July, 2024 ~
I am writing this a few days after joining my weekly Haitian dance class for the first time in 16 months. On March 12, 2023, while in the South Pacific, I stood up to tend to something and collapsed, my left leg unable to carry me. On March 22, 2023, after a long travel home I ended up in emergent surgery. The surgeon thought he would need to do 1 or 2 laminectomies. It ended up being a more lengthy and complicated surgery that I now affectionately refer to as the removal of my “ocean debris.” A series of auto accidents had the cumulative effect of congesting my lumbar spine to the point of nerve compression, strangling and eventually complete damage and shut down.
Dancing in class again, I kept hearing and seeing—the way we do when we engage in deep listening to our own sensations, feelings and thoughts -that ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING is possible. The immense joy my bones were dancing illuminated my inner landscape with hope. Not given to “Pollyanna” approaches to navigating life’s big challenges, I was surprised to hear myself silently reciting this phrase over and over. I often conjure my most helpful ideas when dancing, and as I danced these words, I experienced a full body realization that my healing journey has been – and still is – one of choosing the path of possibility. During this journey, which began with a real question about if and how I might walk again, I received so many messages of impossibility: a physical therapist asking me what I loved to do and then telling me “You’ll never do that again”; a sharply exclaimed reaction from a colleague or friend insinuating that my experience was “terrible, horrible” and I was surely “SO traumatized.” I’d also been treated rudely, literally told I needed “too much space”, when I previously tried to re-join my dance class when my body was still moving slow and lacking the refined coordination required to dance “correctly”. The list is long!
On this Saturday, I was also keenly aware of all these messages and, an environment infused with beliefs and messages of impossibility, that seem to be increasing daily. The messages of hatred, toxicity, othering, polarization, are profuse here in the United States. This is occurring elsewhere, as well. The anxieties, immense worries, profound sense of loss and sadness my clients and students are bringing to our work and classes is palpable. We seem to be metaphorically, and perhaps almost literally, swimming around messages of fear.
Rachel Blodgett of Serpent & Bow is a wonderful textile artist and one of my favorite pieces is pictured here:
As I danced, I shone my attention on how good my bones felt, scaffolding the strength and emergent movement of my muscles and connective tissue to the rhythms I have loved for so long. I heard the cadence of my breath and felt flow begin to direct my body. And I realized this is the balm, the antidote, to the messages of impossibility that at times, or for some, always surround us: Listen to your bones. That is the only map that matters, because that is the map that knows who you are, what you believe, and what you are capable of creating and contributing to in this world.
This path of possibility is medicine. Next month, I will share more about places, beings and experiences that are my portals to this medicine. For now, I dance.