PTSD and returning soldiers

The Universe is a funny thing.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Chamber of Commerce Friday morning meeting, only I REALLY didn't feel like going. I wasn't feeling that great since I have "gut issues" and they're the worst in the morning.

Anyway, when I was coming out of the cubicle in the restroom (this is probably TMI, but I'm trying to give you a picture here!) there I came a across a woman who had tears in her eyes, so I asked if she was OK. I'll not say what was going on with her, but the situation ended with me giving her a big hug, we had a wee chat, I gave her my card and told her she should come get a massage and it would be on the house.

I found out from another colleague at the Chamber that the lady was involved in setting up a group to go to the airport to do nice things for the soldiers coming back from overseas. So I thought that she'd be a good one to ask about looking into getting a group of massage therapists to go out to the airport to work on some of the soldiers as volunteer work (just chair massage). I had it on my "list" of things to look into.

So. Weird thing happened today. When talking to a fellow MOST-EXCELLENT massage therapist blogger on the phone today, Christina, I mentioned what I was planning (plus a lot of other stuff since I'm SO excited that Christina is planning on moving to Texas).
THEN a couple of hours later the lady that I met in the restroom called to set up an appointment for her massage and we talked about the airport/soldier thing then too. She thought it was a great idea. So she's contacting the contact that I need to contact to see about getting this thing going.

Back to my favorite quotation of all time: "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous". The pattern of me not feeling that great/meeting the lady because I didn't feel that great/talking to Christina and then the lady calling right is leading me to get this thing going (and yes, that was an overuse of the word "contact").

Plus I think the lady that was upset deserves a free massage. She's obviously had a rough time of it and she's a nice person.

Just out of interest, I came across this good article on post traumatic stress disorder and massage .

Very interesting. Looks like chair massage will be as far as I'll go since the article suggested that I might need more training for dealing with PTSD clients on the table.