Columbia native Cassy Harris is the proud owner of the UpLift Massage and Bodywork Therapy Company, where she works daily to bring health, wellness and all around good vibes back to her hometown.

The daughter of Vicki Ormsby and Corey Waters, Cassy says that she has long dreamed of forging a stronger community through a shared vision of fitness and collective self-care.

“I had this huge vision of a community wellness center, a retreat center, in my head. A place where people can come and slow down, heal, decompress and ultimately revive,” Harris says. “Self-care is incredibly important…believe me, as a mother, you can’t pour from an empty cup. I know that sounds cliché but it also happens to be true, so that’s just one of the things I set out to bring back home.”

After graduating from Columbia High School in 2009, she initially put that dream in the recesses of her mind. Instead, she opted to try her hand at the more traditional pathway of higher education.

“After I graduated high school I did attend the University of Mount Olive for a year but I didn’t do much with that… and after that initial year and summer, I never went back,” she says. “So I came back home, met someone, had children and ended up waitressing for 15 years.”

While the quiet life as a mother and waitress agreed with Harris, fate would throw its own curveball at her and the rest of world during the COVID-19 global pandemic. However, where other Americans saw dread and terrible uncertainty, Harris saw a unique opportunity to reinvent herself and carve a new path towards a brighter future.

“During COVID, I decided to go back to school for massage therapy,” she says. “It sounds like a strange idea, but I knew that the world would be touch deprived. I knew then what my calling was going to be.”

In some ways, the dark days of the pandemic served to uncover her buried passion for massage therapy and making others feel their best.

“You know it’s funny, I was recently looking back at the story that I wrote for our 10 year class reunion projections. I don’t even remember doing this but I saw that I had written that I became a massage therapist,” she recounts.

That past personal projection was no doubt inspired by her early days as an amateur masseuse during her formative years.

“Back in the day, I used to give my English teacher neck massages after class and she paid me for it,” Harris says. “So is one of those things that was always in the back of my mind as a potential career choice, I just never pursued it right out of school.”

Although the pandemic acted as a catalyst for her new venture, it was by no means an easy journey to undertake.

“I talk like it was easy but it was anything but. At the time I had a toddler, I had two in elementary school, so I was trying to home school them while going to school myself,” she laughs. “I have to say, it was a disaster for like 10 months...”