This story starts with migraine aura

I’ve written about my newest understanding of my migraine disease and how that’s quite possibly the root of a lot of other issues and even big chunks of my identity that I would never have connected to migraine, but I’ve not told the story of one of the greater and lasting consequences of it.

Part of migraine disease for me, from the beginning, has been visual aura. And it was, over decades, consistent in its presentation. Before the pain and vomiting would commence, I would get a warning (how very polite…).

From my very first migraine attack, I got, what I came to call a “hippopotamus” in my left eye. It would start in the outside corner and kinda “walk” across my field of vision, maybe taking a break about mid eye to rest for a while, and then walk off again, out the inner corner. Sometimes it was accompanied by some sparkle or some fireworks but the hippo was consistent.

One evening in my college dorm room at Penn State, the hippo came and lingered. Extra long. I didn’t think much of it because, well, I was 21 and a little dumb like we all are at that age, and I figured it was just extra linger-y.

But it was there hours later.

I mentioned it to my father on the phone and was told to immediately go to the emergency room at the hospital on the edge of the campus.

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Permanent vision loss

The doctor working that night was nice enough and checked what she could. She was concerned but couldn’t do much. There was nothing to do.

I got an appointment at the Hershey Eye Clinic (a big deal at the time) and permanent vision loss due to migraine was confirmed. They could see the rod and cone death via (if I recall correctly) angiography.

I went home for spring break and had every test under the sun done that could have been remotely related. Nothing.

Of course, no one could explain it.

Of course.

And it was a hard semester for this to happen. It was my last, and I had crammed in some extra 400 level English classes, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I somehow managed to graduate on time, getting some pity grades from at least two professors because I simply could not keep up with the level of reading I needed to do.

My eyes were freaking out. As you can maybe imagine.

At this point, reading for more than 20 minutes was exhausting to my brain, as it was working to rewire my vision around this new vacancy. I was taking a lot of naps (and I’m not a nap person).

The main concern at the time was that this could just keep happening. As the years passed, it proved to be (thankfully) a rare and one time thing.

Now I have a permanent dark grey hippo, center and a bit right of center, doomed to never complete its walk.

And my brain has done a fantastic job of rewiring. When I’m reading, I barely notice anything strange. I barely notice anything strange ever unless I close my right eye.

Or if I’m driving. I can no longer just glance into the driver’s side mirror and trust I’m seeing everything; I have to turn my head to be safe.

I thought that was the last remaining effect.

Trauma on the tennis court

Since I started playing tennis when I was quite young, I have loved my backhand. Most people struggle with their backhand at least to start (and often forever) but I was comfortable from the get go and I got really precise with it. I loved it mostly because people expected it to be a weakness and then they got a surprise. (An innocent enough story that perhaps gives you a sense of how competitive I can be. Ha.)

There’s a reason I’m telling you this.

I’ve recently written a bit about my return to tennis after decades away from the court, and this summer, I’ve been noticing that I was struggling to get to my backhand if my husband ripped it down that far side.

For a while, I had an issue going on with my right ankle, so I attributed it to that.

Then my ankle got back to 100% and still…

Then I decided it was just because I’m still not very fast as I’m working on my fitness.

But I’m not having any trouble getting to these absolute killer shots he hits short with a nasty ((respect)) angle on my forehand side.

I started paying closer attention to what was happening on the backhand side and suddenly…

I became aware that there was this deep feeling of fear that would wash through me when I realized the ball was headed in that direction.

Like fear fear. Like primal level.

And guess what?

It’s my eye. My loss of vision.

All these years later, I realize that that loss of vision has kept me hyper-vigilant on my left side. Whether I was noticing or not, my brain was kicking up the bat signal at any perceived threat. It could be so tiny — like a chartreuse ball.

This wasn’t just happening on the tennis court, of course.

I react with a jump when cars come at me from certain angles. I don’t like when a human comes up from behind me on that side of my body.

I’m sure there’s so much more that I’ve just learned to ignore.

And as soon as this clicked, within a few rallies, I started reacting better and getting to the ball better and hitting some of my old favorite shots.

The somatics of it

(People are using the word somatic in all kinds of ways and I’ll be getting to a piece about how I’m using it soon.)

