Salem's Story and Thoughts on Therapeutic Touch

As a Licensed Massage Therapist, I would like to share some thoughts and an experience that happened prior to any of my formal training. I share this hoping to encourage everyone to trust their instincts and positive loving intentions.

We are not meant to live in isolation, even if at times we may wish to. We are as interconnected as the parts of the body or as the leaves on a single tree. Physics refers to "the Butterfly Effect" to demonstrate and explain the vast potential of ripple effects due to this absolute interconnectedness of everything.

On an interpersonal level, we each have an energetic field often called an aura, which surrounds us. We impact upon and influence one another whenever these fields come into contact. When interactions are taken to the level of physical contact, the influences go to great depths including but, not limited to, energy, muscles, thoughts and moods. Safe, non-sexual, physical contact is so critical to our total health that I would add it to the list of survival necessities along with food, water and air. Consider both, stories of orphaned Chinese infants who died in large numbers from "failure to thrive" due to lack of touch and the common experience of keeping vigil over a dying loved one only to have them pass when you are briefly out of the room. We find ourselves in a culture which keeps us feeling isolated and disconnected, even within a sea of people. It is an extension of or societal and in turn individual disconnection with nature, our mother. Eastern Philosophy teaches that we have both Mother Earth and Father Heaven, Our bodies being the fullest expression of their union. Disconnected from both touch and the Spiritual, with not even a moment of silence honoring the concept of meditation allowed in most schools, it is little wonder that drug companies are getting away with "pushing" drugs such as anti-depressants with cute cartoon advertisements on the television.

Each one of us does have the power to make changes and be an influence through our daily interactions. It is as simple as being kind and considerate in small ways. We can trust the universe and leave it to "the Butterfly Effect" to carry the ripples of our small actions on to precipitate greater change.

One month prior to my entering Massage Therapy School, I met an eight week old, black manx kitten who had been stepped on by a three hundred pound man on his tenth day of life. His injury was to the neck and shoulder area. Though he didn't move for weeks, his mother fed him and he had survived to this point. The home he was born at was considering having him put down due to nobody wanting to adopt him. He was very challenged. His neck was locked at a ninety degree angle to the left and rotated forward. He could not jump off of, or onto anything, and was one half the size of his siblings. My daughter already had two cats in an apartment that allowed one, so, I found a friend that would take him after I "fixed" him. With this in order, I took him on as a "pet project." I felt a moral obligation to try to help him if I was going to consider myself a candidate to become a massage therapist, thinking I could "learn" any touch healing for my bread and butter. I do have children counting on me! I worked on Salem, as my children dubbed him, three times daily, each session lasting only ten to twenty minutes with very gentle massage and stretching. One must never forget the clear self determination and attitude of a cat and that one will not remain present and relaxed if you cause them pain let alone irritation. By the time Salem was four months old, we had full range of motion back in his neck. I had not yet completed even my introductory classes in Massage Therapy School.

A great deal of massage is instinctual if you listen to both yourself and the individual you are working on, and for this reason, everyone has access to it without actual training. The primary function of training is to bring these instincts up to the level of conscious comprehension and understanding. So please, allow me to encourage you, especially if you have a loved one who could benefit from the touch. Trust your touch and your instincts when done with honest, caring and positive intentions. Intent is so important that I could write of it alone. By all means, do consult with your personal health care provider and massage therapist for any suggestions or any possible reasons not to do certain things based on a particular illness or condition. ("contraindications")

I should also add that I was unable to give Salem away since we had bonded so deeply through the process of the massage work. This was a good thing for both of us since due to what I learned is called muscle memory, he continued to need regular maintenance work at intervals throughout his life. I am a better therapist from knowing him. So, I thank him and honor his memory as both my teacher and my friend.

Identity: Finding myself in Ann's Arbor

To what extent is identity defined by the name?
Actors and musicians take on alter-egos wrapped up like a bow by the name. Women usually take their husband's names when they marry.
Or, as Shakespeare famously put it, is a rose still a rose if called by any other name?

These are interesting questions to me when I consider that my parents got the name Ann from where I was born (Ann Arbor), and then simply tossed a coin (one side for each grandmother's name) for my first name, Virginia instead of Josetta.


Growing up, I felt that nothing about the name Ann stood out except that it blended into the crowd. So very many girls with pretty first names that their parents favored enough to actually use, had Ann as a middle name, like a mere extra syllable to help the first name flow into the last. It certainly didn't give me assistance in defining myself positively.

just an ann

To grow up ann
in rose land...
plain tan and not
planned, like lily
colored sea foam's
murkey secrets;
tree roots hide my
mirrored crying
all dried; when pain
flies and rain feeds
hunger needs of
small weeds that from
seeds seek to climb
in no time to
find crimes of self.
I'm not a rose.
I suppose, I
must close this short
prose, just an Ann.
In my parent's defense, they were young and desperate enough to have gotten themselves into "trouble" with a college pregnancy, and concocted a crazy plan that blew up in their faces.

I was born shortly after the end of spring finals, on May 20.
I grew up with the story that it had simply taken three days for my parents to decide on a name for me, and that this was why I was named on my third day. This never rang with the solidity of truth considering my name seemed to be be chosen by fate rather than their wills.

I wouldn't hear the story of what actually happened until age 38. I'd hear from my maternal grandmother shortly before her passing, though to this day neither parent has wanted to discuss it.

They had married for my mother's good name to be preserved, as that was still perceived a consideration. Then, the plan was to tell the families that the baby had been still born, and put it up for adoption; freeing them to continue with their educational plans. They did in fact tell the families that I was still born.

What they didn't plan for, was my father not to be able to go through with putting me up for adoption. The fact that I naturally carry much of his side of the family's energy was obvious right from the start. His change of heart forced them to have to call their respective families and own up to my being alive, and I now realize that naming me was probably not as looming an issue as owning up to such a lie.

I grew up to be a geek with too many life analogies which reference gardens, plants and trees, leading to my alter ego Mim and her Garden. One sunny day, it finally clicked that an arbor is a special spot within a garden.

Now, there is a hidden place deep within this Mim and her Garden. A meditation spot called Ann's Arbor, where I know that I am more a child of God than a child of my parents, a place where I found myself in my name.