What Makes You Soften?

When was the last time someone looked into your face and noticed a change?  The kind of change that drew them closer to you and made your connection to them stronger?  This is the story of what is behind the important people in my life noticing that change in me.

I am slowly emerging from a month long dance hiatus.  I got to the point where the classes and the practice felt more like a burden than anything, so in an effort to keep this important part of my life intact, I decided to take a break.  No classes.  Minimal practice, and overall forgiving myself for taking a break because it felt like I needed it.

About a week ago, I pulled my zils out from the back of my desk drawer and spent a few minutes just running through some basic patterns.  The next day, I did a basic drill pattern a few times, and the day after that, I ran through a video to learn a new combination.  That evening, I went to a live music and dancing social event; a monthly event which I had missed for the past several months in a row.  I felt a little rusty and creaky, to be honest, but I did dance.  And I tried to forgive myself for the sloppy technique.

As this has been creeping back into my life, I have noticed something else.  I feel softer.  The shifts and changes of every day tend to land on me with more gentle edges, unlike the angularities of chaos I had been feeling for the last little while.  It's not just the lengthening and occasionally warming days, although that is a big part of this growing softness.  It is the return of dancing, expression through movement and intention of the body.  It sands down the rough places and makes me flexible, in all senses of that word.

As I reflect on the break from and return to dancing, I am grateful to recognize this thing in my life that brings softness.  I think we all have something that makes us more open to the world in general.  A hobby, a passion, a person -- there is something in our lives, that when we allow space for it, makes us soften.  I feel like we are too well trained to be hard -- suspicious, protective, rigid.  There is a time and a place for these things, to be sure, but it is not all the time.  Our softness, openness and vulnerability are what connect us to each other.

So I am asking you this week:  what makes you soften?

ISO the Walkable Life

I can walk to work.  This may not seem like much, but it has changed my life for the better within a week.  Instead of enclosing myself in a rolling metal box and traveling along roads with other rolling metal boxes, now I step out my front door and walk.  I move at the pace of reflection, slow enough to pay attention to what is around me, or to focus inward on whatever is coming up in my day. 

As my world has shifted in this way, I find it increasingly frustrating to actually get into the car and go somewhere.  It is still necessary to use the car now that I am living in a city with minimal public transportation.  Maybe not necessary, if I'm honest, but significantly easier.  I am trying to find more and more ways to make my life walkable. 

More than the physical benefits of walking,  I want to increase the intangible benefits.  When I walk, I have time to completely separate from whatever was holding my attention at home (boxes to unpack, dirty dishes, piles of laundry) and make a calm transition into being at work.  I have more liminal space to let my mind wander through whatever creative projects I have going on right now.  I move through the world on a human scale, able to see and greet people I come across.  And, when I get back home after walking from work, I inevitably have a moment of warm gratitude for my home, my commute, and my life as it is right now. 

As I have been thinking of ways to walk more, I am also reflecting on the history of our use of technology, and how it has changed what we think of as human scale.  As we developed more and faster ways of moving our bodies from here to there (bicycle, car, airplane, rocket, tesseract) we became able to see distance differently.  In my grandparents' time, a long distance relationship meant you had a town or two between you.  Now, that could be as much as a continent. 

And, with the new technology, we have also created new kinds of class barriers.  You see that very clearly with the car in particular.  Having a car, or regular access to a car, opens up opportunities for schooling, jobs, and even everyday errands in myriad ways.  And the deliberate choice to not have a car is in itself a form of privilege.  The privilege of living in a city or a neighborhood where everything you need is within walking distance.  The privilege of good enough health to walk, and the ability to purchase adequate shoes and clothes to walk outside.  The privilege of having walking routes that are safe. 

All of these things live in my mind as I walk to work, or to the store, or to the bank, or to my favorite coffee shop.  Privilege.  Class and economic barriers.  Human scale.  It all lives together with everything else I am doing in my life to create and cultivate balance. 

Lapsarian

This year, I am slated to renew my massage therapy license.  Both of them.  I am licensed in Illinois, where I lived for twenty years, and in Kentucky, my home state which I returned to last year.  When I moved back to Kentucky last year, I had a plan in mind.  I would go back to Chicago every month or so (excluding the worst winter months) and I would see whatever clients I could there, visit friends, and generally enjoy my life as a multi-city massage professional. 

It seemed like a good idea at the time, and for a time, it was a good life.  I absolutely love those liminal spaces that only exist in traveling, such as the time spent in a car going from one city to the next.  I appreciated feeling like I was still part of my friends' lives, especially as I still had more friends to find in Kentucky, where my solitude was often extended enough to become loneliness.  And while my work in Kentucky was minimal and spread out, when I went back to Chicago, I could pack my schedule with a week's worth of clients in a day or two.  I could remember what it was like to be busy and comfortably tired at the end of a day. 

Then winter came, and I put my trips to Chicago on hold for a while.  The winter up there was one of the reasons why I left.  Not the top reason, but definitely in the top ten.  During those months, I made some new contacts in Kentucky, started a more focused avenue for marketing, and generally settled more into my life here. 

And now as the redbud trees are blooming and even Chicago is starting to see little green shoots of things come up, I have a decision to make.  Do I renew my Illinois license?  Is this two-city massage life really going to work for me?  I am looking in my calendar for a few days where I could go up to Chicago and see clients, now that it is (nearly) reliably snowstorm-free there.  I am not finding the days.  Truth be told, I'm not looking all that hard. 

This morning, I took a walk in one of my favorite parks.  Today has the kind of sunshine that makes the trees outlined against the sky look fake.  It is a light so clear that my eyes can barely process it.  I have this free time in the middle of the day because things are still building in my Kentucky practice, and I don't start teaching for another couple of weeks yet.  Tomorrow, I have a full book of clients.  And the day after that?  More space to spend time preparing for the classes I'll be teaching, and to continue working on writing projects I recently re-discovered. 