What happened on the tennis court that allowed me to figure this out? It started with curiosity. What’s going on here? Why am I reacting this way?

Curiosity over the instant story telling that we often jump to that’s usually judge-y.

I could have simply decided that I wasn’t getting to the left side of the tennis court fast enough because I’m carrying extra weight or because I’m “old.”

Instead I inquired.

Our inquiry starts on the visceral level.

What sensations am I experiencing? What am I feeling when this happens?

Often when we become aware of the sensations and then the feelings, it becomes pretty clear pretty fast what’s actually going on.

Body is smart that way once things are brought up to the conscious level.

And that’s the real point of somatic work: uncovering these hidden fear (or grief or pain) triggers frees us to evolve, and whatever happens on the tennis court (or the dance floor) is a mirror to the rest of our lives. Our physical practices are our life practices.

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We’ll start at the beginning so you have context.

I’ve played tennis since I was pretty young. I love tennis and I also have a lot of trauma around tennis (that’s another post). I stopped playing tennis around the same time I stopped dancing and for the same reason — severe and debilitating depression that took all of the things from me that would have helped.

After returning to dance, you would think I would have also returned to tennis, but I was afraid of a twisted ankle that would stop me from effectively teaching the way I like to. Or so I said.

Actually, the anxiety I would feel even thinking about walking onto a court was overwhelming and it was just easier to make excuses that seemed reasonable.

Fast forward to my early 50s and two frozen shoulders. Menopause shoulders. (Which doctors in the United States seem to know nothing about even though they’ve been called that in other parts of the world for a long time.)

It took me a couple of steroid shots and about two years of self rehab to get all of my mobility back, and when I did, I woke one morning and thought, “it’s time to buy tennis rackets.”

In that time of being cut off from a lot of the movement that I was used to having in my body, I realized that I was willing to risk a mere sprained ankle because very little could be as bad as the frozen shoulders I had just gotten through.

Also? One life. Time to live more and do the things I love.

Playing with my husband

Ever since I met my husband about 10 years ago and as soon as he learned I had played tennis, he was trying to get me back on the court but again… trauma so I kept saying no sprinkled with excuses about my dance and teaching.

I point this out to say I have a built-in practice partner, making this whole re-entry so much easier.

We bought rackets.

There is a park about four blocks from our house with a lot of courts. As we walked over, I nervously explained that if anyone else was there, I could not play. Just the thought of someone watching me and me being terrible made my breathing shallow.

He said that was fine and that he could just practice serving.

Turns out, as soon as I was on that court and opened the can of balls and started bouncing them with my racket, I couldn’t resist. Every piece of sensory information on a court makes me deeply and viscerally happy.

And so we embarked on a journey that we’re still on.

We are now into our approximately fourth summer of playing (we started in almost fall so that was a short season) and I could not have imagined how good we would get. I think I’m better than my teenage self at this point at 57.

Tennis is my obsession.

We are fairly well matched and push on each other’s weaknesses which is perfect really.

My husband is stronger but I have more control and placement precision.

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Other Men

When we first started playing, my husband’s use of his strength on the court was difficult for me to manage. I was out of shape from my shoulder “adventure” and he was in great shape. He’s also a runner so he was fast and didn’t get tired, on top of being so much stronger than me.

He could hit shots that I could not get to. (This is not categorically true anymore.)

It was beyond frustrating and I wanted to be able to focus on learning the fundamentals again and rebuilding my abilities. I couldn’t do that if he was consistently hitting his favorite shot that I could not get to.

When I was expressing this in front of a male relative, he made fun of me. Like really made fun of me. Acerbically.

And he tried to joke about it with my husband. As if I weren’t there.

The joke being, of course, that as a woman it’s expected that I could not return my husband’s shots. What else did I expect!? What a silly woman!

And as a woman, of course, I was going to whine about that and make excuses, and well, what do I expect trying to play a man!?

Recently this happened again.

My husband was asked if he played 100% when he played against me, with a sort of nod and wink cheekiness.

At this point, he does, thank you very much. As do I.

But this man could no accept that, he kept laughing and doing the eyebrow raise at my husband, again, as if I were not there.

