I didn’t decide what I wanted to do until I was in my late 20’s. I tried a few different things but nothing felt right. I tended bar for nearly two decades and for a short time worked as a photographer. Bartending was a great way to make money while I explored other things and I have always had a genuine curiosity for learning about people and their perspective on life. I enjoy helping and observing people, multitasking and socializing and bartending let me do all that while giving me incredible skills that have served me well in life. In fact, I think if everyone did it at some point, the world would be a better place. You learn the value of hard work, teamwork, patience, communication, and social skills. I learned how to multitask and how to connect with people who are very different than me. As for photography, I loved capturing a moment and the way pictures tell a story - I loved the art of it. But neither were my passion.
A few months after 9/11, I moved to lower Manhattan to take advantage of the cheap rent. Not long after that I found myself in a funk that I couldn’t shake so I went to my primary care physician to get a check up.
When I made my appointment, like many New Yorkers, I went to some random doctor assigned to me by my insurance company whom I hadn’t researched and had zero relationship with. Who has time for all that? Besides, I figured I could just trust the insurance company to send me to someone who would take care of me, right?
After waiting nearly an hour to be seen, a young doctor entered the room. He hardly made eye contact with me while he listened to my concerns, checked my vitals and, wrote me a prescription for an anti- depressant then sent me on my way. The total time of my appointment was 5 minutes.
I felt like a number. It was such an awful feeling, as if all of my concerns were invalid. No recognition of my fears of the air quality downtown or even an order for blood work. Clearly this was not the doctor for me.
We are all so different - we have different backgrounds, upbringings, beliefs, jobs, home lives, and health histories just to scratch the surface. How can two people receive and benefit from the same exact treatment? How could this doctor, who didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, think he could give me a pill and fix everything?! Was he even listening to me?
This is why acupuncture is so difficult to study, because this is not how we approach the body. So, what did I do? I went home and decided to find another option.
I had long been aware of Chinese Medicine. I grew up in the back of a Chinese Restaurant in a small town in Massachusetts. Seriously. My mom worked there as a waitress and I would often go do my homework after school. I would hear stories of how Grandfather Chan would make these herbal concoctions that would completely heal things you could not imagine. He treated my mother when the Poo Poo platter warmer caught fire and her polyester uniform was in the wrong place at the wrong time and set her abdomen ablaze. Mr. Chan mixed up an ointment and immediately applied it to her blistering belly. The next day, it was as if it had never happened. But even beyond Mr. Chan’s herbal wizardry, the culture, use of color, and language of the people who worked in that little restaurant fascinated me. It’s funny when you realize these small things from your childhood have influenced your adult life in ways you couldn’t have anticipated. But I digress.
At the time of the anti-depressant experience, I was working one of my bartending gigs and one of my regulars was a massage therapist. We spent a lot of time talking about the body and how it worked. Unrelated but relevant: I was also learning flying trapeze at the time and had quite a bit of shoulder pain. I saw him often for massage and he really helped me. He also referred me to an acupuncturist that he respected so I went to see her. That was one of the relationships that changed the course of my life.
In just my initial visit, I could see that this experience was going to be a game changer. More than my name, address, and insurance card number, for this appointment I filled out a 10 page intake form. She made eye contact! She put her hands on me and felt my area of pain! She listened, and I felt heard. I left there feeling as if I had space inside myself. The weight of the world had been lifted. My problems were still there of course, but I could carry them because I could see things for what they were. My funk did not own me anymore. I knew as I walked out of that office that THAT was what I needed to do with my life. What I had to do.
How It All Started