All this is to say, I will let my Illinois license lapse.  I was holding on to the familiar and safe by keeping it.  Through the winter months, I have given myself the chance to absolutely trust fall into Kentucky.  It feels like home here, with people I love and a practice that is slowly picking up steam.  Even as the Ohio River Valley allergy season begins, I breathe better here, so I'm staying. 

Of course I will be visiting Chicago when I can, but I plan to focus on what's really important when I go there -- my friends.  And dancing.  Lots and lots of dancing. 

Cross Country Drive

Last week I cleaned out the files on an old laptop, and I found a bunch of writing that I thought was lost forever.  It took me a while to remember the time, place and situation that inspired some of it, but the feeling of the poem below came back instantly.  It was written after the last day of a cross-country drive (from Chicago to L.A.) that started a year of living in California.  I was trying to capture that moment where movement -- any kind of movement -- punches through and gives you a way to express what feels inexpressible.

Movement, dance, touch, massage -- all these body-based activities can support and encourage communication.  I see that as a side effect of the work I do, which is why you will find cards and pens in my office to record any ideas that came to you during your massage.

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Bed Diving

Barstow is a ghost town in training.

It rolls up after the desert 

dry concrete roads and boarded up strip malls

sun-bleached sky searing your eyes.

At the hotel, fatigue pulls away for a moment

bares the anger just behind.

We go bed-diving,

leap across the space from the door to the bed

let the springs flip and roll our bodies onto the floor.

The cross-country drive — nearly over —

coated us with fine gray dust.

We bed-dive through it,

and when we can barely breathe for laughing

we lie side-by-side, holding hands
fall asleep hard and deep, still in our sweat-stained clothes.

What Happens If

"What happens if you speak up?" 

An acquaintance recently had reason to ask me this question.  I understood it as a rhetorical question, and I filed it away as soon as I heard it.  We moved on with a conversation about other things, with other questions that needed answers of some kind. 

But then something a little strange happened.  You know how sometimes a song gets stuck in your head, and you have no idea why?  Or maybe you realize it's because the song is connected with an emotion or a memory that requires your attention?  That started to happen with this question, now in first person. 

What happens if I speak up? 

As I was settling in for sleep, gently clearing my mind and relaxing into bed, this question came into my head.  For a few minutes I was wide awake again, trying to think of times I spoke up, and to remember what happened.  I fell asleep before I could come up with anything significant. 

What happens if I speak up?

The next day, reading a book about a completely different topic, I couldn't focus on the words any more.  I put the book aside and attended to the question.  It no longer felt rhetorical, and after a little reflection I realized why. 

Somewhere in that original conversation , my acquaintance and I had made a tacit agreement about how we were going to work together.  Upon reflection, I knew the agreement would not work for me.  In no way was I going to get what I needed from our working relationship unless I made perfectly clear what my expectations were. Unless I spoke up. 

Every time I meet a new client, I have a little spiel I give about how I want and need them to speak up if something about their session needs to change.  I try to remind everyone that this is their massage session, and they have the right and the responsibility to ask for what they want.  (I have the corresponding right and responsibility to work within my scope of practice and ethical guidelines.)  Sometimes, people do ask for changes during the session, and I change what ever I can without going outside my training.  Sometimes I read or hear later that they wanted something to change and had a not-so-great experience because they didn't get what they want. 

And now, with my acquaintance, I was about to have my own not-so-great experience -- unless I could manage to speak up.  So I did.  I'm here to tell you, it was not easy.  It almost felt easier to just let it go and accept what was.  The moment between me speaking up and my acquaintance responding contained all the possibilities of a difficult time.  Anything could have happened. 

But, what actually happens? 

Well, in this case at least, I got to feel and be understood and respected.  My experience changed for the better and more effective work is being done.  And I try to make that happen for every client when they speak up too.  If I know about it, I can change it.  Usually for the better. 

Back in the Classroom

I am thrilled to report that I will soon be teaching again in a general massage therapy program.  I've been geeking out with my brand new Pathology textbook, and making my partner smile with my enthusiastic flights about myelin.  I can't wait.

And yet --

I just completed the piles of new hire paperwork.  It was mostly the usual forms where I write the same information 10 (or more) times over.  This particular stack featured something I've never seen before, however.  In the handbook/acknowledgement of campus procedures document, there were extended instructions about what to do in case of an active shooter on campus.  I suppose I should have expected it, especially so soon after the school shooting in Florida.  Even in so-called adult education, it has become a normal part of the standard paperwork that we educate ourselves about how to behave if someone comes to campus and starts shooting.

I refuse to accept that this is anything other than deeply weird and ultimately unacceptable.  My office, and my classroom, need to be safe places where clients and students can explore and discover and learn.  My whole profession is about the opposite of bodily harm, and I resent that I have to think about and be prepared for it as a real possibility.  Because it is a real possibility.

I am watching the survivors of the shooting in Florida, and other young people across the country, speak out and try to change the world, and I am watching as the solutions they are offered only point to a more heavily armed society.  I am seeing these traumatized children ask lawmakers to protect them, to help them feel safe enough to learn, and I am seeing some lawmakers and others respond by offering them even more fear.  Arm the teachers.  Buy bulletproof backpacks.  I am having trouble finding conversations focused on creating a safe, vibrant, inclusive learning environment.

Except for the conversations generated and continued by the students in Florida and by other young people.  They seem pretty clear about what they want.  They want to learn without fearing for their lives.  They want the lawmakers of this country to value children's lives more than they value their interpretation of the second amendment.  This seems reasonable and fair to me.

I'm going to start teaching again in a few weeks, and I am thrilled, excited, ready to learn from and with students again.  And I am now aware, if I wasn't before, how deeply important it is to create a safe space for my students.  This was always important, but now -- now it's life and death.

High Maintenance

There is a meme floating around that invites you to score how "high maintenance" you are.  It lists a number of different personal care activities and gives each one a points value.  For example: regular pedicures are something like 5 points. 

Cute, right?  Harmless fun? 

Actually, no.  When I thought about this cute little nothing test, it occurred to me that the implied value system was anything but harmless. 