Men behaving this way — even after a lifetime of experiencing it — always surprises me and turns me into a deer in headlights, but the next man to do this will be met with a different response as I’ve had time to process and think about it.

The underlying violence

I know women reading this understand what I’m writing about. You have heard the tone. You know the sarcasm disguised as humor. You know the biting mockery that borders on or falls right into disgust.

And if you get mad and point it out, you get all the “oh, calm down! I’m just joking!” Adding another layer of humiliation.

As if my husband’s biological advantages are somehow moral advantages. As if his larger muscle mass and higher levels of testosterone make him a superior being, a more valuable being.

As if all of that means that he should be humiliating me on the court — because I deserve it for wanting to play against a man and as if I need to be put in my place.

These sorts of men enjoy humiliating women. It makes them feel better about themselves and bigger.

This is foundational to violence against women: that we are deserving of humiliation, punishment, being made small, put back where we belong.

How dare we think we can compete.

Again, this post is not about tennis.

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I’m not sure there’s any other time when we realize how much we are a part of nature than when nature is ferocious and frightening. There are many among us, I include myself, who have a deep enough relationship with a place that they understand this on a visceral and daily level, but I think we are not the majority.

I know we’re not the majority, or the world would not be what it is today. We would be taking care instead of just taking.

I understand this connection enough to know that the earth feeds me physically and emotionally with its food and beauty, yes, but also that swimming in a fast moving river is asking for trouble and that when the trouble comes, it’s your fault, not the river’s. I understand it enough to know that even a lake can have a deadly undercurrent, that lightening can strike when the sky is blue, that the snake (or whatever animal frightens you) is protecting themselves, and that rain can quickly turn to flood.

So this morning, as I was preparing to teach one of my weekly online somatic dance classes and the rain was starting to get hard, after already having a night of fairly hard rain, and the sky was quickly darkening and the rumbling kept getting closer, well, my alarms started to go off.

Alarms that I developed when I was little and home alone with my sister and dog. I got a call from my mother that a tornado was in the area and I was told to open all the windows and get everyone to the basement. I can still feel the panic that overtook my entire small body. The breathlessness and my heart feeling like it was going to escape my chest. The sweat and the wide eyes. The prickling of my skin.

I got my sister and dog to the basement but then I was too frightened to stay there. I know… that sounds strange (or not), but I was compelled to keep checking and I ran between front and back windows and basement for the next many minutes. I have no idea how many minutes. Until suddenly, the sky was blue.

I’ve done EMDR for this particular trauma, because even a small rainstorm on the horizon can send me into a PTSD response.

And the EMDR seemed to have worked. Until this spring when we’ve had one storm after another and my nervous system is just done with it all.

So this morning, as I was teaching, I found myself — while my students were moving to a prompt that I set them up with — running between the front and back windows, watching the rapidly increasing flooding of the street and our backyard.

I tried to focus on my class — on these somatic practices that I have created and that have helped me through so much.

My classes are my circles. My classes are not filled with strangers but with community. If you are a stranger when you start, we will take you into this community so fast that you’ll forget the not knowing.

All to say, I was surrounded by kind and loving and helpful humans who were simply present with me as I would give them a quick report as to what was happening in between prompts and songs.

Eventually things started to slow down. Eventually, as I have been working on this, the sun came out.

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SAD and my weather journal experiment: to know a place is to love a place

Throughout my life, I’ve suffered from cycles of depression. Some have been life threatening. Some have lingered on a low setting for far too long. Others were definitely exacerbated by the deep and dark winters of my hometown, Erie, PA.

(A note I always write when I’m writing about this: I am antidepressant resistant so if you are able, please use all the tools.)

This was before happy lite lamps were widely available, affordable, and understood to be effective, so I ran a few experiments to see if I could help myself. (Experiments are my favorite. Ha)

I figured if I could find a way to see the patterns of the seasons, I could perhaps figure out how to disconnect a bit from this idea that winter is “forever.” Depression ruins my sense of time and overall is quite the liar. I needed to combat that.

My approach was multi layered.

I started to get outside every day, no matter how cold or snowy or wet it was. I got excellent weather gear including yak trax and snow shoes and my first snow pants since I was pre-teen. I freaking loved those snow pants (and perhaps need to get some again soon…).

