The Pain That Pulled Me Back

Even though I had surrendered to the calling, I still tried to run. I didn’t want to be doing this work—I didn’t ask for it, and I certainly didn’t feel ready. It was too exhausting. Too lonely. I often felt like I was losing my mind. My days and nights were consumed by unwinding my own body. Pain would tug at me until I followed it. My hands, feet, nose—these places would ache and buzz, directing me to work deeper. I was being trained from the inside out.

There were times I tried other things. I carved candles and turned it into a business. I made good money and actually enjoyed it. It was fun, lighthearted, and creative. I thought maybe that was my path. But every time I tried to walk away from fascia unwinding, something would happen to pull me back.

Then we moved to San Antonio from Virginia because my husband was in the military. We moved around a lot. I was still carving candles, preparing for another season of sales when I took a simple walk with my dog. I didn’t trip. I wasn’t pulled. But something invisible wrapped around me and shoved me forward. I fell—hard—landing on my right arm and face shoved against the sidewalk. I broke the bone in my forearm. It required surgery and now I have a plate in it.

Still, I didn’t take painkillers. I’ve always avoided them. I had a doctor friend in Atlanta who introduced me to a pain cream. I wasn’t even thinking of myself—I was excited to try it on my sister who had a bulging disc at the time. She doesn’t tolerate pain well and had tried everything: shots, pills, quick fixes. Nothing worked. She finally agreed to let me try my method on her—with the help of the cream—and she slept through the night for the first time in years.

That moment changed everything.

Suddenly I found myself using the cream at military bases, sharing it with others. I was still in a cast, but I was massaging it into people’s skin and listening to their pain. And when I touched them, the unwinding started. I couldn’t help it. It’s not something I can turn off. The lines start to move. And then I knew. The fall was no accident. It was a divine shove—forcing me back into the path I had tried to abandon.

Eventually, I could no longer delay the inevitable. I needed to get licensed. I didn’t want to be a massage therapist—something about that label never sat right with me—but I needed a way to make this work “legitimate” in the eyes of the world. In 2017, I enrolled in massage therapy school. Around that same time, my husband was struggling deeply. He had served through many deployments and returned with the weight of PTSD. Our marriage was in limbo, and so was his life.

It felt like everything was crumbling.

But as I leaned into my work, life began to realign. My husband found the help he needed. We reconnected. I realized that doing this work, no matter how exhausting, was stabilizing the world around me. Once I committed, everything else began to fall into place.

There were still many sleepless nights ahead. There were still doubts and questions. But I knew now that this was more than something I can do.  It was something I was made to do.