Let's start with the list itself.  When you look carefully, or even more-than-glancingly, at all the items on the list, you see that they all have one very important thing in common.  they are all stereotypical "female" activities.  Not even actual female activities, like getting a pap smear.  They are socially ordained female activities.  (All except one, but I'll get to that later.) Applying makeup.  Having your nails done.  Shopping.  Wearing high heels.  There is a whole lot of forced gender normativity in that little list.  All these stereotypically female activities somehow contribute to how difficult a person you are to be around.  So, somehow, we are supposed to navigate the expectation that, as women, we must somehow want to do these things along with the sanction against being "high maintenance." 

Look at that, another Scylla and Charybdis for the ladies. 

The thing that gets me the most though, is this line: "Gets massages regularly --- 10 points."  So, one of the highest point values is assigned to massage.  Meaning, that getting regular massage is one of the most high maintenance things you can do.  Aside from this irritating me as a massage therapist, this strikes me as an extension of a dangerous assumption women are encouraged to make:  the assumption that time spent on their own care is time somehow wasted.  Or, by extension, that time for self-care takes time away from others who need this woman's time.  (Spouse, parents, children, co-workers, literally anyone) 

This is why I had this recent, far-from-unusual, client experience: a woman in her late 50s came in for her first ever massage.  She was fit, active, and engaged in her community.  She lived a good life, full of love and fulfillment.  She loved her partner, her children, her job.  And yet -- at the end of a massage, she walked out with tears in her eyes, and embraced me, crying into my shoulder.  She told me she had never felt so cared for;  she didn't know she could even experience that.  All that stuff about her wonderful life was absolutely true.  And so were her tears as this new layer of honoring herself was opened up to her. 

So, no, I don't find it cute or harmless when memes like this go around.  Not as long as any human in the world denies themselves a moment of compassion and care because of social expectations. 

Predicting the Future

I am in the process of moving, so I have the pleasure of distracting myself by looking through my old journals.  Here is something I wrote in my business journal in August, 2014:

My Typical Day

I wake up before my 7am alarm.  I have three clients scheduled today, starting at 11am.  I go to some wooded trail or path near water and I run.  I meet my partner at some outdoor space.  We stretch together and then have leisurely coffee/breakfast.  I go to my practice and work with my clients.  I dance, either practice at home or in class.  I go to a coffee shop to write or I spend time teaching a class/workshop either about oncology massage or how to get in touch with your creativity.  I meet a friend or my partner for dinner.  We eat outdoors and enjoy a good conversation and fresh food with lots of vegetables--something we made together.  There is loving touch.  I go to sleep early in a quiet room with windows open to clean air and blinds that will let in the first bits of morning.

I wrote that paragraph in response to an exercise in Be a Free Range Human by Marianne Cantwell.  As I re-read it, I felt a growing rush of excitement.  My life now is getting ever closer to my imagined description of that day.  Until I found that paragraph this morning, I completely forgot that I had ever written it.  It probably left my mind within a week of writing it.  At that time, I was just setting up my first private practice, still managing grief from a recent divorce, and basically using the "just keep moving" approach to life. 

For a while now, I have been able to deliberately plan and direct my life.  I have had the good fortune to make decisions based on reflection and deep thought, rather than panic or fear.  Finding this paragraph feels like confirmation.  Confirmation that there is an enduring thread of intention in my life.  Sometimes I don't see it, but it is there.  When I can take the time to find quiet, and tune in to the things that feed me,  I know I am following that thread.

Of course I don't predict the future.  And there are still days when I barely experience the present.  Then I find little clues like this that remind me -- it's only chaos if I'm not paying attention. 

Emily and the Solitary Life

It is morning, just after the sunrise.  I have washed all the dishes and cleaned the kitchen counter after a healthy breakfast.  I am sitting here with my mug of turmeric and ginger tea, watching the steam rise as it cools.  I am alone, and perfectly content.  In the quiet, I am thinking of Emily Dickinson.

Like any enduring writer's work, I come back to Emily Dickinson at different seasons and find different and new things, not because her work is different, but because I am.  I first became enamored of her work when I was a proto-adult, just entering college.  For me at that time, she represented a kind of rebellious nihilism.  I dreamt of having the strength and courage to reject conventionality the way she did.

As I matured and started to take on and understand subtlety, and the often contradictory nature of our human souls, I understood Emily more as a tortured soul, who wanted human connection and love but lacked the emotional skill to handle it.

Recently, I have come back to an active appreciation of her work after several years of benign neglect.  A growing relationship with my partner sparked the renewed interest, and now I feel like I can finally separate the poems from the life more effectively.  To understand the life that informed the poetry without letting that life overshadow the work.

As many of us do with artists we admire, I felt a little bit of a kinship with Emily Dickinson.  This woman felt deeply and possibly had limited ways to express herself in her time, so she wrote pages and pages of letters and poems.  I am entering a period of exploration and growth into the last half of my life, and I am sensing the truth of the paradox:  in order to connect more deeply with other humans, I need to guard well my solitude.

And here is where, in my more mature understanding of the life of Emily Dickinson, I can see that our paths diverge.  For me, the solitude serves to remind me what is important and necessary about human connection so that I can go out and nurture the relationships that are important and necessary.  In my solitude, I know what it is I need to bring forth, and in my relationships, I find people who help me in that task.

In my current season of Emily Dickinson, I am reading more of her letters to her sister-in-law than her poetry, and thinking about the depth of their friendship.  It is significant to me that even in her iconic solitary life, Emily cultivated and nurtured such a bond.  From a place of solitude, she still engaged in deep human connection.

The sun is all the way up now, and from where I sit, the light lays directly across my face.  I have finished my mug of tea, and nearly finished my writing for this morning.  I have clients in a couple of hours, so I know I need to get up and enter into the world of people.  And I know I can do that with grace, because of this morning's deep, satisfying solitude.

