Three years ago, I came home from Puerto Rico after a month-long working vacation.
Before I left, I thought I needed a break.
I'd been pushing hard for a long time. Running businesses. Teaching classes. Working with
clients. Solving problems. Raising kids. Running a household. Carrying responsibilities. Like
many women, I had become exceptionally skilled at showing up, figuring it out, and keeping
things moving.
Adapt. Improvise. Overcome. Our family motto.
A month away felt like exactly what I needed.
I expected to come home rested.
Ready.
Refreshed.
Instead, two days after returning to the treatment room, something happened that changed the
course of my life.
I woke up one morning with a message so clear there was no room for debate.
Take care of yourself. Now.
Not next month. Not after a few more clients. Not after the next class. Not after things settled
down.
Now.
I wish I could tell you where that message came from.
I can't.
I only know that it was absolutely clear.
There was not one more massage left in me.
Not because I didn't love my work.
Not because I wanted to quit.
Not because I had another plan.
There simply wasn't one more massage to give.
My body had made a decision before my mind had a chance to understand it.
I was devastated.
Massage wasn't just my career.
It was part of my identity.
I'd spent more than two decades helping people understand and care for their bodies. Most of the
clients I stepped away from had trusted me with their care for more than a decade.
Writing those emails remains one of the hardest things I've ever done.
I told them I needed to focus on my health.
The truth was, I didn't know what was wrong.
That's what made it so frightening.
I looked fine.
My bloodwork looked fine.
Every test looked fine.
People would ask what was happening, and I had no answer.
All I knew was that nothing felt right.
Nothing.
The timing couldn't have been worse.
Some of the business decisions I'd made while away didn’t unfold the way I'd hoped. Problems
seemed to arrive faster than solutions. The ground underneath me felt increasingly unstable.
Meanwhile, I was trying to understand what was happening inside my own body.
The deeper I searched for answers, the more confused I became.
I couldn't focus long enough to read books I loved.
I couldn't practice yoga, something I'd done consistently for more than twenty years.
I couldn't lift weights, despite strength training being part of my life for more than thirty years.
I couldn't work. I couldn't think clearly.
Some days, getting out of bed felt like a victory.
I wasn't myself.
The hardest part was not knowing if I would ever be myself again.
No one really talks about that part.
People talk about hormones.
They talk about hot flashes.
They talk about sleep.
What they don't always talk about is what it feels like when the person you've always known to
be suddenly disappears. Overnight. Gone.
I felt lost.
I felt angry.
I felt scared.
I felt alone.
There were days I laid on my yoga mat and cried.
Not because I was practicing yoga.
Because I couldn't.
The mat became the place where I grieved.
The loss of certainty.
The loss of energy.
The loss of confidence.
The loss of the woman I thought I was.
For a while, I joked that I had become a zombie.
Humor felt easier than explaining it.
The truth is, I wasn't laughing.
I was surviving.
As I searched for answers, I began reading stories from other women.
For the first time, I saw pieces of myself reflected.
I also discovered something that frightened me.
Not everyone makes it through that darkness.
That realization changed something for me.
Because waiting wasn't a strategy anymore.
If I wanted to live, I had to find another way forward.
I just didn't know what that looked like yet.
What I didn't know at the time was that the thing that would eventually help me find my way
back wouldn't come from a doctor's office.
It wouldn't come from a textbook.
It wouldn't come from another certification or another strategy. I tried.
It would arrive quietly.
Unexpectedly.
In the form of a paintbrush.
But that's a story for another day.
Today, I'm simply grateful.
Grateful that for listening.
Grateful that I stopped.
Grateful that the woman writing these words survived long enough to tell the story.
And grateful to be returning to the treatment room, not as the woman I was before, but as the
woman I became because of everything that followed.
Because sometimes healing isn't about getting back to who you were.
Sometimes it's about discovering who you've become.
Until next time.
That’s the Rub,
Lisa