I spent entire seasons writing a minimum of one haiku a day. Capturing my observations through tiny bits of language in a small red leather journal.

And finally, I kept a weather and nature journal for a few years.

Every day, I would write out the basics of what was happening with temperature and snow and rain and sun. All of it.

I would also note what was happening with birds and plant life and the lake.

Magical things started to become apparent. I realized I could hear the thawing of the ground — the quiet trickling just beneath the surface — and that told me it was time to plant peas.

Over those few years, I started to discern the larger patterns.

For example, I noticed that in Erie, there would be at least one more small snow after the forsythia were in full bloom.

This meant that I wasn’t fooled into thinking winter had let go her cold grip when others thought we were further into spring than we really were. This meant that I wasn’t disappointed when spring didn’t quickly act like early summer.

Because the patterns were simply pattern-ing.

But that’s not the case anymore. The patterns are shifting. The springs are becoming even more volatile than ever. Tornado alley is shifting. Heat is worse and sooner. While at the same time, every part of the country seems to be either in a drought or at the opposite end of the spectrum — getting too much rain, like us.

This all becomes more noticeable when you love a place enough to notice that place.

To love a place is to protect that place

I cannot remember what I was listening to but I do remember where I was walking when I was listening to an interview with a British environmentalist. I was walking in the Erie City Cemetery. It was early summer. The greens were still at that vibrant, almost neon level. The air was loud with birdsong. (Birds I could identify by their songs.)

And the guest was talking about how we get people to protect the environment.

He pointed out that scaring people with stats and stories of Mad Max like futures was not working. People just tune that stuff out. It’s too much. We can’t process it so we disconnect.

So what is the answer? I’m sure you already know…

People protect what they love.

People love what they know.

We know when we pay attention to details.

Like the summer I spent sitting quietly in my backyard determined to learn each and every type of sparrow that came into view. Dear reader, there are a lot of different sparrows, if you didn’t know, and there are very tiny differences between many of them.

But my obsession is my love is my commitment to protecting the places that contain us and all of those sparrows.

How to pay attention: the importance of walking

That seems like a strange and simple subheading to write, but if more of us knew how to pay attention, again, the world would be a different place.

We’ve lost our sense of interconnection with nature. We forget that we are nature. That’s partly due to our ability for meta cognition, but it’s also about lost skills and and lost understanding and all of our time being owned by schools, companies, jobs, the constant influx of news.

You can’t notice the degradation of patterns if you’ve never noticed patterns.

You can’t notice patterns if you don’t insert yourself into the outside world.

Even just deciding to notice everything from about a one block radius around your house would be enough. Because within that seemingly small space is everything.

Depending on where you live, that version of everything will be different, and it might be more obvious or less obvious but it’s still there if you take eyes and ears and heart to it. And perhaps pen and paper and binoculars and curiosity and your feet.

Walk not to cover a distance or to count calories used but to notice.

Walk to see and walk to hear.

Walk to note what changes and how and when.

Walk to be fascinated and to fall in love.

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That’s a photo of me from about ten years ago when I used to do hard things all day, every day. A photo of what it looked like when I approached life through that practice lens for over ten years. A photo of defeating chronic cycles of life-threatening depression through an exertion of will that I had started to think I would never again access.

And I’m still not totally sure I can access that level of will again, but I am starting to kinda believe that just maybe…

That photo of me doing aerial yoga has layers of meaning, not just how badass I was when it came to determination. It is also about my willingness to go directly at my fears, like my fear of being upside down (and that fear was strong in me so if it sounds silly to you, you are lucky). That photo contains the me that existed right when I was opening up to dating. It was taken about six months before I would meet the man whom I would eventually marry.

That photo of me is all hope and excitement and curiosity and belief and dreams. It’s dancer me to the nth degree, dancing with any physical challenge but also dancing with my own depression and demons enough to exhaust them.

That photo is like a version of me captured in amber: so perfectly preserved and no longer present but still containing the DNA of who I was and who I still might be.

What the heck does walking have to do with anything?

