It Started on the Living Room Floor

I've been doing this since third grade. I just didn't know that's what it was.

My mom had seven kids. She's a nurse in the military, she spent her whole day on her feet, and then came home and kept going — the house, the cooking, all of us. Regular massages were not in the budget. They weren't even in the conversation.

On Sunday afternoons she'd lie down on the living room floor, and we'd all claim a limb. One kid on each arm, one on each leg, somebody at her shoulders. I don't remember it being a chore. It was just what we did. A way to give back to her.

Most of my siblings drifted off it eventually. I didn't. I kept going all the way through high school, and somewhere along the way it stopped being "rubbing mom's shoulders" and started being something I was actually trying to get good at. I'd notice that one thing worked better than another. I'd pay attention to what made her sigh and what made her flinch. I'd remember it for next time.

She'd get up off that floor moving better than when she laid down.

That's the part that got me. Knowing I'd taken something off her — even a little — so she could keep doing everything she was doing for the rest of us. She was carrying a lot, most of it right across her shoulders, and I could reach it.

I started working on friends, then extended family. Everybody said the same thing: you should do massage. And I always figured I would, eventually, on the side. Something I'd do for extra money on weekends.

It did not stay a side thing.

The Detour

I had my daughter right out of high school, and I did what seemed like the responsible next step — switching to college online to become a high school math teacher.

I lasted about two years before I admitted to myself that I did not want to be a high school math teacher.

That's an uncomfortable thing to realize when you already have a kid and a plan. But I took a break, sat with it, and started looking at massage schools instead. Around the same time my partner and I decided to move back to Illinois, so I ended up in Chicago for school.

I picked a clinical program on purpose. I wasn't interested in the fluff — the candles, the spa music, the hour of pleasant nothing. I wanted to know why someone's shoulder hurt, I wanted to figure out the actual problem and do something about it. That's the work I wanted.

I fell completely in love with it. I met people there who are still some of my closest friends. I also learned something I wasn't expecting to learn, which was how to take care of myself.

What I Found Out About My Own Body

I grew up with chronic pain. Hypermobility. Spondylolisthesis. A metal plate and six screws in my arm from an old snowboarding injury. Feet and knees I've injured badly enough that they still speak up when they feel like it.

Before massage school, that was just background noise. It hurt all the time, and that was the deal.

Then I started learning anatomy, and all of it suddenly had names and reasons. I learned what my conditions actually were. I learned what set them off, what made them worse, what to stop doing, what to start doing. I learned how to work on myself.

I got out of a lot of that pain.

I cannot overstate what that did to me. Not just physically — though that was significant — but the shift from my body is doing this to me to I understand what's happening and I have options. It made me want to do this work about ten times more than I already did. If I could get that for myself, I wanted to hand it to other people.

That's really where the whole education thing started, even though I didn't call it that yet.

Landing in Madison

I finished school during peak COVID, which was its own adventure, and got licensed in both Illinois and Wisconsin.

Around the same time, my daughter's dad and I separated. We'd gotten together very young, and we both needed room to figure out who we were as adults — partly for ourselves, and honestly partly so we could be better parents to her. We ended up co-parenting really well. We communicate, there's no drama, and I'm genuinely grateful for that every day. Not everybody gets that version, and I know it. She is always our priority and we never let our own differences distract from that.

We both moved back up to Madison. He kept doing his work, I got hired on as a massage therapist, and I started building.

It went well. Fast enough that within a while I was thinking, I should really be doing this on my own. So I did. I opened my business.

Two locations now. Still working entirely for myself.

Some of my clients have been with me for years at this point, which is my favorite thing about the whole job. I've watched people's pain come down over time. I've watched someone go from bracing every time they sat on my table to walking in loose and easy. You don't get to see that in a single session. You only see it over years.

The Part I Don't Usually Say Out Loud

People ask if there's one client moment that sticks with me. There isn't one. There are hundreds.

Most of them aren't really about muscles. Someone comes in carrying something heavy — grief, exhaustion, a bad diagnosis, a bad year — and what they actually need is for somebody to put their hands on them with care and give them one hour or more where nothing is required of them. Sometimes they need a hug. Sometimes they need to say the thing they haven't said to anyone yet.

I care about my clients enormously. I want the updates. I want to hear how the surgery went, how the new job is, how the kid is doing. When something hard happens to one of them, it lands on me too.

But I keep the room professional, and I keep it theirs. Most of my clients don't know much about my life, and that's deliberate. Your time with me isn't the place for me to unload. If you ask me about my daughter I'll tell you, and I'll keep it light, and then I'll turn it back to you — because you're the one who came in here with something to put down.

Which is why writing any of this feels a little strange. It's more than I'd normally say.

Why I'm Building Something New

Here's the honest reason.

I'm burning the candle at both ends, and my body is telling me about it. The same hypermobility and old injuries I learned to manage in school are catching up with the volume of work I'm doing now. I am endlessly grateful for where my practice stands but also need to care for myself to continue to care for others. A real moment, I was in the ER recently with my entire forearm swollen — pure overuse. Nothing dramatic, nothing permanent, just my body sending a very clear memo.

I can't keep working at this pace and expect to still be doing this in twenty years. I really want to still be doing this in twenty years.

So I'm building out the other side of it: education, community, teaching. Bringing on more therapist to help our amazing clients. It's not a retreat from the work. It's the only way I can see to keep growing the work instead of grinding it down.

Part of it is reaching people I'll never get on my table. I've got friends and family in other states who video chat me to show me what's going on, and I walk them through what to try — and it helps. If I can do that for a handful of people over the phone, I can do it for a lot more people on purpose.

Another part of it is other therapists. I've received a lot of massages over the years. I would be very clear with what I wanted and what I wanted avoided. I felt time and time again that wasn’t always listened to and my body suffered the consequences. They are great therapists, just not the right fit for me and my body. I've almost never had one where I felt like the therapist was truly tuned into what my body was telling them. That's a teachable skill. It's the difference between a nice session and a session that actually changes something. I want to teach it.

There's also a longer-term reason. At some point I want to go back for my doctorate, and that'll mean leaving Madison for a few years. I'd like the community here to still have me in some form while I'm gone — and by then, hopefully, to have grown well past just me.

Still Growing

I say all this with a lot of gratitude. I get to do work I love, on my own terms, for people I care about. That's not a small thing and I don't take it lightly.

But I've been running myself the way I'd never let a client run themselves. Too much, too long, no repotting. If someone described my schedule to me on my own table, I'd have opinions. I would be trying to convince them to slow down or to prioritize themselves more.

So this is me taking my own advice. Making room. Growing in a direction that has more space in it.

If you've been holding out for the perfect season to start taking care of yourself — I don't think it exists. I think you start where you are, with what hurts, and you get a little more curious about it than you were yesterday.

That's all a propagation is. Something that decided to start.

🌿 Aundrea