For over twenty-five years I have worked with bodies that were carrying things their owners could not say out loud. Most of my clients are women healing from sexual, religious, and spiritual trauma — the kind nobody brings a casserole for. The kind that never shows up on a scan, and moves into the tissue instead.
I was a founding member of the Texas Massage Therapy Advisory Board. I went there to get two things written into the rules: that draping is mandatory, and that no therapist stays in the room while you are dressing or undressing. I did it for your safety, and for the legitimacy of a profession that has spent a long time being mistaken for something it is not. Nobody asked me to. Your safety was never the part I was willing to negotiate.
