The Journalist Who Became a Healer: From Deadlines to Life Lines

I used to be a journalist and if someone had told me ten years ago that I'd trade breaking news for breaking up muscle knots, I would have assumed they'd been sampling too much of whatever they were reporting on. Yet here I am, having swapped interview notebooks for massage oils, and honestly? It makes perfect sense in retrospect.

Though I should mention my career path wasn't exactly what you'd call traditional even before the massage thing. I've been a horse trainer (yes, really), a circus performer (also really), and a journalist. If my resume were a dating profile, it would definitely fall into the "it's complicated" category.

The Newsroom Years: Stress Olympics, Professional Division

Journalism is basically competitive anxiety disguised as a career. You're constantly chasing stories, meeting impossible deadlines, and surviving on a diet of caffeine and adrenaline. I spent years hunched over keyboards, phone permanently attached to my ear, treating my body like an inconvenient meat vehicle for my brain.

The thing about journalism is that you absorb everyone else's stress along with your own. Every story you cover—the tragedies, the conflicts, the human drama (you know, the stuff that sells advertising space)—gets filed away somewhere in your nervous system. I was like a stress sponge, soaking up the anxiety of every interview subject and newsroom deadline.

My body kept score in tight shoulders, tension headaches, and that lovely feeling of being perpetually wound up like a caffeinated jack-in-the-box.

The Plot Twist

Ironically, it was during my most stressful journalism period that I discovered massage therapy—not as a career, but as a client desperately needing to remember what relaxation felt like. That first session was revelatory. For the first time in years, my nervous system actually downshifted. The chronic tension I'd accepted as normal started to release.

I walked out thinking, "Wait, people feel like this regularly? And someone gets paid to help create this feeling? Sign me up."

The Skills Translation (Or: How Journalism Accidentally Prepared Me for This)

Funnily enough, the skills that made me decent at journalism turned out to be exactly what makes someone good at massage therapy. Both jobs require:

Deep listening. In journalism, you learn to hear what people aren't saying. In massage, you learn to feel what bodies aren't expressing verbally.

Reading between the lines. Whether it's detecting when an interview subject is dodging a question or sensing where someone's holding tension they haven't mentioned, it's all about paying attention to the story beneath the story.

Asking the right questions. "What's really going on here?" works whether you're investigating a news story or trying to understand why someone's left shoulder is angrier than their right one.

Building trust quickly. People need to feel safe before they'll tell you the truth—whether that truth is about a political scandal or about how much their chronic pain is affecting their life.

The Circus Connection

My time as a circus performer might seem irrelevant, but it actually gave me something invaluable: an intimate understanding of how bodies move, balance, and compensate. When you've spent time learning to trust your body to do impossible things, you develop a pretty sophisticated sense of physical awareness.

Plus, circus people are basically professional body problem-solvers. When something hurts, you figure out why and fix it, because the show must go on. That diagnostic mindset translates perfectly to therapeutic work.

The Horse Whisperer Thing

Training horses taught me the most important lesson of all: communication happens through presence and energy, not just words. Horses don't care about your credentials or your technique—they respond to whether you're genuinely present and trustworthy.

Turns out, human bodies are similar. They can sense when someone is going through the motions versus when they're truly paying attention. That ability to be present and read non-verbal cues has been invaluable in massage work.

Buddhism Enters the Chat

Somewhere along the way, I discovered Buddhism and started sitting with the lovely folks at Red Clay Sangha. Buddhist practice taught me something journalism never did: how to be present without agenda, how to offer help without attachment to results, and how to find peace in the middle of chaos.

This wasn't just personally helpful—it completely transformed how I approach bodywork. Instead of trying to "fix" people, I learned to simply offer support and let healing happen naturally.

What This Hodgepodge Background Means for Your Massage

When you book with me, you're getting someone who:

• Has the curiosity of a journalist, so I actually want to understand what's going on with your body

• Has the intuitive awareness of someone who's worked with animals, so I can sense things you might not be able to articulate

• Has the body awareness of a former performer, so I understand compensation patterns and movement quirks

• Has the presence of a Buddhist practitioner, so you get my full attention instead of someone going through the motions

From Reporting Problems to Creating Solutions

The best part about this career change? In journalism, you mostly document problems. In massage therapy, you get to be part of the solution. Instead of just witnessing human suffering, I get to help alleviate it, one tight muscle at a time.

Every session is still a story, but now it's a story of transformation—the chronic pain that finally lets go, the stress that melts away, the body that remembers what ease feels like.

The Plot Continues

Looking back, all those seemingly random career moves make perfect sense. Each one taught me something essential about paying attention, building trust, and understanding how bodies and minds respond to stress. Now I get to use all of it to help people feel better.

Your body has a story too—of all the stress it's carried, the compensation patterns it's developed, the ways it's adapted to life's challenges. I bring the curiosity of a journalist, the intuition of a horse trainer, the awareness of a performer, and the presence of a meditation practitioner to understanding that story.

Ready to discover what healing feels like when it's approached with genuine curiosity and years of learning how to really pay attention? Book a session and let's explore your body's story together.