Thinking Tree Massage

It's so good to be back, y'all.
Back to bodywork.
Back to connection.
Back to community.
Back to doing what I love. 💗🌸💗
www.thinkingtreemassage.com/bookonline

It’s been 6 weeks since I re-opened Thinking Tree Massage. 7 weeks ago, there was a beautiful, encouraging downward trend in the percent positive COVID-19 cases here in Milwaukee (and much of the rest of the country); the key metrics I’d been watching were shifting more and more towards re-opening. It gave me the confidence to trust in the science of wearing masks to reduce the transmission of COVID-19, even when it is impossible to physically distance while giving a massage.

I then watched in horror as the numbers started to spike all over the country. New hotspots emerged and cases soared. Mask mandates were put in place all over the country (side note, I’m so grateful Governer Evers mandated a state-wide mask policy last week.) Government officials started establishing quarantine rules and restrictions for interstate travel (yep, Wisconsin is on the “you gotta quarantine” list for Cook county…).

I immediately second guessed my decision to re-open Thinking Tree. Was I contributing to the problem? As the photo I attached to this post started circulating among my facebook friends, it hit me hard. Learning to live in the risk has been a weird lesson in navigating the grey area. Even though I’ve kept the movement of my personal life limited, by virtue of the fact that I re-opened my business, I’m no longer in “safer-at-home” levels of pandemic precautions. For those of my friends who ARE still in safer-at-home mode, my actions might be contributing to the feeling of having hallucinated a pandemic. After all, every time *I* witness (via social media) one of my friends engaging in what still feels like a high-risk activity (group activities, eating at restaurants, getting on a plane) I have this immediate gut reaction of “ARE YOU NUTS THERE’S STILL A PANDEMIC!?!?” I’m sure there are those who have that reaction to *my* choice to return to work.

What I remind myself is: yes, giving a massage during the COVID-19 pandemic is a choice with risk attached...but it’s not the same level of risk as going to a bar or party or concert. I’ve made my peace with the risk of giving a massage, having put as many precautions in place as is reasonable and I trust my clients to have done the same. I’ve even decided to test the waters of doing two massages per day instead of just one! It’ll allow for a little more availability, without too much more risk. Am I nervous about it? Absolutely. Every single new risk tolerance choice I make during a friggin pandemic makes me nervous!

This grey area is profoundly uncomfortable for me, made more uncomfortable by the reality that I might be simultaneously holding the umbrella AND being one of the ones laughing. This whole mess requires nuance...and social media is a terrible place to explore nuance! The good news, at least, is that Thinking Tree Massage is a fantastic place to recharge our umbrella-holding energy.

I’ve decided to become an imperfectionist.

I used to call myself a “recovering perfectionist.” It was a cheeky way to acknowledge that I’ve always had a hardcore Type A personality, that I dislike being a beginner, and that I gravitate towards things I have an “inherent knack” for. I do still like the metaphor of being a recovering perfectionist, but I also had a lightbulb moment last week:

I define my moral goodness by what I don’t do.

The pandemic world we’re living in has highlighted this brain wiring for me. I ease my “am I doing the right thing??” anxiety by listing off all the things I don’t do right now: I don’t go to bars, I don’t go to restaurants, I don’t participate in large group gatherings. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. I have a sneaky suspicion a lot of people have this wiring - after all, we’re indoctrinated into a world where following the rules amounts to “don’t do this, don’t do that.” Being a recovering perfectionist is similar: it’s defining myself by what I’m NOT. I’m *not* a perfectionist any more. Or at least, I’m trying not to be.

What if we lived in a world where we were defined by our actions? By what we DO, not what we don’t do?

Here’s the problem for this former perfectionist: Do or do not, there is no try. As in - do it perfectly, or don’t do it at all, because trying doesn’t count. If I choose to be an imperfectionist, though - that gives my brain wiring a loophole. I CAN try, because in trying, I get a result - an imperfect result, because perfection is by and large a myth.

So here’s to actively becoming an imperfectionist!

I made a promise to myself on my birthday last year that I would spend the next 365 days journaling. I borrowed Morning Pages from The Artist’s Way - the idea being that you sit down every morning for 3 handwritten pages of stream-of-conscious writing. No careful wordsmithing, no self editing, no censorship, no pausing. Just writing. Dumping out whatever’s in your head onto the page. It's a practice I've used off-and-on for the past...20?...years of keeping journals.

I’ve told myself a lot of stories over the years about my ability to make and keep healthy habits. The stories usually end with the moral of, “welp, you ALWAYS get excited about new habits, stick with it for 3 days, miss one day, and throw in the towel. Why bother trying again? You’ll just do what you always do.” (Side note, my therapist looooves calling me out on this kind of black-and-white, always/never thinking!)

So I decided to spend the past year challenging this narrative. I promised myself I would do it. That I *can* prioritize this one thing that is so good for my self-care, every day.

And you know what?

I missed 3 days.

I’m actually *more* proud of 363 days of journaling than I would have been of 366 (yay leap years!)

The first day I missed, I straight up forgot. (The other two were deliberate, intentional, "nope I don't wanna and you can't make me and that's okay" choices). I don’t remember how that first missed day got away from me (it was during safer-at-home when everything blurs together) but I do remember waking up one morning and realizing, with absolute HORROR, that I had broken my streak. I had made it 277 days and then I just...FORGOT. I had a choice, in that moment. I could throw in the towel, allow the narrative to become a self-fulfilling prophecy...or I could pick up my pen and keep going.

I went back to re-read the journal entry from that day, out of curiosity. There’s a lovely line my past-self wrote that I’ll leave you with for today’s :

“Habits are intentional choices transmuted into subconscious behavior.”

What alchemy are you undertaking?

