about me

BACKGROUND

(a long answer to the old "So Why'd You Become a Massage Therapist?" question)

Born and raised in Old Metairie [part of the New Orleans metro area], I came to Jackson in 1987 to attend Millsaps College.  After finishing with a B.A., my husband and I moved to Hattiesburg where I picked up a M.S. at U.S.M., thinking that law school was somewhere in my future.  I was wrong, and thankfully so.  Instead, an old friend invited me to interview with her technology firm because they needed a salesperson to help sell inmate management software solutions to state Departments of Corrections that were facing the looming Y2K crisis.  I got the position and the job turned out to be a fantastic financial blessing for several years, but damn, it was stressful.

Then 9/11/2001 happened and, like so many people around the world, I was prompted to pause amid the confusion and take another look at my life and where I was going. 

My epiphany came during a road trip down to N.O. for a concert on November 2, '01.  As I drove and dear hubby napped, my mind kept turning over the images that were everywhere in the media of the continuing clean-up effort in NYC.  I kept thinking of the rescue workers and how terribly stressful it had to be for them to go through the daily hell of uncovering still more rubble and more bodies and, although at that time I had never had a massage myself, I sincerely hoped that there were people on-site there *touching* them.  It just seemed so critical to me at that moment that those people receive loving human touch to heal their bodies and help them through it all.  And then ~ just like that ~ Somebody whispered in my ear, "You could do that..." 

By the time my husband had woken up, I had it all worked out that I was going to quit my sales job and become a Massage Therapist.  Never mind that at that time I had never experienced massage firsthand, had no idea where the nearest Massage Therapy school was, or what the job market was like ~ it was a done deal and I've been blessed by the decision ever since.

Massage Therapy Vita