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“And to me, that gal hanging there was a lot,” Busby said. Snoqualmie Fire Chief Bob Rowe said that without Busby’s actions, he had “no doubt the river would have taken another life” that February day. Busby was honored by a full complement of city firefighters in front of the Snoqualmie City Council on Monday, March 25. “It gives me great honor to have Brian as a Snoqualmie employee,” said City Administrator Bob Larson, in a statement. “His actions are a testimony to his outstanding character and dedication to serving the community.”
“I feel like I’ve got a gift. I’m happy to share it,” she says. Ryan was voted “Best Therapeutic Massage” practitioner in the 2013 Best of the Valley reader poll. She’s a cancer survivor who helps other people heal and hope. “It feeds my soul,” Ryan says of her work. “It’s the only job where I wake up, thinking ‘I love coming to work.’ It’s a job that gives back to me.”
Here comes street work on Falls Avenue, Cedar Street in downtown Snoqualmie.
Going back Ryan’s skills in healing touch took shape when she was only 7. Her mother, Shirley Davies, had Bell’s Palsy, a partial paralysis of the face, ever since Ryan was young. “She had a lot of facial nerve pain,” Ryan said. “My dad had big, gnarly man-hands. He could not do it.” So Ryan’s hands did the comforting, massaging her mother’s face and neck. “She talked me through it,” she said. “She was suffering a lot. It felt like I was able to give her some comfort.” Ryan grew up in the Santa Cruz/Monterey area of California. In her early adulthood, she drove ambulance as an emergency medical technician.
A big street and infrastructure project to fix mostlywrecked roads in downtown Snoqualmie began this month. Officially named the Falls Avenue Southeast and Southeast Cedar Street Rehabilitation and Infrastructure Improvement Project, it’ll transform several streets. Work goes through December of this year. In places, the curb, gutter, planter, and sidewalks will be removed and replaced.
“I probably should have gone to nursing school,” she says. “Things didn’t work out.” Ryan came to North Bend with her ex-husband. After 17 years as a stay-athome mom, she divorced, and life changed. Ryan was ready to go back to work, but the skills and training had moved on for all of the jobs she’d ever done. As for driving Seth Truscott/Staff Photo an ambulance, Heather Ryan stands in the North Bend “joining the fire office of The Healing Garden, the thera- department at 45 peutic collective she runs. Ryan, named was not an option,” Best Massage practicioner in the Valley, she said. “I thought believes in the power of setting goals. about the things I’d enjoy doing.” Ryan remem“It was a different time. That was way back when,” she says, bers the “wonderful” mas“there were no paramedics in sage therapists she’d worked Santa Cruz County,” so Ryan, with in the Valley. Nancy an EMT, went on all the emer- Colton, her mentor and inspiration, practiced in gency calls. “It was exciting—and some- North Bend. She helped get thing for young people,” she Ryan into the Brian Utting school of massage in Seattle. added. She worked emergency She graduated in 2006 and rooms, then for an eye doctor opened her own business in and orthopedic surgeon, gain- 2007, moving locations seving experience in the world of eral times. medicine. At the club across the street,
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Ryan would dream of her own place. “I used to sit over at Boxley’s, on the couch, and I’d look across the street, see this very building, and I’d say, ‘There’s my office.’” She opened The Healing Garden a year ago, going solo. For her, just two years after her bout with cancer, still recovering, it was a big deal. She had the intention of forming a group of massage practitioners around her, and sure enough, she started the warm, comforting place, and they came. “I’ve got wonderful practitioners who have unique and valuable skills,” she says. “Everybody here is an independent practitioner. Everybody here is allowed to have their own practice and have freedom. We have meetings to keep things on the same page.” “Many of my clients are my friends.” Some become her friend through the practice. “I hold them all dear to my heart.”
Fighting cancer Ryan was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. It was out of necessity that she hung in there on her beloved job. Enduring five surgeries over 15 months, she always came back to work between treatments. “I kept working through it,” she said. “As a single mom, I didn’t have anybody else paying the bills.” She overcame cancer, thanks to a lot of emotional help from her Valley friends, who threw her a big benefit to pay for surgeries and bills. “The community came together in a big way to help me get through it,” she says. “Even though it was not an easy thing to go through, I’m grateful for the opportunities cancer gave me to see the love and generosity in our community and for reminder that life is precious,” Ryan told the Record. “Joy can be found every single day. You just have to open your eyes and heart to it.” Since then, Ryan has changed her diet and routine, and many other parts of her life. Ryan credits “feeling gratitude every day and being thankful for what you have, always looking forward to the future with hope and vision.” Gesturing to her North Bend Way practice, “this would never have happened if I hadn’t visualized it and believed it would happen.”
• Heather Ryan is part of The Healing Garden, a collective of massage and other therapeutic specialists including Nicole Braithwaite, Nancy Witt and Jeremy Hall. Healing Garden is located at 106 W. North Bend Way. Call the business at (425) 292-0402 or visit TheHealingGardenMassage.com. • Ryan plans a May 1 grand opening event and open house for The Healing Garden.