When I was that person in that photo, I moved so much every day on top of the dozen classes I was teaching. And a big chunk of my daily movement was nutbag levels of walking (nutbag is a term of endearment in my world). I was up to about 15,000 steps a day. 15,000 happy steps, I might add.

Living in Erie, PA meant my walks were a lot by big water but there was also a gorgeous city cemetery that was more like a manicured park of the Frederick Law Olmsted variety (random comparison but iykyk) and then there was an actual arboretum/park and a gorge and too many other options to list. The point is, I was not at a loss for beauty to drink in while I was walking.

I would break that 15,000 steps into chunks, starting, typically, with a morning long walk that got my brain started on the right foot ((ha)).

And all of this is to paint a picture: I know how good walking is for me and I mean mostly for my brain.

But I’ve not been able to do it. This recent cycle of depression has been intractable. (Here I insert the reminder that I always do: I am anti-depressant resistant so movement has been my medicine. I would have loved to have been able to take actual medicine and encourage you to do so if needed.)

Again, this recent cycle of depression has been intractable.

Until suddenly.

That’s how these things can feel, right? “Suddenly” you’re deep in a depression (though it’s been working its way toward you in so many ignored and denied ways) and then “suddenly” you’re getting out of it (though you’ve been working away from it in so many ways that kept feeling like failure, until they added up to change and then ta-da! The tipping point!).

My tipping point happened just over a week ago. It’s a precious and precarious thing that I must work to hold on to every single day.

I’ve written a bit about how I got back to morning walking and how that’s changing everything for me.

But it’s changing everything because I’m changing.

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Some things walking is teaching me this time around

Being a nutbag walker the last time around was something born of my dance practices and the need for another form of movement that was healthy and that balanced dancing. I also loved walking because I could listen to podcasts and interviews that were otherwise hard to make time for.

This time is different: I am walking in the hopes that it kickstarts the part of my brain that loves my own dance practices (and not just the time I’m teaching).

This time I know it’s medicine in and of itself.

I know that if I push myself enough to get out every day, I will be strengthening the part of my brain that is associated with my willpower.

Beyond that, walking is already teaching me some big lessons. Or I should say, re-teaching me. It amazes me how much the depressed brain forgets. ((sigh))

• My perfectionism is strong and is linked to my depression. It’s my black and white thinking: If I don’t do something exactly how I think is best then why should I do it at all? It’s startling to me how powerful this is in me. I became aware of this the other day when I didn’t do the 5 mile walk that I had planned.

• So now, instead of creating “ultimate goals,” I’m sticking to working from “minimum goals.” I used to teach this all the time — dance for five minutes and see what happens; pick one song and go from there. I taught people you could fool the resistant part of your brain this way and here I was doing the opposite.

• I’m also slowing down, which again is ironic because slow is the main message of most of my work. (MY. GOD. Do teachers teach what they need or what?!) I was just the other day lamenting my slow pace but slow is often exactly what the body needs. I’m not race walking; I’m walking to feel my legs moving, to look at the sky and take in fresh air, to observe small bits of beauty.

• And speaking of small bits of beauty, when I first started up again, I was listening to very serious audiobooks. I thought I “should” because these were things I didn’t necessarily have time to read in my preferred manner with pen in hand, at the ready to underline or argue with the text. But it was terrible. I couldn’t concentrate. Now I’m listening to full albums of new-to-me artists and what a difference it has made! (The artist I’ve been listening to most recently.)

• Finally, every single day is still really hard. The bed is cozy and the cat is cuddly, just to name two reasons (and there are other bigger reasons, of course). But admitting that it’s hard, allowing myself to feel whiny, and then telling myself I’m doing it anyway…

• That’s the biggest lesson: I can do hard things. One step at a time and it gets done. Not perfectly but it gets done.

This isn’t to say that I could have done this even one month ago. Coming out of a depression is warrior level stuff. And even that way of talking about it is problematic. Because it might be warrior level stuff but it’s also a fuck ton of luck.

Depression can be deadly and so I write always knowing that there are those who have not survived it. And I am thankful for every time I (and perhaps you too) have.

EDIT: It’s the following morning and another lesson was waiting for me when I woke to big storms and couldn’t get out for my walk.

