care labor is sacred work
self portrait, 2021
Last year, I started seeing a new physical therapist. The first bit of our session each week is scar work, a gentle prodding, softly breaking up tissue that’s been hard and unfeeling for nearly 20 years. She said the nerves might start to regrow, and I didn’t believe her.
The first few sessions, just minutes of scar work left me dizzy, lightheaded, nauseous — physically ill from a few centimeters of light touch. After my very first time, I stumbled out the door and gasped down a quart of strongly honeyed mint tea, craving electrolytes like I was at the end of the NYC Marathon finish line, not a midday intersection on the Upper West Side full of dog walkers and overpriced strollers.
But my PT was right. By the sixth seventh eighth time, the sensation shifted, softened, started to come back. It’s tiny, but there — a little seedling of change, the most delicate of stems — just enough that I imagine little nerve tendrils unfurling.
These days, my algorithm is full of psychobabble wrapped in DSM-V language — attachment styles like a personality test, a dating profile, a reality show introduction.
Are you an INFJ-T Pisces moon Virgo rising avoidantly attached AuDHD cutie? Here’s four reasons why you’ll be ALONE FOREVER, the seven things most WRONG WITH YOU, six tips to FIX IT — just click the link in bio for a free PDF ebook download Amazon storefront.
I sift through it and wonder. Is it language we use to better understand ourselves and each other, or do we use it to shame ourselves into capitalism-driven “better” behavior?
Are our expectations of ourselves oppressive?
I wonder what happens when we swallow the shame, lock up the darkest parts of us, shove it all behind a wall of scar tissue. Politics, after all, are the symptoms of what we embody, and conflict (at its best) is an invitation towards intimacy. And when we’re not used to it, the first touch might leave us dizzy, lightheaded, nauseous.
And so I wonder: what kinds of little tendrils could grow with just a bit of attention, warmth, softness, a kind someone to guide it along? Even after decades, even in the hardest, most unfeeling, most untouchable parts of us?