20 years as a massage therapist - there are areas of the neck to be cautious of and there is never any excuse to do anything with force or speed to anything associated with the neck or spine. “No pain no gain” approaches in manual therapy (and expectations from clients) needs to die. That approach is abusive to both parties.

There are many ways to provide touch that are both safe and therapeutic. I currently work with hospice patients (you don’t get much more fragile and complicated than that) but when I was teaching the bottom line I gave my students - if the skin is intact and you’re allowed to touch the area with the type of contact to bathe, then there are ways to provide touch for comfort with a positive outcome. Massage can take many forms and it should never hurt or create a threat.

My niece has Turner’s syndrome. She had to learn to give herself hormone shots to grow and develop as others normally would during puberty, but due to very underdeveloped ovaries is incapable of producing gametes. How does she fit in?

Massage therapists hate spray tans.

Lol when it was discussed with the funeral home folks (who gave us the shovel to dig with - left it leaning against the back door of the funeral home the morning of) they just said to let them know when we were done so they could document what was left there for the records.

Yes. This happened in a very, very rural area lol.

My mom used to do arts and crafts things with gourds. When she passed there were easily over a dozen laying around the house plus a giant one she had started prepping, but never finished.

She was cremated, and the plans were to bury her in the plot she already had next to my dad. State or county requirements, however, that works, allowed us to be the ones to dig the hole to actually place her urn in the ground. When the time came, her five children, their spouses and many grandchildren gathered to dig a great big hole in the ground. We ended up taking the big gourd that she had been working on and placed it in the ground, then as we filled that with dirt we placed her urn inside the gourd. In the end everyone took shovelfuls and handfuls of earth and covered her up.

I can never look at a gourd without thinking of my mom.

Oh God, the truth in this hurts.