I didn’t have a contingency plan. Eventually I decided I would just walk later, but that’s not the point of my walks… the point is MORNING to wake my brain.

It’s the same old lessons over and over: learning to discern between self care, self indulgence, and self punishment. But this time I knew faster what was happening because I’ve gotten better at listening to my body, which CLENCHED when I thought of that afternoon walk. It was coming from my inner perfectionist and not a love of or need of the movement. So I’m “allowing” myself the day off.

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I have this memory of myself around the age of three and a half, and I think residing inside this memory is the blueprint for my happiness. I might even assert that it’s the blueprint for any human’s happiness.

I am outside, by myself, standing under the night sky. (It was the early 1970s… kids were free range… perhaps to the extreme but it was what it was.) The full moon is sitting high over a field across the street. It sits nestled in a blanket of stars. And I am just, well, star struck. I am in awe. I can feel this feeling in my body to this day.

I am still that little girl every single time I see the moon. Maybe you feel the same. It’s like the moon is new to us every night. (Side note: If you do feel the same, you might be shocked to find out that not everyone feels like this. There are people who barely notice the moon. I know! It’s really quite terrible.)

Fast forward and I am 11 years old and I’ve saved up all of my birthday money and allowances to buy my very own telescope. Seeing the moon’s surface, I am speechless.

Fast forward again and I am in my 30s and I own the house outside of which I sit on a stoop in snow pants in the middle of winter so I can gaze up at the moon and Orion (my fave).

Now I live in a city with too much light pollution and I am sad. These things are not unrelated.

We are going to be changing our circumstances soon, but it has taken me about six years of living here to understand all of the ways I have cut myself off from my toddler self and her connection to the moon and the natural world and what that cutting off has meant for my mental health.

My mental health (and probably yours) is complicated, of course, by our current political situation, but really… I know I would be handling even that much better if this toddler self were being taken care of.

She lives off of awe and fascination and curiosity and intense noticing.

And that… that right there is the blueprint.

The disease of apathy

I’ve written about the part that despair was playing in my depression, and I am relieved that I am no longer that stuck, but I am still somewhat stuck. Like before I was in quicksand (and hello!? Where is all the quicksand Gen X was warned about!?), and now I am in some regular old mud… maybe to just below the knees.

That mud is my apathy.

I am doing things but I’m not feeling great about those things.

I am doing things but I’m doing the bare minimum.

I am doing things but I’m no longer dreaming.

And that right there is awful. My dreaming muscles used to be so strong, and they were strong enough that they led to actions and to the building of those dreams.

I used to believe in the beauty of life and in my capacity to create beautiful things.

But the last decade has been so hard. There is the political reality we’ve all been living within, but on a micro/personal level, I’ve gone into full menopause (anyone else?); I’ve lost my soul cat at the age of 9 (far too young and it was sudden and traumatic); I went through two years of living with, treating, and healing two frozen shoulders (yep, one after the other) so my overall movement got smaller and smaller, and there was more, but you get the idea.

The depression cycle was bad.

There are remnants and bad habits left behind.

The biggest remnant and bad habit is the apathy.

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How I noticed it

I hadn’t really… noticed it, that is. It had/has become such a regular feeling and state in my life.

I have started to wonder, is this it? Is this how life gets as we age?

I recoil from those questions. I refuse those questions even as I find myself constructing them.

None of my old tricks were helping. None of the old routines were kicking in. Nothing I was doing was working, until I started to pay attention to someone whom I’ve known of since I was writing my Blisschick blog about 20 years ago ((what!??!)): Andrea Schroeder of Creative Dream Incubator.

As a teacher, I often find myself lacking mentors because I’m so focused on self directed learning and the creation of my classes and methods for my students.

But as they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

I finally signed up for one of her smaller courses, Project Miracle. I ran through the material faster than the 30 days it’s intended for but I couldn’t help it. I could feel the energy building and I was… what is that feeling???… excited!

The miracle I was working on was simply wanting more positive energy in all its forms — physical, emotional, and spiritual. That’s how deep my apathy had become — that positive energy would feel like a miracle.

How the energy showed up

It’s always in some unexpected way, right? We ask for one thing but get something that seems to be not it and then it turns out to be exactly what we needed.

