the edges of myself

My name is Mandy, and I am a healer.

Such a simple statement, and yet it has taken years for me to give voice to those words. And even now, sometimes I still stumble on them– try to quickly find the justification or clarification once they’ve been uttered… Couch them in apology or immediate explanation…

I don’t talk much about my work– not in the outside world. I have a hard time contextualizing for people what it is that I do outside the safety of the four walls of my treatment room. And perhaps a large part of my hard time is the fact that what I do doesn’t have a name (beyond the one I’ve given it). No one taught me how to do what it is that I do. No one except for the hundreds of people who have allowed me to place my hands on their bodies. I wasn’t “certified” or…