For this week’s , I’m going to do something I very rarely ever do:
Publish a barely-edited copy of a journal entry I wrote a few weeks ago. The only editing was for clarification...and spelling :D

***
I don’t really know where to start. But that’s half the problem, isn’t it? White people don’t know where to start in talking about reckoning with their whiteness. Alice’s Garden hosted a labyrinth walk to “Reckon with your whiteness.” We were given a list of statements to reflect on as we made our way to the center; a new set of statements waited for the way out.

The “way in” were essentially “I’m not racist, but…” statements.
I have said/thought “you don’t sound black”
A black man in a hoodie makes me uncomfortable
I have laughed at racist jokes
Etc

I kept the paper. I’m going to highlight every one that has/does apply to me.

There were plenty.

Honestly, the whole experience was the perfect metaphor. I’ve been walking labyrinths on and off for half of my life now. I know how they work. I know how they take you right next to the center and then reroute you away from it, over and over, until you find the center - and then take the same path out.

I’ve walked all sorts of them - flat lines printed, stones and bricks placed for elevated guides, an outdoor hedgemaze type. But I’ve never walked one of calf-high plants and flowers, only wide enough for single-file walking. There were places where the branches were trampled. Where it wasn’t clear if I was supposed to turn, or go straight. So I guessed. I think I guessed wrong a couple of times; I retraced my steps, back tracked, stood and stared in confusion.

I felt silly. Come on, I’ve been walking these for years! I’M not supposed to get lost! I’m supposed to know the route! It should be easy!

And then I recognized the feeling. It wasn’t “silly,” it was defensive. I HAD fu**ed up. I had taken the wrong turn. I had misstepped...and it was uncomfortable as f**k. It was the same feeling when [Black friend] called me out on a blanket statement about Black culture and I responded, “well, no, that’s not what I *meant*...” It was the same feeling when I realized I had completely erased [biracial friend’s] identity by lumping her in with our white friends. I was embarrassed at my own mistake.

But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Reckoning with my whiteness means sitting with the discomfort. The discomfort of my internalized racism. Discomfort of being called out when I f**k up. Feeling silly, at best, and utterly ashamed at worst. The discomfort of knowing I have been part of the problem.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t get lost on the way back out of the labyrinth. No wrong turns. No missteps. I’m not naive enough to assume that that means once I get to the “Big Picture” center of whiteness, it’ll be easy-peasy or comfortable to find my way back out. It’s still a twisting, winding path. But I was moving with purpose and intention, taking more deliberate steps and paying more attention, instead of moving on pride-full autopilot.

I was being care-full.

***

(As a side note, in preparing to publish this, I found myself wanting to add disclaimers about soooo many of the statements I highlighted. Which means I’m STILL sitting in the discomfort, and will continue to do so...because I recognize wanting to add disclaimers is wanting to separate myself from them. To explain away my complicitness. To be absolved and protect myself. Which just goes to show...I still have work to do ;) )

Reopen? Stay closed? Reopen slowly? Stay closed until there’s a vaccine? Take enough clients a month to cover operating expenses? Hope Pandemic Unemployment Assistance finally comes through to cover costs? Give up on massage therapy forever? Say f**k it and charge full steam ahead?

Welcome to my brain over the past 15 weeks, friends. The reopening question has been a lesson in analysis paralysis like no other. I am deeply committed, on personal AND professional levels, to being part of the solution in situations like this. I don’t want to contribute to the spread of a disease like COVID-19. I was drawn to massage therapy because I want to help people and because I’m committed to the health and wellness of *all* my clients, after all!

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a risk-averse person. “Living in the risk” is hard for me; all-or-nothing binaries are much easier to follow. You either do, or do not. There is no try ;) But like it or not, our country is moving forward to live in the risk - and I’m learning to do so as well.

Two things have happened recently that are helping me make the decision to reopen Thinking Tree (with extreme caution):

The key metrics for Milwaukee have changed from 2 red (cases and testing) and 3 yellow (care, PPE, tracing) as of June 1 to 1 green (care) and 4 yellow (cases, testing, PPE, tracing) - and have stayed that way for 12 days now. This indicates that the spread of COVID-19 is slowing in Milwaukee. Not over, not stopping, but slowing down.
https://county.milwaukee.gov/EN/COVID-19 (there are tabs at the bottom - key indicators is the chart I’ve been following)

On May 25th, news broke about a hair salon in Missouri where two stylists were working while COVID-19 positive and showing symptoms. They exposed 140 people. As of June 9th, none of the exposed reported symptoms; 40 people opted to get tested and they all tested negative. Now, it’s not a perfect study - 100 people elected not to get tested, which means 70% are self-reporting. But this anecdotal evidence does support the science of wearing masks - and is allowing me to breathe a little easier.
https://www.kmov.com/news/health-department-no-clients-contracted-covid-19-from-missouri-hair-salon-where-2-stylists-tested/article_cec3c4c8-678a-5b40-bc53-30d18e6dd1f6.html

https://www.livescience.com/hair-stylists-infected-covid19-face-masks.html
Furthermore, this is incredibly encouraging for massage therapy, where physical distancing is literally impossible. Stylists and clients are inches away from each other, as are massage therapists and clients.

Science is strongly in favor of masks as the best defense against spreading COVID-19: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/21/880832213/yes-wearing-masks-helps-heres-why

This is all to say: I will begin taking appointments at the end of the week. I’m *not* going to be charging full-steam ahead; my availability will be *significantly* reduced. I’m not going back to pre-COVID operations, so please be patient with me - and get used to the idea of wearing a mask during your massage! They WILL be required.

Because of my limited availability, I will not be accepting new clients for the time being. Those who have already worked with me, you’ll be receiving an email later today with details on how booking a massage is going to work. Thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation - I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to returning to the happy green bubble!