Just Be Nice

There is a loop in a park here where one half of the road is set aside for walkers, runners and other humans not in cars.  The other half of the road is for cars, so it is a one-way drive around the loop.  It's a lovely walk or run through one of my favorite parks, so I go there as often as possible.  Here is what happened the other day:

I was walking around the 2 1/2 mile loop, and since it was a warm day after about a week of deep freeze, so were lots of other people.  Shortly ahead of me was a guy who was going for a run.  He slowed down towards the top of one of the long hills on the loop, so I caught up within a few feet of him.  This was near a parking area.  One car pulled out of the parking area and started to slowly drive on the side of the road meant for walkers/runners and whatnot -- as if this was still a two-lane, two way road.  The man ahead of me scooted out of the way.  he made a rude gesture at the car and glared at the driver as she slowly rolled past him.

As I walked up to the car, the woman in the passenger seat rolled down the window and asked, "Excuse me ma'am, is this a one way street?"

I said, "Yes.  It is."

The woman thanked me warmly, and the car slowly turned to the right direction as I continued to walk.  When the car passed me again, going the correct way this time, she thanked me again and waved.

Just another random encounter, but I kept thinking about it.  Finally I think I understand why.  This small moment, this seemingly throwaway encounter, illustrates in microcosm a larger problem which we see the results of every day.  This problem of our divisions, and the cruelties (small and large) we inflict on each other because of them. 

Kentucky is a largely rural state, with a few larger cities.  I live in the largest metropolitan area of the state.  I have heard it called the "blue bubble in a red sea."  This one small moment in the park illustrated, for me, the ways we fail to understand each other and therefore miss opportunities to really communicate. 

The people in the car were visiting the city.  The county on their license plate was one in the eastern corner of the state, in the mountains.  The man who was running saw them only as an annoyance, an obstacle to his pursuits.  What I did was not especially kind or unique.  I will admit I was a little annoyed at first too.  It only took a moment of openness to answer a question, human to human.  At the time, I felt a little embarrassed by what I saw as the woman's excessive thanks.  Later, it made me wonder if their "city" experience had been so full of harshness that a polite exchange seemed so special. 

See, I know some smart people.  And some of these smart people have shaken their heads in confusion and wonder at the "backwards" nature of some of "those people out there."  Meaning, usually, people who live in rural communities, or people whose politics are different, or people who are mistrustful of intellectuals.  I have been guilty of this myself. 

This one small moment in the park brought it home for me, though.  If you were a person whose contact with "big city" or "intellectuals" usually involved someone glaring at you, making rude gestures, talking down to you and in other ways making fun of you for your lived experience -- well, wouldn't you learn to mistrust intellectuals too? 

There are complexities and layers and oceans of social and economic factors that put each of us in the lives we have now.  Our differences are legion.  But our sameness is still there. 

It only took a moment to speak politely to someone who just had a question about the way things worked in an unfamiliar place.  It only took a second to be nice.  I know I didn't change the social and political landscape of anything, but maybe I helped change some one's mind about the city.  I hope I did, anyway.  And I hope we can all take every moment to let go of labels and just be nice.

The Bardo

I recently read the amazing book, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.  It was unique, touching, haunting and heartbreaking -- all the things I love about fiction.  This post is not a book review, I will just say that I loved it and I think you should read it too.  (And get your copy from a library or local independent bookstore.)

Since I finished the book, I have been thinking a lot about the concept of the bardo and how I can carry that idea into my life.  Briefly, the bardo is the intermediate space between death and rebirth, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  When I was trying to learn more about it, I found this wonderful comic book guide to the bardo.  I suggest you check it out for a primer on the concept.

The ideas that stuck with me in all my reading on this topic were that the bardo is not just one "place," there are multiple manifestations.  Several commentators also suggested that the concept of the bardo could be expanded to apply to any transition, not just the transition from life to death and whatever comes after.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately -- that there are several bardos which apply to any life transition.  It is, for me, a useful metaphor to describe how I was feeling at multiple points in my life where things changed and I felt completely out of myself for a while.  The transition of moving to a new city.  The transition from being in a long marriage to being single.  The transition from being single to being back in a loving, supportive relationship.

At the same time, I have been re-reading one of my favorite Lynda Barry books, One! Hundred! Demons!  The book is autobiographical, and it goes through the moments of life that hurt you, both small and not-so-small.  At the end of the book, Lynda Barry has a short how-to section, where she invites you to draw your demons, to give them shape and features as a way of removing their power.

See, there are demons in the bardo as well.  And demons in every transition.  Maybe they aren't the specific kinds of spirit manifestations as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Maybe they are things like grief, self-doubt, fear, and anger.  And maybe Lynda Barry is onto something when she suggests you draw your demons, give them a face.  Isn't it somehow easier to know what you are facing, to be able to call it by name somehow?  This is another thing I understood about the bardo -- that the dying person finds peace when they are able to recognize the true nature of the things manifested before them.

So, if I can draw (or name, or recognize) the demons that appear in every life transition, I can release their hold on me.  I can maybe even strike up a friendship with them and learn the lessons.  My friend grief helps me recognize and articulate what is precious in my life now.  My friend self-doubt teaches me where to find my deepest skills.  My friend fear shows me where I still need to heal.  My friend anger drives me to act for a better, more loving world.

As with everything, I am trying to bring this understanding to every client interaction, indeed every human interaction.  Recognize that we are all, at some level, in some bardo, facing or running from some demon.  Deal gently and gracefully with each other, as we navigate our own transitions.

(And forgive me for my limited and very beginner knowledge of what the bardo is and what it represents in Tibetan Buddhism.  If you want to learn more about the Tibetan Buddhism, Louisville have a great resource in the Drepung Gomang Center for Engaging Compassion. )

Working Wounded

A long time ago, when I was still on the track to become an academic, I spent a few years working my way through grad school by teaching English Composition.  Before my first semester of teaching, the grad school did make an effort to make sure we grad students were at least a little ready to manage a classroom.  We took a summer seminar where we talked about pedagogy, syllabus craft, assignment design and other teacher-ish things.  I remember almost none of it.

