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Let the healing begin for stressed commuters

November 29, 2008 12:36 am

By MICHAEL ZITZ

Interstate 95 is gridlocked. State Route 610 consists of bumper-to-bumper, endless, ugly sprawl. And then there's bailout news on the car radio to make North Stafford residents' commutes all the more fun.

As the poet didn't quite say: Some see North Stafford as it is, feel their necks tighten up, gnash their teeth and ask, "Why?" Linda Osorio dreams of a North Stafford filled with peace and love after it's had a good massage, meditated and gone to a Qi Gong class, and asks, "Why not?"

North Stafford, with its high percentage of Washington commuters schlepping up and down a packed I-95 to and from pressure-cooker jobs, may very well be the most stressed out part of the Fredericksburg area.

The 31-year-old Osorio, along with partners Drew Calhoun of North Stafford and Kathleen McBride of Fairfax, saw a need and recognized an opportunity. So they opened Massage Matters Wellness Center at 418 Garrisonville Road, No. 106, on Aug. 18.

" People are so stressed out right now," Osorio says, "and you know it really affects your kids when your works stresses you out and you go home and you don't let it go. Commuters, both people working for the government and the military, get beat up a lot, physically and mentally."

If that sounds familiar, Massage Matters, which takes walk-ins, offers a variety of types of treatments on heated tables as well as chair massage.

But Osorio emphasizes the whole-person, preventative wellness center aspect of the business, saying "We want to be a resource center," offering free workshops and working with a nutritionist.

"So many people sit around at work and sit around in traffic and these people get depressed," she says. "They have chronic pain. And they spread it around because misery loves company."

Generally, she says, people who are healthy are pretty happy.

"We try to help people overcome negativity. We ask, 'What do you do for exercise? What's your diet like?' We say, 'Listen, if you really want to feel better, you need a lifestyle change. It's going to affect both your body and your mind.'

"I will tell you you need to eat better. I know what it's like. I was slightly overweight myself. Some people say, 'Wait till the New Year.' You've got to do it now.

"Go at it moment by moment, step by step," Osorio said. "Martin Luther King once said, don't look at the whole staircase. Look at one step at a time. When you look at the whole staircase, you feel like you can't do it."

And we know we can't always do it by ourselves, she says.

"You need someone to tell you just try to do it today. Whenever you need someone to talk to, whenever you just need a pep talk, come to see us."

She's lived in Stafford for 25 years, long enough to see life change there from a slow pace to a frantic one. So she knows people in North Stafford have different problems and worries today than they did a generation ago.

That's part of the reason she wants to take time to listen to clients and get to know them the way mom and pop stores did in Stafford years ago.

Osorio also knows what it's like to feel that hope has almost slipped away.

She knows what it's like to be part of a stressed home environment because her mother struggled to support the family after her father left when she was 12.

"We had no electricity, no water at one point," she said. "I remember my sister and I were sitting in our bedroom one night with only candlelight. We were hungry and we talked about what we would want if we could have anything to eat. When my mom came home two hours later with two bags of KFC, it seemed like the best meal I ever had. We thought this was a miracle to be able to have something we really wanted."

Good things, she said, happen when you really believe something can happen, "when you can taste it, feel it."

Even in the toughest times in her youth, "I always knew I wanted to help people," Osorio said.

Now it's happening at Massage Matters.

But now she may help people by telling them not to taste it and feel it at KFC.

Michael Zitz: 540/846-5163
Email: mikez@freelancestar.com