Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68008
BONNIE BROWN'S GIIGLE Brown's life hasn't always taken the path of least resistance. As a matter of fact, in 1998, her Cinderella dream life (as she describes it) began unraveling and eventually ended up in cinders. After 20 years of marriage, she found herself divorced with two grown children. In an effort to move forward, Brown closed the Christian day school she successfully operated for a decade, sold her home, and "held the garage sale to end all garage sales," totally breaking free from her old life. It wasn't until after Brown closed the school in Canyon Lake, California, though, that she realized how much stress she had endured. "I got really tired," she says. "[The school] was a labor of love and, as in any extreme endeavor, you don't see what you're going through until you're removed from the scene." And Brown knows that stress can kill you. "You get addicted to it," she says. "I had lived through the stresses of a failing marriage, a move, and trying to raise two teenage girls by myself during this time but, I was too tired to realize the magnitude of all these changes." One day, while sitting around with a couple of girlfriends, Brown finally began to realize the extent of her stress. "One [of my friends] pointed out a test in one of those women's magazines," Brown says. "She started reading it out loud: 'You are likely to suffer a major illness, if you have experienced two or more of the following in the last year…' As she went down the list, I stopped counting because not only would I have a major illness by now, I'd also be dead." To escape the stress and to begin her new life, Brown went to live with her sister in Los Gatos, California. Chris invited Brown to come and stay for awhile and get herself together. "I slept for the first month of my new life," Brown says. Slowly Brown began to slow down, de-stress, and savor life. One day she was sitting at home with a cup of coffee, admiring the poppies on the table, and 72 massage & bodywork november/december 2008 she actually saw one open. "'Well, God,' I thought, 'do you think this is slow enough? I just watched a poppy open.'" As Brown emerged from her emotional coma, she decided to enroll in a local massage school. "I wanted to add to the massage techniques I already knew and used, and further my knowledge of anatomy," she says. It was also high time to use the $100 massage table she bought on a whim from a fitness center. After attending three months of night school, Brown received a certificate in massage. She then discovered a school offering a more advanced study of massage therapy, which she wanted to acquire. Going for more advanced training would also force her to perform massage on the public—something she had avoided—rather than just massaging close family and friends. During her advanced class, Brown realized she loved giving massage. "It felt very natural to me, and after the stress of the previous years, this was very relaxing. The therapy was perfect for my state of mind and body at that time." Going to massage school was also very healing to Brown because she was receiving massage, as well as giving it. "Over time I was able to calm down and become healthy again," she says. RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME Shortly after Brown received her advanced massage and bodywork training, she received a phone call from a friend who had seen an ad in the newspaper. A small, relatively unknown company, called Google, was looking for a full-time massage therapist. Not having heard of Google before, Brown interviewed for the job anyway, but she wasn't the company's first choice. She didn't really care, though, because she had built up her own massage therapy business and Outreach efforts in places as far away as Uganda have benefitted from Brown's new-found wealth.