I do remember one thing, though.  In the midst of a discussion of attendance and absenteeism, our gangly gray-haired professor jumped down from his perch on the edge of the desk and glared at us with his steely blue eyes.  "People," he said, "I need ya to work WOUNDED.  If you got a cold or whatever, you gotta just power through and hold yer class.  Ya gotta work WOUNDED, people."

Believe me, we did.  There were moments in our shared grad student office where people would be collapsed on their desks, trying to gather up just enough strength to get to their classroom and power through an hour or so.  There were days when our whole lesson plan was "go sit in small groups so I can sit at the desk so I won't pass out."  It got pretty brutal sometimes.

I am so gratified now to work in a career and with humans who know that what you do when you are wounded is heal.  You rest, recover and recuperate.  You most especially do not, under any circumstances, offer to share any potentially contagious thing with your clients.  You model appropriate self care.  I am so gratified to know that now.

Except for the times I don't.  Recently, I scheduled a trade with another local practitioner.  I was excited to learn more about her modality and to maybe cultivate another referral source for mine.  As the day of her appointment with me approached, I was nursing a mild cold.  Not enough to stop any but the most strenuous of my activities.  On the day of her appointment, I had reached the point where I was past feeling sick, but still coughing and draining pretty impressively.

What I should have done was call her that morning (at the latest) and ask to reschedule the appointment.  What actually happened was much less professional.  She called me about twenty minutes before her appointment time, asking for directions.  Hearing the cold still in my voice (really, you couldn't miss it) she gently suggested that if I wanted to reschedule, it would not be a problem for her.  So we rescheduled the appointment for the following week. 

I have been thinking about that exchange, and how it highlights the need for continual self-vigilance and review.  Somewhere along the way, I learned only too well how to work wounded.  With clients who were not immune-compromised, I had started to drop my guard.  I am embarrassed that I did not nudge myself to make the right decision, and I am immensely grateful that she modeled appropriate self-care for me. 

In grad school, the concept of working wounded came accompanied by the threat of losing our scholarships and stipends if we missed a day of teaching.  In my life now, the only threat that comes with working wounded, is the threat of remaining wounded and missing the chance to heal properly.  My fellow practitioner reminded me of that.  I am humbled, grateful, and looking forward to working together when I am all the way well again.

Let it Be

I started this blog to uncover a quiet but integral part of who I am -- a writer.  As such, it is extremely satisfying to see the little numbers next to each post that shows how many times the page was viewed.  Even better is when someone responds to what they read.  And best of all, when someone I love and admire talks about how my writing struck a chord for them.  

This happened recently with my friend and fellow oncology massage therapist, Lucy Allen.  She shared a paper written for a course she is taking, and in it she quoted a section from one of my posts.  Here is what I wrote back to her (with a link to the referenced post):

Lucy!
I am humbled and grateful that you chose to include something I wrote in your paper.  Thank you.  It's wonderful to know that what I write is helpful in any way. 
I have a reflection on what I wrote -- reading it again through your eyes, what strikes me is that I could have done a much better job of letting that client have all of her feelings.  I think I was maybe too quick to go into the "You will be empowered!!" space before she had time to really sit with her guilt/shame/whatever.  

And this is another great thing about writing and sharing -- I get to see my blind spots.  When I first wrote that post, I was all hopped up on a self-acceptance kick, ready to take down body-shaming in all its vile guises.  What I failed to notice: maybe my own crusading was taking away a moment for my client to really have and sit with her emotion.  Instead, I swooped in, biases blazing.  

I am savoring the process of becoming aware of this.  Like most humans who sometimes do clumsy things, I was trying to act from a place of love and compassion.  I forgot to also act from a place of supporting and serving my client in her moment, rather than supporting my own agenda.  So, my dear friend Lucy, thank you for the compliments, but most of all, thank you for sparking the lesson.  

In the words of the incomparable Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Work v Service

I recently read this article, in which the author talks about things we need to recover from every day.  It's another in a long series of posts, articles, books and talks about how we do too much and need to settle the heck down so we can hear our own quiet voice of truth.  The first item on his list of things we need to recover from: work. 

So, this made sense to me, and it also made me bristle a little.  Because I love my work.  I'm in a place right now where I don't yet have enough of it, so every moment of work is precious to me.  But I am also aware that when I had my full practice in Chicago, especially during the short period where I was working at four different places, I needed to schedule in serious self care time.  I don't want to call it recovery time, because to me that implies some sort of harm was done to me by the work.  I think of it more as integration time, where I can finally take a minute to examine all the moments of the time at work and distill them into knowledge and lessons I can carry.  Maybe even turn some of those moments into stories that go up on this blog. 

It surprised me that I reacted so strongly to the idea of recovery from work.  It is a perfectly sensible idea, and I would have been all about it when I worked in I.T. or Marketing.  (Yes, I did both of those things.)  The difference for me now is how I perceive my work.  It is not so much work to me as it is service.  The work I do to pay my bills and put delicious vegan food on my table is also directly linked to what I feel is my purpose as a human being.  I realize this makes me incredibly fortunate. 

I used to work for a living.  I worked in several different capacities, and some of those I even enjoyed.  Still, I always had a sense of not really doing anything that would inch the world forward in a more compassionate direction.  Now, though, every day that I work I know I have added a small nudge in that direction.  Every day that I work, at least one person feels a little better because of me. 

I'm not thinking is grand scales when I think about service.  When I try, it become overwhelming and then I truly do need a moment to recover.  The things I want to change are astronomical, pervasive, and require long patience.  True service, though, can happen in an instant.  When I let my client cry because she needs to.  When I remind the person in front of me that no part of their body is "bad" or "wrong."  When my client comes into his massage with a headache, and out of it with no headache and the ability to turn his head all the way to the right.  It's not going to change all the things i see as big-level problems, but it is going to fulfill my purpose. 

So, I don't need to recover from work, because for me, work is service and it nourishes me.  I do, however, need time for reflection and integration.  Which I am getting ready for right now.  I am writing this on December 31, about to go into my annual tech shut-down and future planning retreat.  You will be (are) reading this the day after I get back, hopefully full of ideas, plans, clarity and energy.  Ready to work.  And to serve. 