For quite a while now, I’ve been trying to get movement in first thing in the morning. I got to the point where I gave up because nothing I tried was sticking. I just couldn’t. It started to feel like I was bullying myself. The resistance was that bad. Staying in bed later than I wanted to, cuddling with Begonia cat, happened every day no matter the systems I set up.

Then a little over a week ago, Andrea asked this question in one of the Project Miracle units: what are you willing to change to get what you want?

I kept reading/hearing it as: what are you willing to give up?

Finally, from deep inside me, I got a very clear and loud answer: APATHY.

I called myself out.

I don’t know what was different about this time… not exactly. I know that I had done a lot of introspective work with Project Miracle but the miracle of it all was the way it just suddenly! Poof! Change!

I got up easily the first Monday after that and walked almost four miles right off the bat.

Crazily, I immediately could feel how cemented in the change was.

The results of this “small” thing keep accumulating: my brain is clearer; I’m giggling more; I want to move more (which is more normal for me); life feels… good.

More anti-apathy work to be done

But I also know this is just the beginning and I’m working another course with Andrea to keep my mind focused in the right direction.

And I’m looking for other anti-apathy tools. So let’s start a list, shall we? I would love for you to add to it, but here’s the beginning:

• Notice a time in your life when you were young and you were so full of yourself, meaning you were who you were born to be. Notice what she loved. Notice what sparked her joy. Is there a blueprint in all of that for you?

• Start doing the things little you loved to do, no matter how ridiculous you may feel. Like me getting roller skates a few years back. I sucked but I did it anyway. (Then the frozen shoulders happened.)

• Add in little things like checking the moon every night. Put reminders on your phone if you need them. It can be hard to remember on our own when we’ve not been doing these things.

• Make lists of things you love. Do this every day. For example, I’ve restarted the practice of a joy/sanity list on my socials every morning. I used to do bliss lists long ago and people would comment how much they meant to them. This has started to happen again. (Ripples!)

• Go outside more.

• Go look at art wherever and whenever you can.

• Listen to more music. Listen to favorites from times in your life when you felt good but also find new things. (Each of those approaches does amazing and different things for your brain.)

• Ride a bike. Really. Find a hill and go down as fast as you can. (Or find another equivalent of this type of activity.)

• Sit by water as much as you can. (There’s too much research on the efficacy of this to ignore it.)

• Look around at the people in your life and do not be afraid to notice who is bringing nothing but negativity to your spaces. Clean house. (I don’t mean to sound cruel there but life is short and we know it’s important who we allow in to our inner circles.)

• Be cautious of what you’re watching and reading. Feed your brain and heart with things that grow the states of being you want to experience. I’ve written about Japanese healing fiction and now I’m into my third novel of that nature and I am more in love than I thought I would be.

• Pick something small to focus on learning. I was just reminded the other day of a summer that I spent in my backyard in Erie learning all the different sparrows. There are so many and there are often very small differences. But this seemingly tedious differentiation task made me feel connected at a new level.

For now, that’s enough from me. Like I said, I’d love to hear from you. And I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this soon.

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It’s so easy not to do it.

I should know.

Suffering from chronic depression for over a decade (really so much more than that but I’m just counting the years when I was aware of the battle), I spent days, weeks, months, and years not doing so many things.

I eventually found profound healing when I turned 40 and started to dance again. And as I’ve written about many times, that led to the creation of Peony Somatic Dance, which I’ve been developing, sharing, and using for over 17 years now.

I am a teacher and guide, but I am also a student and I, too, get lost. I still have cycles of depression, and I still have days, weeks, months when I don’t want to do the thing. Luckily I am obligated to my students and that has saved me more times than I can count.

The last decade has been no friend to those of us who struggle with mental health issues. I never thought I would see the levels of depression I suffered so many years ago again and yet here I am… trying to come out of another protracted cycle.

My daily dance practice has not been daily for too long to admit (again, besides teaching). But I’m trying and I’m hitting the same walls anyone else does.

In the recent past when I’ve tried to do this, I immediately felt a deep boredom, so I thought back to my practices years ago and came up with a couple of…

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Key “rules”

• I can’t force myself into using music that I think I “should.” Yes, even I have this issue. I go into practice thinking I “need” to work on serious pieces. Nope. Whatever works is the best thing.

