Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/82405
dusk, camp out with friends across the lake, and drive back in the next day. After the initial mucking out of our home, we hit the road again. A week later, I received an email from a long-ago client. She had gone by the house and, when she saw the massage table in the huge pile of debris that filled our curb, she remembered all the work she had done reclaiming her body on that very table, and she wept. GRANDMA'S ROSARY Returning about a month later, we found the mounds of our first floor life still there, piled five feet high in front of the house. There was also moldy sheet rock and old lath board removed by our contractor to stem the growth of mold. Garbage removal was impossible, as two flooded vehicles blocked the street. There was nowhere to take the cars, and not enough tow trucks in town to remove them. The only option was to move the moldy piles to either side of the cars. As we began the process, we had the opportunity to discover what was actually in the piles, and to ultimately register and feel the loss. For me, most of my practice was in that pile: client files, resource books, all my supplies, the course plans and other materials developed for classes I'd taught at Reidman College of Complimentary Medicine in Israel and Big Sky Somatic Institute in Montana. Gone. And my journals—my whole life's worth of journals were destroyed. I grieved especially for those journals that charted my course from social work to bodywork. Gone were the records of my discovery and exploration of the body and the power of touch. I have always encouraged my bodywork students to keep a journal, sharing with them how I could go back to see where I chose one technique over another, how I learned to "hold a heart," how to balance a pelvis, and why I decided to call my work Relational Somatics. Through my journals, I had been able to see the development Boost your practice with ABMP's Website Builder—free for members on ABMP.com 55 Katrina trashed the author's belongings. Battered and moldy, her massage table lies at the curb. When she saw the massage table in the huge pile of debris that filled our curb, she remembered all the work she had done reclaiming her body on that very table, and she wept.