Today in our “Coffee date with…” we’ll be meeting Miranda Cacek. Miranda is an acupuncturist and holistic healer. Massage therapist and doula for the last 15 years, Miranda will share with us her personal experiences while raising three teenagers, developing her alternative wellness business and embracing who she is.
R: Good day Miranda, thank you for being here today. Let’s start talking a bit about your career journey. What made you become a wellness therapist?
M: Although I do acupuncture and massage, what I really do is provide guidance, support, and healing for people as they navigate their life. Our Bodies are with us 100% of the journey. It stores events, emotions, and experiences as memories in the body. Before we know it we are operating from past events and belief systems that do not serve us in the present and are very likely causing the very health problems we are trying so hard to cure. I’ve been doing alternative wellness work for over 15 years as a massage therapist and birth doula and have recently added the profound healing capabilities of acupuncture and BodyTalk. All of these skills have coalesced into my healing sessions today. I love this work because we can access not only the physicality of our bodies like muscles, fascia, tendons, and ligaments, but the very important subtle energetic aspects that contribute to our health like emotions, thoughts, and even spiritual beliefs. All of these come together to create our bodies and our experience of life. Being able to facilitate healing on all these levels makes our sessions that much more impactful.
I started my business way back in the day because I wanted to become a midwife, and although I did work briefly as a midwifery assistant, the evolution of my practice coincided with my own health journey and discovering healing techniques that were powerful for me. I wanted to also learn these techniques, especially acupuncture and BodyTalk, to help others through their health challenges.
I started my business way back in the day because I wanted to become a midwife, and although I did work briefly as a midwifery assistant, the evolution of my practice coincided with my own health journey and discovering healing techniques that were powerful for me. I wanted to also learn these techniques, especially acupuncture and BodyTalk, to help others through their health challenges.
R: What specific challenges is your business facing at this moment? Has being bisexual caused any particular challenge itself?
M: The specific challenges that I’m facing right now are primarily around finding my authentic self-expression of who I am and what I do, and marketing that to the people I love to work with. It’s actually quite a beautiful metaphor for what’s happening for me on a personal level right now as I explore and share with others my own sexual identity. My “coming out” story starts right here, I guess. Only a very select group of close friends and family know about my identity and it has been an exploration on where I stand on coming out to my wider circles. Being cis-female and passing for straight brings a lot privilege in how I can navigate the world, but there’s also a part of me that feels disguised and hidden, not fully seen for all that I am. Because of this, I’m often asking myself what is my authentic self -expression here? Does it require correcting others when they label me as they think I am? Is it really necessary for me to interrupt conversations and say, “oh, by the way, I’m not actually straight?” Would doing this be for me or for them? Or both? Does my self-expression lie in their view of who they think I am or am I satisfied that I know who I am and that’s enough? See? It’s still something that seems very nuanced and complex and I’m still figuring it out.
R: I, particularly, believe that we all are figuring ourselves out our whole lives. Definitely, it all depends on self-identity at the end of the day, right? How we grow to feel we are and be more or less attached to that feeling. Do you think you’d change your past? If you could see your whole timeline and modify as pleased, would you?
M: I wouldn’t change anything! Sometimes I think about what it would have been like to have my kids later (my oldest was born when I was 19), but I know that everything in my life has given me the trajectory I needed to be here, right now, doing exactly what I’m doing now, and this is my life and I love it.
R: I, particularly, believe that we all are figuring ourselves out our whole lives. Definitely, it all depends on self-identity at the end of the day, right? How we grow to feel we are and be more or less attached to that feeling. Do you think you’d change your past? If you could see your whole timeline and modify as pleased, would you?
M: I wouldn’t change anything! Sometimes I think about what it would have been like to have my kids later (my oldest was born when I was 19), but I know that everything in my life has given me the trajectory I needed to be here, right now, doing exactly what I’m doing now, and this is my life and I love it.
Zen Master Thich That Hahn – “We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”
R: That is so amazing! So, if you could visit yourself when you were 16, what would you tell young Miranda?
M: Ha! This is a great question! I would tell 16-year-old me, “You got this, girl! You are amazing and phenomenal and that heart that wants to love everybody but is so scared to trust- let it! Let it feel all the things and know that you got this!” “Stop worrying about what other people think of you and just shine!”
R: Ok and what if I told you that you could travel anywhere in time and space right now, but only for one visit?
M: I would travel back in time to before Mexico was colonized by the Spanish. I have ancestral lineage from there and I would love to go back and learn the language that was spoken before Spanish, sit with my great great grandmothers and learn their methods for healing with herbs and spiritual ritual, and really connect with that part of my family’s history.
Thank you Miranda. Has been a pleasure getting to know you a bit better!
If you’d like to know more about Miranda’s work, don’t hesitate to check www.BreakthroughFamilyWellness.com
Are you an amazing LGBTQIA entrepreneur and you’d like to be interviewed for this series? Reach out!