Profiles Encourage: Amanda

Hello again, everyone. Today we're talking with Amanda. We used to work together in the newspaper business. When you needed a laugh, an 80s music or movie reference, or a piece of candy, you went to Amanda's desk. No questions asked.

She's done a ton of profiles for the Washington Post and other news outlets, and I hope she enjoyed being on the other side of this process for a change. Take it away, Amanda.

Hi Amanda. Let’s start with some basics. Tell me a little bit about your life. Where do you live and what do you do?

I live in Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia. I am a massage therapist at the Teal Center for Therapeutic Bodywork. I actually found them about 17 years ago, because I needed therapeutic work after I broke my leg. So I was a client for a while, and now I’ve worked with them for five years. It’s a clinic, not a spa. It’s injury rehabilitation and pain management.

Before that, I was an editor and a writer. Editing was my full-time job and writing was my freelance job. I have always had freelance jobs when I’ve wanted to scratch a different itch.

Now tell me a little bit about your background. What is your heritage? Where does your family come from? Do you have roots outside of the United States?

I have no idea. It’s because my family seems so very small. It was small to begin with, and then it got cleaved in half. My mother is one of three kids, they were two girls and a boy. I have three cousins from her side. My father was an only child, and he was much older than my Mom. He was born in 1920 or something like that. I didn’t have any cousins on my Dad's side. My dad died when I was six.

I have not really gotten curious about it because I didn’t think I was starting with a lot of branches. I’m pretty sure I’m German, my grandma’s name was Hamburg. I don’t know a lot about my Dad’s side, which is really weird.

When people ask me about my heritage, I tell them I’m from the country. Maybe because of the contrast of where I am now. I grew up in rural America, southern Indiana. Born in a town across the river from Louisville, Kentucky. When my Dad died, we moved out to farmland. There was no four-way stop in this town, and maybe 1,500 people. All the towns nearby went to one high school. Everybody’s parents were either farmers, teachers or worked at a plant.

Is there something about you – a physical characteristic, a personality trait, an aspect of your job or any part of your life – that is frequently misunderstood by people? If so, please tell me about it and what you would say to dispel that misunderstanding.

I think people think I’m too skinny, and therefore they judge me completely about my physical size. And the word that sometimes follows skinny is “bitch” and it’s just not true. Or they think I’m sick. I feel like a have to dispel a bunch of things from the get-go. Everybody has to do that with their size if they’re a woman.

I wish I didn’t have to think about it so much. I’m so much more than whatever you just tagged me as. And if you didn’t just tag me as something, I love you. I get lots of assumptions about being from a small town, too. “You’re uneducated, you’re a redneck,” stuff like that.

Let’s flip that around now. Tell me about a time you learned more about somebody – or something – after looking a little deeper, beyond the superficial.

It happens all the time. I work at a place that demands that you make no assumptions. It’s been a good exercise. Here’s a good example. You cannot honk at anyone in a hospital parking garage. You know why? You have no idea what they just learned. Is their cancer back? Is their mother dying? Did they break their leg? Did they just have a baby? They’re probably not thinking about their car or how slowly they’re driving. You can extrapolate that to all of life. Don’t make any assumptions about what anyone is going through. It’s not easy. And if you can’t do kindness, practice patience.

What really drives you? What’s your reason for getting out of bed every day?

So much of our life falls into routine, you don’t have to think about why you’re getting up. You gotta get your run in, take the dog to the doctor, get to work. All those things land on your head when you wake up. And that sucks. Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up and say, “Why am I getting up today?”

The older you get, the harder it is. What drives me, in a more existential way, I just want to connect with people. It’s trite, but you can never empathize with somebody unless you’ve made some kind of connection, I don’t care how small it is. I’ve had to work on it, because my old job made it easy. I got paid to talk to people and make connections.

A lot of that comes from living so far out in the middle of nowhere and having a small family. I’ve never felt like I was part of a big family. If you can find connections, it makes things a whole lot better. With my job, I have to listen, and I have to appropriately respond to it. If there’s a woman who’s holding a baby in one hand and on the phone with the other, she’s got a lot goin’ on! I need to understand where people are coming from.

Tell me about a difficult period in your life, how you coped with it and how it made you stronger.

Recently, I had two back-to-back injuries. First my hip went out, and then I had a foot injury. Basically, it hurt to be standing up. I’m very active, my job is active, so the things I do all day long I couldn’t do without being in pain. And I’m supposed to be there to help other people with their pain.

Nothing was as raw and lonely and low as not being able to do the things that make you who you are. Add to that the physical pain, which brings its own type of stress, and the lack of social engagement. I was just with my thoughts, and it was effing uncomfortable. I just felt low. I got through by asking for help.

It’s stupid that people are hesitant to ask for help. Why would I think I was the only one who could help me through that? So I found a new doctor, talked to a therapist, took time off from work, rested and recovered. The hardest part was getting through the day without the routine. And I talked a lot to my husband and took a lot of comfort with my dog. I had to just plod through and have patience.

We all know there’s no shortage of bad news out there. Now tell me what gives you hope and what’s good about the world.

The fact that you and I are doing this. That’s what is good about the world. People can get together and talk without worrying that a bomb is going off in our front yard, and not worry if they’ll be able to eat that day. We take so much for granted in this country. Also, I don’t have kids, but they’re so much better than we are. They like people that look differently from them, they see meanness and they call it out.

The planet makes me hopeful. The level that the planet adapts to what we’re doing to it, there’s science, or God, or something out there that’s keeping things going. And laughter! It’s such a release. If you feel so moved to just laugh out loud, it’s such a release from everything else that was hurting you.

Let’s have a little fun here. Tell me about your worst job. And if you haven’t had one, tell me about the most interesting one.

I’ve had two worst jobs. They’re tied. I’ve worked since I was 15. My most recent awful job was editing for the Associated Press. Nobody was friendly with each other. The whole place felt very territorial. I never felt like anything I said was valid to others. The work itself wasn’t terrible, but what sucked was the feeling that nobody was on your side.

My second-worst job was, I sold hot dogs in the town square of Corydon, Indiana. That was the first state capital of Indiana, and it was a “tourist destination.” I sat there all day long and sold hot dogs from a cart. No one ever came! They weren’t roasted, they were boiled. And I couldn’t go anywhere. If I had to go pee, I had to close everything down! I did that for a whole summer.

Now let’s talk about music. I need it every day. In the car, at the gym, in the kitchen, you name it. Tell me what you like and when you need to hear it.

I definitely need to hear it when I’m by myself. I don’t spend a lot of time by myself, but just the other day, I was alone at home and doing light chores and I needed to hear it. I also need it when I need to cry. I also need it when I work. I also love to dance. I need music to come on every now and then that reminds that I can still lose myself dancing. I need to do that more.

My husband loves music, and we love the same 80s hair band music, and I need that when I want to feel like a kid again. I met Robert in Chicago, not the type of place where people talk about Whitesnake and Motley Crue. I guarantee you that was part of the attraction for me. He started to see me in a different way. I also like music when I want to feel naughty. Any kind of R ‘n’ B.

Thanks Amanda. Did we miss anything? Anything you’d like to add?

I’m so glad you’re doing this, Joe. When I did it for a living, it felt so good. It gave me the confidence to become a massage therapist. I miss that rush after a good interview. You’re like, “Yeah! That person is a person just like me!” There’s nothing like that.