Happy New Year, Dear Ones.

detail from a gorgeous commission completed by my talented friend Maike of Maike's Marvels.  Check out her work.

Imposter Syndrome

There are a few things I think I do very well.  Clean a kitchen counter.  Make a green smoothie.  Parallel park.  And provide a supportive, compassionate oncology massage. 

Recently, I applied for a part time job working exclusively with people during and after their cancer treatment.  I had no doubt that I was qualified for the job.  I had met the hiring manager before and she had encouraged me to apply for any openings they had.  The interviews went very well, I thought.  All in all, I looked forward to good news and a little financial sigh of relief. 

About a week later, I received the news that I had not been hired for the position.  I immediately began my retroactive storymaking.  Of course I could sense that the hiring manager and I didn't quite gel, I just didn't want to dwell on it before.  Come to think of it -- it did seem like she had made a decision well before she talked to me. 

In short, I was trying to come up with a story that felt somehow better than what I really felt.  Because what I really felt was that I was (am) a complete imposter, deceiving no one but myself with my ridiculous confidence. 

And, really, if I was wrong about this one thing, wasn't I wrong about everything else too?  Had I ever really bacteria tested my kitchen counter?  Maybe all those people who tried one of my green smoothies were just being polite.  And when was the last time I had managed to parallel park in a truly tight spot? 

I suspect that far too many of you recognize this syndrome.  Maybe you're in the middle of it right now.  Maybe, like me, you feel it like a movable wall that magically appears five steps into every single one of your new ideas.  Maybe, like me, you are letting the disappointment obscure the lesson. 

Although the imposter syndrome is strong with me (and is fed by the far more difficult practice-building tasks ahead of me,) I am still in touch with my rational brain.  She knows things.  Like -- I am supremely qualified for that job, and I am not the only person who is.  Or -- my interview follow-up game is pretty weak, so perhaps I hurt myself in that way.  Even -- the more difficult, self-employed path is much harder, but it also brings me more overall happiness. 

Rejection sucks.  Any kind of rejection.  And rejection for something that I know (I just know!) I would be great at -- this feels particularly unfair.  Somewhere in there, I know that this is one person's decision about one job.  I have all these stories -- all these true stories -- of people who felt better after seeing me.  I have a conviction that I am doing the work I am meant to do, or I will be when I get my practice built up a bit more. 

The movable wall still appears, and I am learning that it is made of styrofoam.  Or biodegradable corn-based materials, if you prefer.  The point is, I can kick that sucker down any time I please.  And I'm ready.  Almost.  Just another thin layer of confidence, and it's going down.   

I'm keeping the lessons, though.  You can bet that if I ever interview for another job, my follow up game will be on point.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Let's talk about fairy tales for a minute.  Princes and princesses and happily ever after.  Trolls under bridges outwitted by young men who follow the advice of old crones in the woods.  Enchanted castles, apples, spinning wheels.  Magic around every corner.

When I was little, I had an illustrated book of Grimm's Fairy Tales.  I would spend hours poring over every page, getting absolutely lost in the details of the illustrations.  The stories were, of course, sanitized versions of the original tales, but they still contained a hint of the original menace of the Brothers Grimm.  Like salted dark chocolate, this little hint of danger/salt made the sweet stories so much better than other, completely scrubbed versions I found.

Now, as an adult women who has lived through the falseness of easy "happily ever after," I have a love/hate relationship with most of the stories.  The one that still draws me in, though, is the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses.  If you haven't heard of it, you can get the full version here.  Here's a very short version:

A King had twelve beautiful daughters.  He locked them in their room every night as they slept, but still every morning their shoes would be completely worn out as if they had been dancing all night.  The King asked for help to discover their secret, offering one of his daughters as the reward.  Some people tried and failed.  One man, taking the advice of an old crone he encountered in the woods, discovered their secret.  The princesses followed an enchanted pathway to a castle every night, where they danced all night, then traveled the pathway back to their room before dawn.  The man who solved the riddle married one of the princesses and they lived . . . . well, you know.

The part of this story that draws me in every time is the period from 12-6am, when the princesses are away dancing all night, dancing with such abandon that they completely wear through their shoes.  See, I can't resist an unspoken back story.  How did the princesses find the enchanted pathway?  Why were they locked up in their room at night in the first place?  What compelled them to go dancing every night?  And what in the world did they do after their secret was discovered?

I've begun to see this story as a kind of metaphor for things in my own life.  There is, first of all, the literal dancing.  I started dancing on a regular basis about four years ago.  I make it important in my life, even if no one ever knows the dancing is happening.

The more lasting metaphor for me, though, is the pursuit of what brings happiness, the opening of a pathway that leads to an entirely new world.  A few years ago, around the same time I started dancing, I decided that things that scare me are things I need to try.  I have not regretted any of the scary things I tried, even if they did require a little bit of resetting afterward.  Lately, the scary thing that has opened up an enchanted pathway is the move back to Kentucky.  I am in the process of discovering and re-discovering work that I love.  Most of the discoveries are still in the 12-6am place, waiting for the right time to be brought into the open.   Meanwhile, I am doing the work, wearing my metaphorical shoes to metaphorical bits, and enjoying every minute.

Watch this space for updates on what's going on with my work.  Fairy tales aside, I guarantee any news will come from me, and not from some prince who magicked his way into my private work spaces.

(this picture is a page from Buddha's Brain by Dr. Rick Hanson.  It's a great read.)

Synchronized Swimming

There is a neck hold I teach sometimes in Oncology Massage workshops.  It requires you to gently slide both hands under the client's neck while they lie face up in the table.  Once your hands are in place, you maintain a relaxed, gentle hold, encouraging your client to relax their neck.  It is surprisingly effective.  All the therapist has to do is sit still, gently holding and patiently waiting. 

