The Weight We Carry

This is not going to be a typical blog post. It's not about muscle pain. It's more about life experiences and the weight we often carry as we navigate life's responsibilites, challenges and uncertainties. It's a bit touchy-feely and it was originally written as a social post, so it may read that way. If it's not your thing, feel free to check out some of my previous blog posts.

Otherwise, here goes.

I like to write.

Yet I haven’t really had the desire to in a while.

And when I say, I haven’t had the desire to write, I don't mean business or educational content. I mean expressing feelings and thoughts from my heart.

When I write authentically from my heart, that is when my best work is noticed and understood.

And what I recently realized is that the reason I haven’t wanted to write is because I haven't allowed myself to express the things that make me feel vulnerable.

I've been fortunate, and by many measures life has been going well. Yet beneath the surface, I've carried the same fears, unanswered questions, frustrations and unresolved challenges that so many of us quietly carry.

And I don’t know about others, but sometimes ignoring things has been the best way to just coast through life and get through it. This doesn’t mean that life isn’t wonderful. I have an amazing family. I have this great business. I live in a wonderful city. I’m healthy. I get to do things I love most every day.

After recently allowing myself to fully give my heart to an experience that ended in deep disappointment, I found myself feeling emotions I hadn't experienced in quite some time. In the process, I came to an important realization. Even if things don’t turn out the way I think I’d hope them to turn out… that is the beauty of life. That is what we call experiencing life. The envisioned outcome that we hope will come to be which often doesn’t happen is not what makes life great. It’s the struggle. It’s the unknown. It’s the trial and error. It's what we learn and reflect upon that helps us become wiser and better human beings.

And this got me thinking today, people don’t visit me for a massage therapy session simply for muscular issues. They come because life can be confusing, heavy and sometimes painful both mentally and physically. Massage gives all of us a chance to put some of the weight down for a bit. And after the session, when a person walks out the door and says goodbye to me, their LMT (licensed massage therapist), there is a sense of a relief. There is a sense that things are going to be okay. It’s like getting a really deep, good nights sleep, and waking up and feeling like anything is possible.

What fascinates me about this topic is how rarely it's discussed. And I don’t think people recognize what's happening beneath the surface.

Before posting this I was thinking maybe this is too raw. Maybe it’s too honest. Maybe it doesn’t fit into the perfect messaging for my brand, A Knead for Wellness.

But these ideas have been stirring inside me for a long time. And rather than expressing them and sitting down to really think about what I’ve wanted to say, I've either written or posted aboslutely nothing for weeks to months on end, or I’ve turned to AI to help me write, edit and post surface level content, completely avoiding any genuine, deep, reflective thoughts.

And there’s nothing wrong with allowing AI to assist with polishing up a post, among other ways it can help us communicate more effectively. But it can be a little too easy to allow the tool to smooth away the imperfections that make our writing uniquely ours and dilute the intended message. It does no justice to the message that I need my clients to hear when I post content that has become disconnected from my original voice through perfectly edited and structured AI language.

I love to write. In fact, some of the work I'm most proud of has come from sitting down and putting my own thougths into words. I've learned that when I stop writing in my own voice, I also stop sharing the messages that matter most to me and those are often the messages that resonate most with my clients and readers.

So this is not going to be easy. But I have stories to tell you. I will be taking you back to a pivotal chapter in my life, when I walked away from a career in professional sales and stepped into the unknown by enrolling in massage school.

Because my experiences apply to what so many others experience.

And it’s relevant to the massage session.

So stay tuned.

There is more to come.

I graduated from Massage therapy school seven years ago in June 2019. It does not feel like seven years. It’s gone by so fast. I’ve experienced so much and I’m going to share my experiences with you. I'll continue sharing content about muscles, pain, movement and massage therapy, but I'll aslo be weaving in stories about what brought me to this profession and how those experiences may realte to your own life.