Mental Health Grand Rounds...today!

I'm frittering away some moments in the chilly, dark pre-dawn hours. I'm giving a talk today on massage and eating disorders at Mental Health Grand Rounds at HUHS. I'm alternately nervous, not nervous, and nervous about why I'm not more nervous. I'm trying to remember why I'm doing this (hint: it's not because I need to prove anything to anyone, but you'd never know it from the soundtrack in my head!).

So this part is more a note to self:

I'm doing this because I believe massage is an amazing healing tool. It is compassionate, nurturing, non-invasive, relatively low-cost, has no grody side-effects, and feels good. People make the choice to receive massage, to make the time and money for it...in that sense, it asks people to be active participants in their well-being. It says, "This body is worth loving. This body is worth compassion and care. This body is good enough to touch." For someone with body image issues, that can feel incredibly risky. It flies in the face of the hateful things they believe about themselves and their bodies.

So yeah. I've got my outline. I've got my resource list. I've got freshly made steel cut oats, slowly cooling coffee, a dog waiting to be walked, a dozing, recently-fed cat nearby. If I can hold my reasons for approaching HUHS about doing this in the first place, I think things will be a-ok.