Mirror on the Table: A Therapist's Memoire

I ALWAYS SAID I WOULD WRITE A BOOK ONE DAY

I always said I would write a book one day. Or maybe a series.

My first book would be entitled “Mirror on the Table – One Therapist’s Journey,” capturing my first 25 years of practice as a physical therapist.

The next book could be “Things I Thought I Would Never Say Out Loud.” A collection of memoirs from 7 years as an Executive Director of a Massage School would fill these pages.

My final piece, “The Life of a Reluctant Body Worker,” would reflect on reaching mid-life and questioning my path and choices along the way coupled with just plain being worn out from a life of using my body for work.

Retirement seemed like a good time to muse and write. Perhaps I would be secluded in the Adirondacks for a long period of time by myself.

I would be invisible amongst the trees and have all the space I needed to dive deeply into my past and find the perfect words to describe my experiences. Dreamy but unlikely.

Instead, I am attempting to write from my very visible living room turned office while quarantined with my husband and two daughters – aged 15 and 24.

It is anything but secluded and/or peaceful and I have not magically become an amazing writer so compelling that my books will hit Oprah’s inspiring list.

While I am clearly not needed by my husband or offspring, there appears to be a return to the “family of origin” format which fills my days. This is both heartwarming and exhausting.

I am living out my long-desired wish of being a stay-at-home Mom while simultaneously wondering how to tolerate a lack of personal time and trying to keep up with their Covid inspired voracious appetites.

While we are only leaving the house for groceries, I have never needed more groceries. Feeding 4 adults three meals a day has become quite a task.

Regardless, I decided that if I did not start writing a book now – during a time of pandemic quarantine, I will never write one and I should never again say that I will.

After spending more than a year living the pandemic alongside the world, my books have become a tidbit of writing no longer than a short story or maybe a novella.

I realized as memories flooded pages and experiences were realized that the story being told must be one of my own healing journey as mirrored on my table and not a recitation, interpretation, or revelation of anyone’s story other than my own.

In the privacy of the clinic my clients describe to me their physical experience of life, or what it feels like on a physical level for them to exist in space.

They confide in me their life story and their version of personal trials, tribulations, traumas, and aspirations.

I hear things they can’t tell the people who are closest to them because they don’t want to worry or hurt them.

I hear the things they didn’t get a chance to say to someone who has passed or grown up or moved out of their life.

They say to me what they couldn’t say to their perpetrator.

It is hard to let go of what I hear at times.

It is hard to leave my office after reliving an experience with someone and go home to make dinner for my family as if nothing ever happened.

After 36 years I have my rituals which assist me in doing so but the accumulative affect still haunts me at times.

On a spiritual level I feel blessed to have chosen a career which grows with me and constantly reflects and challenges my own human experience.

I can’t imagine another career which would allow me so much opportunity for self-reflection and potential self-growth.

Miracles do happen every day and while I am not a religious person, I have born witness to unbelievable events and healings.

Diving into “touch” is a whole other dimension. When you touch something, it becomes real.

Talking about something allows you to swim about in your head looking for associations and forming judgments and opinions.

There are no such judgments when I “feel” someone’s tissue. It is either tight or loose, strong or weak, normal or traumatized.

Each person has a roadmap of life events and experiences it has lived through, and the footprints of all their life experiences exist within their body.

If you practice bodywork long enough you learn to find breadcrumbs and footprints and follow them to places in the body needing help and attention.

This process becomes a journey through time for both the client and the therapist.

Memories and emotions occur in snapshots. Internal photographs capture frozen moments in time as tangible images scatter throughout the body’s scrapbook in an unordered, non-linear pattern.

At times a critical mass of snapshots occur and images are strung together to form a story.

More often emotions and memories lack an image and there is a wave of distant recognition felt along with a physical release of tight tissue.

The experience for the therapist is one of riding a wave and observing the horizon.

The intent is to detach from the outcome and be present for the client. This most often occurs although emotion is still tangible, and presence requires deep grounding.

The process of allowing emotion to pass through and maintaining a grounded presence requires great energy and perseverance.

The intimacy of these moments should not be shared beyond the seconds they lived.

Hence the Novella blog rather than the best selling novel....