Massage: Staying In the Game

Dawn at Pearl Lake - August, 2024

​​May: the time of year in Steamboat when things are a little quieter, AKA mud season. Thankfully there’ve been enough days of rain and snow to earn that name, every drop potentially staving off the imminent fire season following the less than lackluster winter snowfall. 

The quiet around town is oh so welcome, but the quiet in my massage practice is disconcerting. Busy weeks and lulls are a part of the normal rhythm, but the busy weeks this past winter paralleled the snowfall - less than the kind of busy I’ve come to expect.

And so, as has happened in prior slow periods that extend for longer than I think they should (I start panicking after a day or two), my go-to coping mechanism is to have an existential crisis. What am I even thinking, having my own business? What am I doing? Who am I? Why am I here? 

An attractive solution in the midst of this mind chaos is: “I know, I’ll go get a job with a reliable paycheck and benefits, and sit on my can behind a desk all day.” After breathing into the proverbial paper bag, I calm down and remember why I do massage therapy.

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I earned my BA in Cultural Anthropology, thinking I’d head somewhere exotic to study some fascinating people. As anthropologists do. The Amazon Basin, Africa, Central America…all intrigued me. Instead, I got a position in a legal office, saved up some dough, and headed off to travel Europe, where I planned to end up in Barcelona and establish myself prior to the ‘92 Summer Olympics. 

Instead (seeing a pattern here?), after about six weeks of solo travel I decided I really wanted to do Ironman, a triathlon consisting of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run. So I returned to the U.S., got a job at a sporting goods store to support my athletic habit, and did my first Ironman.

Fast forward to the summer of 1996. My Great Aunt Dorie in Maryland passed that summer just before I moved from Steamboat to Boulder. Aunt Dorie was a delightful whimsical sweetheart of a person. When I was a kid I would beg to wash dishes in her kitchen because she made it such fun…something about oodles of soap bubbles and a literal spoonful of sugar when I had the hiccups, which was very often. The last time I saw her was a year before she passed, and she was in a nursing home. She had suffered a stroke, and was completely dependent on nurses and aides for her care. She could not communicate. Her once bright, twinkly blue eyes were dim, and the only bit of color in her tiny room was a small flower bouquet and a little mobile hanging above her bed. I left there heartbroken and bereft - how could magical Great Aunt Dorie, whom I loved so much, be in this situation? Somehow, in my sadness, I had the conviction that if she could be given compassionate touch, it would change the quality of her remaining life. Since we lived so far apart this was only a wish, so when she died I thought about how I could make a difference in other people’s lives, even if I could not have done that for her.

I didn’t pursue that right away. It took a second person passing to seal the deal. Surprisingly, that person was Princess Diana. I despised the whole royal wedding coverage, and detested the in-your-face tabloids at the grocery checkout blaring the latest sordid scandal of the monarchy. But when she died in August, 1997, it struck me as so wasteful that a woman - a mother - who’d been doing such meaningful work in the world (with HIV/AIDS, landmines, and the homeless) was now gone. Princess Diana’s death was the impetus for me to make some kind of a difference myself. I enrolled in the Boulder College of Massage Therapy and graduated from the 1000-hour two-year-long night program with my certification in December, 1999.

Eventually I landed a position doing massage therapy at a continuum-of-care facility in Boulder. The thirteen years there gave me the opportunity to work with many different people, young and old, and many different conditions. People with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s patients, folks recovering from surgery, from illness, people in wheelchairs, with chronic and acute pain, and staff who were athletes. Several clients were residents who transitioned all the way through that continuum during the time I worked with them: from independent living, to assisted living, to skilled nursing, and sometimes to end of life. 

One of these clients was a woman named Florence, who transitioned through those phases with humor and happiness. Florence wore bright colors and had a zest for life. She loved to swim, to dance, and to paint. And as she progressed, those things that she loved to do became the things she used to do. Her response to this was unfailing graciousness. When I went to her apartment in assisted living, we’d walk to the peaceful greenhouse room so she could sit among the growing plants and gurgling little fountain for her massage. When I went to her room in skilled nursing, she would tell me at least once per visit how blessed she was to live there. When she had a stroke and could no longer get out of her bed without assistance and could no longer communicate, I would put on her music and massage her neck, shoulders, arms and hands, legs and feet as she lay in her bed. One day while I massaged her hand, she made a little movement with the music. On her lips was a little smile, and I thought I heard the slightest whisper of a hum. Florence was dancing.

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Do I believe I’ve made a difference in people’s lives through massage work? I do. When someone’s pain is relieved, when they perform their sport better, when their anxiety is calmed, when their grief has a little more space, when they sleep through the night on their massage days, when they move better so they can do what they want to do - I believe that these people’s lives are made somewhat better through this work. I can’t change the really hard stuff, like dear Aunt Dorie having a stroke, or Florence not being able to swim. But I can bring moments of good. And maybe, at least on some days, that is enough. Certainly enough to keep me in the game.