All the Aunties

I think every inch of my skin was touched yesterday, massaged with oil in a way that no one should ever die before experiencing. I was relaxed beyond measure in spite of intense pain that I’ve been in for weeks now. I simply thought that this little rotator cuff impingement injury would go away as I followed the doctor’s orders to take ibuprofen or naproxin fairly regularly. But this little puppy of pain just was not responding and seeming to continue to spasm and get worse, was my only relief a shot of cortisone? On top of trying to figure out how to get pain relief, I was beginning to get loopy and depressed from the ibuprofen. When I broke down and shared my pain with a co-worker, he acknowledged that he too had the side-effect of depression from ibuprofen. Not a good combo, intense pain and depression.

Didn’t I just read in Bruce Lipton’s work (a cellular biologist) that energy heals better and faster then chemicals? I know I did, but so hard to be rational when in pain! Strangely, in the weeks preceding this injury (most likely from lifting my darling granddaughter up in the air over my head) I knew I needed to start taking better care of myself. My client load is building up, I’m finishing up a Master’s paper and coursework, and I’m still working a full-time job (on the side). I was beginning to feel like that 50 something executive who just wouldn’t stop til they had a heart attack. How did I get so busy?

Friends were telling me that massage was a good way to take care of myself. I should know, my oldest daughter starts massage school next week. Then a friend at work gave me the names and phone numbers for two different massage therapists. But still, wasn’t it expensive? A luxury? Who was I to get a massage? Finally, though, on Friday, when I had to leave work because of both the pain and the depression, I called and left messages at both places. The first massage therapist who called back could get me in the next day. I had a memoir class, but I could leave it early and make this appointment. I was nervous, seriously, you’d never think that taking care of yourself could be so difficult.

How could I let someone massage me, while I just lay there and did nothing? As a woman, we always all pitch in, “Let me help you with those dishes” and “No, no, let me do it.” Now I was in such a bad place that doing my own dishes was painful, and I had to let someone help me heal. While I lay there on the massage table I thought of the difficult place of transition I was in. Contemplating leaving the job where I’d been for five years, my best friend there had already left and found work as a counselor only a couple of weeks before. Wrapping up all this difficult coursework, ironically, studying how people best heal. Seeing 5-6 clients a week coming in with their own pain. And in the midst of this; while just sinking into the massage table, I thought “And all the Aunties come in to help.”

And this, I realized is how I have made difficult crossings. All the Aunties show up. When I went through my divorce, I ended up in an aerobics class filled with women who could easily have been my mom or grandmother, and I wondered “Where I have landed?” These women carried me through my divorce and Kathleen’s pregnancy with their support and wisdom. I went from hanging out at closed rehearsals at Prince's Paisley Park Studios to exercising and having coffee with grey haired “Aunties.” And so here I was, in transition, in pain, the Aunties once again showing up, this time, the Aunties are women a bit younger than me, but women who know how to care for themselves and others. Women like me, pitching in, saying “It will be OK, let me help.” Using all our good energy to heal, so much better than chemical compounds.