Why, You Ask?

The summer of 2007, as some of you will recall, was blazing hot and miserable. The drought that sucked the life force out of every living thing in North Carolina felt to me like an expression of the fiery hell that I was stuck inside. With the exception of my mother’s death, it was the lowest period of my life. In fact, it may have been worse, in the acute sense, because I did not find the same support network that I had crashed into when my mom died. I learned a bitter lesson about loyalty and I found out who is willing to walk through hell with me.

For those that have found themselves in similar situations, you know as I do now that fewer people will hold your hand through dark times than will when you are cruising down Easy Street. In all honesty, the friendships that were torn away from me that summer are what truly haunt me.

There was no question that I had to walk away from my marriage. At the moment I realized that truth, I sensed as the box containing my life started to turn upside down in slow motion. I knew that the results were going to be messy, but I had no idea that my life would continue to fall apart for months. And eventually, everything that I had meticulously placed inside that metaphorical box would wind up being shaken out into a giant tangled pile, totally unrecognizable from the illusion of the life that I thought I had been living. People, it was a painful and ugly truth.

I knew I had work to do and there wasn’t a moment to spare. God only knows how much money I spent in therapy in the subsequent months, but I would pay it again ten times over because it saved my life. I learned that in order to live authentically, I had to figure out how to be a conscious member of society. I had to learn how to accept others’ judgments and understand why some of my closest friends couldn’t look me in the face any longer. I had to quit drinking and making detrimental choices for my health across the board. And the hardest thing I had to do was find a way to forgive myself.

Enter massage therapy. My broken body found its way on to a massage table sometime in early autumn. I was bruised down to my core and while I laid there, tears poured out of me, soaking the cotton sheet under my face. As I tried to absorb strength and energy from the bodywork, a voice came over the gentle music that was playing, “Forgive yourself. It is okay to let go. Everyone is doing the best that they can in each moment.” You can’t make up stuff like this. It was exactly what I needed to hear in order to start moving forward instead of continuing to spiral downward.

I got into my car and noticed that the leather was hot on my skin and that my windshield was really dirty. I felt the tiniest seed of hope that perhaps there was a life on the other side of my pain. In that very instant I felt drawn to be a bodyworker, and although it took me a considerable amount of time to dance my way into school, I feel so blessed to be diving into this work. This is where I belong.

Amen.