotional repository.

From what I've witnessed, women in the plant medicine world are basically expected to be walking, talking emotional sponges. It's like we've got this invisible sign taped to our backs that says "FREE EMOTIONAL LABOR - UNLIMITED CAPACITY".

Here's the thing: in these sacred spaces that are supposedly all about healing and transformation, women are low-key carrying the entire emotional weight of the universe. Every single unprocessed trauma, every whispered wound, every breakdown—it's all supposed to land squarely on our shoulders. And we're supposed to what? Smile. Hold space. Transmute it like we're some kind of spiritual alchemists. (I do believe in alchemy, by the way, but you can check out Jung's Vol 12 for more on that - it's definitely going on in our offices everyday, but it's not about an expectation for women to absorb and alchemize pain without anyone ever acknowledging the toll it takes).

We're supposed to be this endless well of compassion, never running dry, never showing a crack in our perfectly curated empathy. It's exhausting. And nobody's talking about how f*cked up that is.

Plant medicine communities love to talk about sovereignty, about breaking free from old patterns. But I feel like they've just repackaged the same old patriarchal BS. Women are still doing all the emotional heavy lifting, just now with more sage burning and intentional breathwork.

Our compassion isn't just a skill anymore—it's become a performance. A constant energy exchange where we're giving, giving, giving, and rarely ever getting anything back. And if we dare to show we're human? If we admit we're tired, or over it, or want to get paid an appropriate amount? Suddenly we're not "holding the right energy" or we're "blocking our own healing".

It's a special kind of spiritual gaslighting. This expectation that women should be these bottomless pits of understanding, these magical emotional processors who can take in everyone's pain and transform it without ever acknowledging the toll it takes.

Spoiler alert: We're humans. And humans need boundaries. They need rest. They need to not always be expected to be the living embodiment of maternal energy.

So here's to all the women in plant medicine spaces who are silently saying: "Enough." Who are learning that compassion starts with compassion for themselves and who are breaking up with those who hold the idea that femininity means niceness.

The plant medicine space, for all its rhetoric of healing and personal sovereignty, often replicates the same patriarchal dynamics found in broader society—just with a more spiritualized veneer. Women are still the emotional laborers, the invisible infrastructure upon which transformative experiences are built. It’s a subtle violence—this expectation of endless compassion. A demand that women continue to pour from vessels that are rarely, if ever, refilled.