There Is No Crying In Massage! (oh, wait, yes there is)

I haven't posted much this month. I have some good reasons.

I was still recoving from surgery in December and my energy levels have only, in the last few days, really gotten back to something approaching "normal" for me.

Harder than that is that my sisters and I are having to find a new assisted living facility for our mom, some place that has speciality care for people with dementia. My mother's dementia has taken a significant downturn in the last year. If you have loved someone with dementia, you know how it empties you emotionally and spiritually.

I spent most of Thursday looking at facilities and talking with my sisters about the options (and the confusing financial picture). I got home just 30 minutes before a client. I was emotionally wrecked. During the intake, the client (who has seen me for years) asked how my mom was.

I started crying and I couldn't stop.

I'm am so profoundly grateful that this client knows me well and is a very compassionate person. She held me while I cried and then we talked about what was going on with my mom. She talked about coming up on the 2nd anniversary of her mother's death and how difficult that is for her.

In short, a lot of the "intake" had nothing to do with the massage session (which did eventually happen) but a whole lot to do with where we both were as adult women in our relationships to our moms.

If you're anything like me, you were taught in school to maintain a healthy professional boundary between your professional life and your personal life. You were taught that you should not be bringing your "stuff" to the table because that hour exists for the client. You may have even been cautioned about the challenges and potential pitfalls of becoming friends with your clients.

It's all true and it's all good advice and it's not exactly how it works in the real world. The simple fact is that the longer you work with someone, the more you will get to know them and the more they will get to know you. The simple fact is that there are clients you connect with at a more personal / deeper level than the rest of your clients. The simple fact is that some of your clients are the kinds of people you would absolutely be friends with if you met them outside your practice.

Our work is unusual. The relationships we form are not ordinary. Our ethical guidelines are built on years of experience of MTs who went before us doing things right and also making big whompin' mistakes. They make sense.

And sometimes we are going to go right past those ethical guidelines. You will be able to handle it better if you are well-grounded in those ethical guidelines. Even in the midst of my sobbing, a portion of my brain was noting the boundaries I was violating and conscious of the possible effects.

Why am I telling you all of this? Honestly, I'm not sure. But it feels important to say "this happens too and it's OK".