Key Points

• Bodily change is inevitable, whether related to aging, injury, surgery, or other reasons, and these changes can bring about feelings of fear, grief, and loss. 

• Although there may be no way to completely relieve the existential pathos of aging and physical change, in our role as practitioners, we can be both companions and comforters to our clients who are experiencing physical and emotional loss.

I notice the time first: It’s 2:08 a.m. on the bedside clock. Then, I see in the moonlight that my wife is sitting up in bed, curled forward, hugging her knees. Almost 10 years after her double mastectomy, the grief of losing her breasts is finally present for her.

I touch her back. We talk. At the time of the surgery, she says, she just wanted to get on with her life. Waking up after anesthesia, looking down at her chest, the first thought she allowed herself was, “Well, the surgeon did a good job—nice and flat.” I watched as her brave face and stoic nature got her through a difficult recovery. Why dwell on sadness when there’s nothing to be done anyway? The previous body isn’t coming back in any case.

Now, years later, the tears come. Loss, sadness, grief. Sitting with her in the quiet moonlight, my chest aches too. Her quiet sorrow gently breaks my heart. It’s a bittersweet variety of heartbreak, particular to this stage of life, when even the most stoic among us are faced with unavoidable evidence that our bodies are no longer young. It’s bitter, because there is loss, sadness, and grief. But at times, like this moment in the moonlight with my wife of nearly 40 years, being an aging human is also strangely sweet: Alongside the pain, there’s also tenderness, poignancy, and a deep well of love that opens when we touch into the inevitability and vulnerability of loss that we all face.

I’m getting to know loss so well. In my body, though I haven’t been through what my wife has, the signs of aging are very clear. As they are with my friends and family: We are more wrinkled, creakier, and talk more about our latest medical news. One is recovering from a stroke, another from a heart attack, several are dealing with smoldering cancer diagnoses. All of us are faced with aging, loss of our youth, symptoms, replacements, mortality. Everyone ages differently, but even the super-agers among us are changing with the passage of time. 

No matter what our style of aging, at some point in our lives, the tide turns, from a view of the future that is boundless, full of possibility, and open, to a realization that there are limits, losses, and endings. Sometimes this realization grows slowly; other times it comes with a shock. Some of us get bitter, some philosophical, some find ways around the feelings this realization can bring. But unless the end is very sudden, we will all be asked to face the fact that we aren’t going to do everything, be everything, experience everything in life that we had looked forward to. Whether slowly or suddenly, we realize we are losing our body’s youthfulness, and it isn’t coming back. 

Of course, aging isn’t all bad. Wisdom, perspective, and even a welcome detachment come with maturity. And, most people actually get happier with age: I was pleasantly surprised to learn that older people consistently score higher on happiness measurements, even with the physical challenges and loss that aging brings.¹ This might be because the way we deal with aging and loss is perhaps the defining aspect of our personal growth in the last half of life, and the issue that makes spiritual or philosophical considerations rise to the top in many older people’s lives. 

But there’s no silver lining to the inevitable loss that comes with being a body: no way to dress it up, make it nice, or ease the fact that at some point, we all lose our physical abilities, our youthful identity, and the life that those things had allowed us. And, said simply, loss is often just hard.

So how does aging and the loss of our youth relate to being a bodyworker? Demographically, our client base is older, like the population as a whole. This also means there are many more older practitioners than just a decade ago. Certainly, the physical changes that come with aging influence the style of work older therapists want to do. No-effort, seated-versus-standing alternatives are very popular with older practitioners, and in both my work and in our Advanced Myofascial Techniques trainings, the watchwords have become “easier,” “more comfortable,” “more patient,” “deeper,” “no effort.” I don’t work nearly as hard as I did 20 years ago, and honestly, I see even more satisfying results.

But the deepest professional impact of my wife’s wee-hours grief is in the way I understand my clients’ loss-connected pain. Whether it’s with my teenage client wanting help with a knee injury so he can keep competing as a wrestler, or my septuagenarian client seeking relief for her ongoing back pain so she can get back to her walks, I’m newly sensitive to the additional layer of emotional pain that their “implied loss”—the feared loss of ability, identity, and possibility—might imply.

When we can provide some physical pain relief, it can help ease the emotional pain of this implied loss. But even when it seems we can’t change the physical pain, it can help to remember that our clients’ pain is rarely only physical. And while there is no real “fix” for the existential pain of loss, even then, there is much we can offer. The listening, companionship, witnessing, and acceptance we practice as part of our work (and as part of also being bodies) are no small comforts, in and of themselves. 

Our bodies won’t stay young forever. We’re all vulnerable to injury, age, grief, and loss. Maybe at some point, letting go and being together is the best we can do. With grace, the poignant, bitter, and sweet tenderness of getting older is a place we’ll all eventually meet up. 

Note

1. Marta Zaraska, “With Age Comes Happiness: Here’s Why,” Scientific American, November 1, 2015, www.scientificamerican.com/article/with-age-comes-happiness-here-s-why.