The hardest part about this technique is actually getting into position.  Ideally, the therapist can get their hands into position without moving the client's head around, especially if they are working with someone in active treatment.  I tell my students to think of synchronized swimming, where what you see is all grace and calm and softness, while there is absolute flailing chaos underneath the surface.  At this point, I demonstrate getting into position.  I pull the most ridiculous face I can, while my hands move with grace, calm and softness.  Everyone laughs.  Almost everyone understands. 

What we do is a lot like synchronized swimming.  Everything on or near our clients' bodies should bring only comfort, while beyond the boundary of our clients' space, we may be frantically wondering where we put the lotion bottle, realizing we forgot the bolster, or just letting any invasive thought from the world outside the massage room pass through so we can be present in the space again.  Grace, calm and softness in the air, flailing chaos underneath. 

We ask too much of ourselves when we try to imagine that everything we do in our massage room is done as a beautiful, never-seen dance.  The place where we hold the peace and the power of massage is the space around our client.  Beyond that, there is work to support that space.  It started on our first day of massage school, struggling through anatomy, physiology and technique.  It continues every time we take continuing education, working hard to integrate new knowledge into that which is known and comfortable.  It is there every day, as we work to shield our clients from the little human mishaps that happen in every life.  (Like the countless number of times I have completed a massage with my glasses slid all the way down my nose because I couldn't get them properly pushed up.) 

We owe it to ourselves to embrace and learn to love the chaos, because the chaos makes the peace work.  We owe it to ourselves to thank the work and the chaos for making the dance possible.

Just a Minute

The natural foods store has a new employee.  He is clearly of retirement age, which isn't so unusual.  This is one of the things I love about local businesses -- that they often hire people who might not be the "expected" employee of their kind of business.

I went into the store on what was, I think, his second or third day of work.  Long enough to be left alone to do his tasks, not long enough that he was entirely comfortable or efficient with them.  He happened to be working at the register that day.  As I was shopping, I noticed how he would take his time doing his job, carefully making sure everything was accurate, and taking a moment to actually talk to the people coming through his line.  He said "How are you" in a way that invited a true answer and a conversation, not in that dismissive, I've-done-my-duty way that most people say it.   He took a little longer than most of the other cashiers, and he tried to make a true and real connection with every person who came through his line.  Being the way many of us humans are when we get all task focused, some of the people who went through his line did not appreciate his friendliness.  While everyone was polite on the surface, there was often an air of "just get it done so I can get out of here" subtext.  I will admit that I was feeling particularly task-focused that day, so I kind of dreaded taking my few things to the register.  It took a conscious effort to make eye contact and smile back, but I did it.

About a week later, I set up my massage chair at the same store to raise money for a local charity.  He was working that day as well.  From my spot, I could see all the registers.  I could practically see the whole store, but the point is that I could see him working.  He had the same manner, the same friendliness, and the same speed as he did the first day I saw him.  He was still clearly learning the job, and still taking pleasure in starting a conversation with every person who came through his line.

I stayed for a couple of hours, met and massaged a few people, and raised some money.  I packed up to leave and decided to pick up a few things while I was there.  I got my items and went to his checkout line.  He asked me, as he did everyone else, "How's your day?"  He commented on my chair and talked about how he loved to get massages.  So I chatted a bit, then I asked him how his day was going.  And I really meant it.  I wanted to hear.  He told me that every day was a good day, every day he was standing upright was a good day.  I must have looked a little quizzical, because he went on to tell me he had three open heart surgeries in the past couple of years, so he was grateful for every single day.  I smiled, we shook hands, and I went on my way.

It was a gorgeous afternoon, lovely bright sun slanting across the trees with their remaining leaves.  Warm enough to walk outside, cool enough to sit close to someone.  I started my drive home through the park -- the long way -- so i could enjoy a bit more of the day.  About five minutes into the drive, it hit me:

Three.

Open heart surgeries.

Three of them.

Three times, this man had his body invaded and literally broken open to try and fix something.  Three times, he had fallen asleep with the very real and probable idea that he would not wake up again.  Twice he had done this and gone through recovery and maybe thought he would never have to do it again, but he did.

And here, on the other side, here he was working at a natural foods store and trying to make connections with people who mostly just wanted to finish their tasks.  Here, I thought, was a man who learned the very hard way how important it is to wait.  Just a minute. And see the person in front of you.

And this is another thing I love about local businesses.  Because they hire from outside the "norm," every visit is the potential to learn something valuable.  If you wait.  Just a minute.

To Be Seen

Quick survey question:  How many articles have you seen on your social media feed asking some version of this question: How do I relationship?

My answer is well into the double digits.  It's a good question, and, I'm worried, one we are getting worse at answering as we retreat further away from collaborative living.

What I mean by collaborative living is this -- living in such a way that we spend more time talking to people in front of our faces, where we use more voices, hands and facial expressions than emojis.  But even more than that, living in such a way that we know our neighbors and we know the people who own the businesses in our area.  Shopping locally, caring about the whole street where we live and not just the portion surrounding our possessions.

Lots of people write more informed words on this topic than I do.  Today I am thinking about just one aspect of it that interests me.  I am worried that we are losing the skill of being seen.   I am talking very deliberately in the passive voice.  It is not so much our ability to see and know other people that I've been thinking about, but our own ability to let ourselves be seen and known.

Our online lives are carefully curated, often by well-meaning but careless gatekeepers.  I mean, of course, ourselves.  We choose what to share and show and how to frame it.  In doing so, we necessarily exclude a large portion of our reality.  We tell ourselves this is because not everything we are is for everyone to know.  And we are right, but we are also losing a valuable skill.  The skill of letting someone see.

There are truths about myself that I don't like.  But they are true, and they are pieces of all that goes into myself.  Recently, I have had the great honor to meet friends who really want to see all of my pieces, and I am realizing I don't know how to do that.  I mean, I can open up, I can show the whole picture, but I fear I have lost the knack of handling their reaction, of not taking personally those things which are not personal.  And someone else's reaction to things about me that are true -- those are not mine to take personally.

