I wanted to be a doctor. Instead, I became a massage therapist.
So, what happened?
I knew I wanted to help people. I wanted to understand the human body and how it works. Massage let me do both in a way that made sense to me.

At ten years old, I broke my left arm. It was a bad break, and I would need surgery. I remember being in pain and being so scared. I didn't know what was going to happen. Then my mom and grandfather got there to help. My dad was getting the car ready, and my sister was with him. My grandfather knelt down to check my arm. Decades of EMT training helped him stay calm, which helped me stay calm too. Once he knew what had happened, he also had the equipment and knowledge to help get me to the hospital safely. My mother was with him. Her military training as a pharmacy technician meant she could keep up with the medical words my grandfather was using. They talked and nodded to each other, making sure I was okay. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I could tell they understood one another. They knew what was happening, and that helped me feel like everything was going to be okay. At the hospital, I was in a bed, and we knew I would likely need surgery. Then the orthopedic doctor came over to check my arm. “That is for sure broken. I don't need a PhD for that.” Those were some of his first words to me and my family. Even after the surgery, he kept some humor in the room. He also took the time to make sure I understood what he was saying. He didn't just use medical words. He explained things in a way a ten-year-old could understand. When it came to planning my care, he would ask what I thought, and he took my answers seriously. He made me feel important. He made me feel cared for. That became the driving force behind why I wanted to be a doctor. I loved learning anatomy as I watched my arm heal. With the help of my family and the example my doctor gave me, I also started to understand that I could help people who were in pain. I could help them feel calmer. I could help them understand what was happening. And maybe I could even bring a little humor into the room. So I became set on being a doctor. Then I discovered massage. I started massage school having never had a massage and having very little idea what massage actually was. I heard about it as an adult and thought, well, it paid pretty well for just putting lotion on someone's back. I had no idea how much it was going to change my life. As school went on, I started to see changes in myself and in the people I worked with. My left arm was something I had protected for years. I rarely moved it because I was afraid of causing more pain. Slowly, I started using it again. It still hurt, but the fear of moving it was going away. I started noticing that I was moving my arm more without thinking about it. I was doing things I had been careful about for years. My clients were having moments like that too. They would notice that they had more movement, or that they weren't as afraid to move in a certain way. Sometimes they didn't even realize it until I asked them about it. With consistent massage, they could look back and see changes that hadn't been obvious from one appointment to the next. They were moving more. They were doing more. They were experiencing the benefits of massage in their everyday lives. I was doing the same thing. I had more space in my mind for things other than making sure my arm was safe. I wasn't constantly thinking about whether I might move it too fast or too far. I hadn't realized how much attention I had been giving to protecting my arm until I didn't need to think about it as much. That was when I started asking my clients about what they were experiencing. I heard about some of the same things happening for them. Massage was becoming much more than I had expected. It wasn't just a way to get a head start on anatomy. It was giving me another way to help people, and I was beginning to see just how important massage could be to people's lives. The moment I knew I wanted to stay in massage came a few months after graduation. I was working with a client who wanted to know what I was doing and why I was working on the areas I had chosen. As I explained the connections I was seeing and why other areas might also be important to work on, I could see it all come together in her eyes. It clicked. She was beginning to understand that her pain was affecting more than just the place that hurt. She could see how other parts of her body and her life might be connected to what she was experiencing. And just as importantly, she understood her body without feeling stupid for not knowing those things before. I recognized that moment. It reminded me of being ten years old in that doctor's office—scared, hurting, and not understanding the words being used around me. My doctor had taken the time to explain things so that I could understand. He made me feel like I was part of what was happening. Now I was getting to give someone else a version of that same experience. That moment when everything comes together for a client is what keeps me going, even to this day. To see the dream of a scared ten-year-old girl come true. To see how I have grown to have the tools and experience of my grandfather and mom—to stay calm, understand the harder language, and know what to do. Then I get to be like the doctor I looked up to. I can talk to my clients at their level and help them understand without making them feel stupid. I can also toss a little humor into the mix, because sometimes that makes life a little brighter. Massage therapy might not have been where I wanted to go, but it gave me the dream and shaped me into the kind of person I always wanted to become.