Last Wednesday I was supposed to be on a massage table at 2 o’clock.
Instead, I was on my kitchen floor, sobbing.
At 1:40, I’d gone to grab my keys from their usual spot — at least, usual when I haven’t left them somewhere else.
They weren’t there.
What followed was a search that started mildly — checking the jeans I’d worn the day before. Then my jacket. Then under furniture and seat cushions. Then back to the jacket. Then, absurdly, the fridge and freezer, because I’d exhausted all the sensible places.
By 2:00 I texted my massage therapist: I can’t find my keys. I’m so sorry. Please send me your Venmo so I can pay you.
At 2:05, I melted down — a full-on, head-in-hands, snot-dripping-to-the-floor, face-contorting cry.
I had wanted that massage so badly.
Is missing a massage the end of the world?
No.
But it’s also not nothing.
And last week it was the thing that tipped the scale after a long stretch of holding it all together.
I’ve been thinking about self-care. There’s the pine-scented candle I look forward to lighting again soon. The yoga classes that have been harder to get up for now that the sun is rising so much later. My once-a-week therapy appointment — the one Bertie 🐾 and I both attend. My garden, which these days looks rather tired. (Or maybe I’m just projecting… haha.)
And then there’s the history of the phrase self-care — which predates hashtags by, oh, about half a century — and isn’t about putting cucumber rounds on your eyes or cuticle oil on your nails.
Self-care's origin story:
It was Black women activists in the 1960s and ’70s who tended to one another’s wounds — emotional, physical, spiritual — in a country that refused to recognize them, much less honor them — who popularized the term self-care.
Their care of one another was not indulgence; it was survival.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”— Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: Essays
Racially speaking, I can only imagine what Audre Lorde and all women of color have lived.
My story is different — and privileged.
I was never denied healthcare or entry into establishments because of the color of my skin.
But as a missionary kid, I was raised on the front lines of evangelical patriarchy — taught to mistrust my own body, override sensations, bury feelings, censor thoughts, and judge my own desires.
I was to make myself disappear so that Christ, and then others, could be held up.
Obedience was seen as love. Self-erasure was considered holy. I can still hear us singing it in Sunday School: “Jesus, then Others, then You — what a wonderful way to spell JOY.” A catchy melody with a deeply imprinted lesson.
Every so often I remember my very first professional massage
It was a few weeks after I’d been discharged from the hospital at twenty-six, following a suicide attempt.
I felt so alone. So tired of trying so hard to fix myself. So ashamed of having tried to give up.
My body felt like a battlefield of vigilance and shame.
But as the massage therapist’s hands worked quietly along my back, I found myself letting out a quiet, long-held sigh.
And as the hour went on, I was — for the first time in... ever? — able to relax without numbing out.
It was a holy moment. And I don’t use that word lightly.
I use holy in its older sense — not about religion, but about wholeness, completeness, health, what’s unbroken.
After experiencing deep healing through the very same body I used to loathe — and after working as a massage therapist for nearly twenty years, touching my clients’ bodies with the same respect my first therapist offered me — I say this:
These bodies of ours are holy.
Fragile, temporary, and reaching for connection, our bodies are where our healing, resistance, and letting go all play out.
I think about that a lot these days — days of rising patriarchy and authoritarianism, when the rights and humanity of people of color, of women, of queer and trans people, of anyone who doesn’t fit into a narrow box of belief, are under daily assault.
Systems built to control bodies — especially women's — are not relics of the past; they’re alive and well.
And every act of tending and letting our bodies rest, breathe, or be is a quiet refusal to surrender our aliveness to those systems.
Receiving that massage was like my body — the same body I’d learned to loathe, the one I’d tried to end — reassuring me: I’m here. It’s okay. I’ve got you.
So when my 57-year-old self cries over a missed massage, I bow my head to women like Audre Lorde and Angela Davis, to that massage therapist at Healthworks in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1994, and to the therapist whose table I couldn’t make it onto last week.
Because in times like these tending to a body I was once taught to disappear, is still a holy act.
Honoring your softness and mine,
xo Heidi
P.S. Another holy act? Saying no.
Boundaries are a form of radical care — one many of us were never taught.
They’re a way of honoring your dear self and body, as well as the people in your life, with true YESes and true NOes.
Boundaries aren’t just about saying no; they’re about finding safety in what’s true.
In my workshop ✨Safe to Say No✨ you’ll learn a nervous-system-friendly way to lead with safety and self-respect.
The best price — $97 through Oct 18 — is available now.
(This piece was edited with AI collaboration.)