I see this often with some of my clients.  Even though I work with soft tissues, everyone brings their whole self into the room, and their emotional, spiritual and intellectual truths sometimes come out through the movement of their bodies.  If I see someone often enough, I can start to see the changes in their lives just in their gait or facial expression.  It's not magic.  It's observation, something I've practiced for as long as I've been practicing massage.  I'm not in the habit of commenting on it, but I am in the habit of seeing.  Because of this, I have been fortunate enough to see how powerful it can be for a person when someone just sees.

Quick story:  At the last place I practiced, I had a client I saw every week for a few years.*  With that kind of continuity, you start to learn a bit about each other's lives, and you start to notice things.  She had what most of us would call a good life -- lots of love and friendship and fulfilling work.  She was (and remains) a seeker -- of truth and wisdom.  Sometimes this caused her some anxiety, especially as the world seemed o grow less compassionate in general.  Most weeks, her massage was "easy."  She had no chronic pain or injury, and she did not like aggressive work.  It was a gentle hour of meditation for both of us. 

One day she came in and she was different.  I only knew because I had known her for so long.  She spoke less and in a flatter tone.  She moved slower.  Her whole demeanor seemed heavy to me.   She asked for the same kind of work, and I did a similar massage.  I felt like I moved slower and stayed still more often in response to her own heaviness.  After the massage, she asked for some water and I brought it to her.  We sat in silence in my office for a moment, breathing together.  I made eye contact with her.

"Today is hard," I said. 

She looked startled for a moment, then she dropped her head and nodded.  In a few seconds I realized she was crying.  I walked over to her and gave her a hug.  We sat and held each other for a moment while she let all her tears happen.  When she was done crying, she thanked me, nodded, and walked out.  Not completely released, but a little more quickly and a little lighter than when she walked in. 

I don't know what made that day hard for her.  That's not the point.  The point is that she was seen, and it gave her space to cry.  I believe and hope she felt that space was safe and welcoming. 

In my own life, I have much to learn about being seen and living in my truth.  I'm starting by recommitting to daily creativity, to reconnecting to my first love (writing) and trying to find again that love of how words go.   I am also trying to risk putting more writing out in the world where anyone can find it -- can see.

And I am also recommitting to my massage practice.  While it has been a good choice to move back home, it has also been (and continues to be) terrifying, which makes it harder for me to be truthful about the kind of work I do and the kind of work I excel at.  Fortunately for me, those two things are pretty much the same. The impulse in a new(ish) home with a new practice to build is to take on all clients.  To fill my books by any means necessary.  This would, I know, exhaust my spirit.  And with an exhausted spirit, I will forget how to see, and I will never learn to be seen. 

Integrity and Feminine and Masculine

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to this blog post by Kendra Cunov and asked about my thoughts.  In it, Kendra talks about the concept of integrity, and what she perceives as the differing masculine and feminine definitions of it.  

I struggle with some of the same things she seems to be struggling with -- the whole concept of masculine and feminine qualities and how those are perceived in different aspects of my life.  Especially in business, where reward seems to go to those things labeled as "masculine," which are inherently false to my nature.  

For me, though, it is a problem of language and false categories.  We have only these two words to categorize, and they bring with them all the history of politics and inequitable social structures that has nothing to do with our truest humanity.  

My initial reaction to her post, though, was about the word integrity.  And her definitions of "masculine" and "feminine" integrity which follow.  My understanding of the definition of integrity has to do with being true to one's own internal moral compass, which intersects with, but is different than, "doing what you say you're going to do.” (Her description of society’s definition of masculine integrity.)   But what she fails to point out is that society has the definition of integrity wrong.  (Yes, I looked it up.)  Here are the official definitions of integrity:

1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.  
2. the state of being whole and undivided.

If I am understanding her correctly, she almost seems take the first definition of integrity as the masculine and the second as the feminine.  I find this limiting.  

I really connected with her concept of finding one’s range as opposed to finding balance.  To me, the definitions of integrity relate more to her idea about finding the range in our masculine and feminine qualities.  I think she is exactly right when she says that balance doesn’t really exist.  

I feel this in my body as I am exploring different dance forms.  In one form, balance means a strong, wide stance with a strong downward feeling.  In another, it means a lightness and a strong upward feel.  And in a third, it means the moment where you find the just-before-falling place and embrace the awkwardness of that feeling.  So in these dance forms, we aren’t talking about balance so much as we are talking about the set point which suits the dance’s aesthetic.  The photographable moment that would make almost anyone recognize, “Ah, this is a (insert style here) dancer.”  

The blog post has me thinking more about how I talk to my massage clients about balance.  I talk about someone’s muscles feeling balanced, about balancing time for self care with the rest of life, about the way our head balances on the spine.  But am I really talking about balance as a n achievable end point, or am I talking about a way of moving through the world with a strong sense of yourself, physical, emotional and spiritual?  I am thinking that I need to repackage every one of these “balance moments” in the service of what I really want for my clients — for them to take charge of their own wellness in their own way.   

The first thing I want for all of us, or at least one of the first things, is to find a way beyond the limiting idea of masculine and feminine qualities.  I want to lead us all first to an agreement that qualities are just qualities.  They are not commentary on how we inhabit our gender.  Of course I know that masculine and feminine are the constructs and not the gender.  In this country, though, the parallels are so close that it’s hard to separate.  For example, I have a firm handshake.  I also have long hair and I like to wear skirts and jewelry.  So, for some, my firm handshake (masculine) seems incongruous with my appearance (feminine.)  This makes no sense to me.  I’m a massage therapist.  I have strong hands.  I’m not trying to project masculinity, I’m just trying to let someone know I’m glad to meet them.  

We are still humans, though, and as such we find comfort in categories.  We seek structure as a way to understand our world.  Realistically, I don’t see this masculine/feminine coding of behaviors ending in my lifetime.  But, circling back to Kendra’s post, if we live in integrity, the real, unassigned definition of integrity, I think we can at least start down that road. If we start by being honest, and continue by striving to be whole, what need to we have to categorize the behaviors that are part of our humanity?