• So I’ve been using a lot of pop music for now. Like this list and also this list that triggers joy molecules from my tween years at the skating rink.

• And the most important rule of all: the second I feel bored with the music and/or my movement, I change the song or what I’m doing. Sometimes that means fast-forwarding through a few songs at a time, waiting for my body to respond.

• Finally, I always start with seated tummy circles, like I start just about every single class I teach. Or if I’m feeling extra dull or sad, I start with Mud Body (floor work that sounds like what it is) and then go into seated tummy circles. I ritualize the start of my own practice time just like I do classes and this tells my body, here we go, and it grounds me… helps me to let go of work or overthinking.

• “I ritualize the start…” that phrase should not be read too fast. It holds great power. See every aspect of setting up yourself and your space as ritual. Add more layers: Light candles. Turn on twinkle lights. Say a mantra. Put on special beads or a tutu! (I used to use playful tutus a lot with people who were extra nervous; they are magical.)

• Understand that you are “Pavlov-ing” yourself. Once you really get this, you’ll see greater possibilities with all of your desired habits, routines, goals.

Other rules to keep in mind to simplify your practice:

• Don’t change your clothes if that’s getting in the way. Dance in whatever you’re wearing. Or maybe only change your pants. (I do that one a LOT.) And again, maybe just throw a tutu over your jeans or a special scarf around your neck.

• Don’t fret about space. You can dance in a closet or a bathroom or your shower!

• Or start right where you are: in a chair, on your couch, in bed.

• Set time goals for yourself but don’t force it. But also don’t just give up. Find that delicate balance between the two.

• Maybe find a friend (like me!) who could help you with accountability.

• If you hear a song while you’re driving or doing something else that gets an immediate response from your body, make sure to put that on a list.

Let me know if you have any issues with getting into a daily practice or if there are any questions I can help you with.

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I wasn’t able to write anything long form last week, and I’m betting I’m not the only one. I’m still struggling to set down thoughts in a coherent way but I’m trying.

I did write a note here about how I was feeling paralyzed in a way I’d not felt even in the context of our government’s capacity to start a nuclear war via their own ineptitude. With that looming, I had only just declared that I still would want to be dancing while it happened and so I intended to take back my attentional energy and focus on the good and beautiful in my life and if things blew up, so be it.

Then the rape academy news hit and I was down for the count.

Not only was I struggling to write anything longer than a short note or a socials post, I also could not wrap my head around how to justify writing or thinking about anything but this.

I couldn’t figure out why it was affecting me this way. I’ve not experienced sexual assault myself so why was this so triggering? Obviously, I have deep empathy, and I have experience of helping post assault.

And obviously saying I’ve not experienced sexual assault is a lie. There are so many varieties of sex-based violence, and I have tucked mine away in a dark, small closet in my mind, closed the door, and thrown away the key.

The amnesia that violence counts on

In her book Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, Dr. Judith Herman writes about cycles of remembering and amnesia that our culture goes through.

There will be these moments in our history (and we seem to be in one right now) when en masse we “remember” all of the violence we’ve experienced and we start to call it out. We get hyper truthful. We demand our voices be heard. We start to speak of change and revolution.

Then it all becomes too much to hold. Our collective psyche cannot tolerate the widespread nature of it, the constancy, and how it’s everywhere, starting from families, foundational to all of our institutions. That’s when we start to drift right back into an amnesia of “everything is okay.” We go back to ignoring, hiding our eyes, whispering instead of screaming, and forcing the victims to once again be the holders of all of the truth and the pain.

This is exactly what happens in toxic families, right?

Whether it’s physical violence or emotional manipulation or obvious neglect, after it settles, everyone is expected to “forget.”

We’re told, “put it behind you.” “Stop living in the past.” “That’s over.” “You’re playing victim.”

I, myself, have heard all of those statements over and over. Again, as I’m sure anyone reading this has. It’s the scapegoats and the black sheep that are expected to carry all of it so no one else has to take responsibility or face consequences.

Waking up this part of myself — finding the key to that closet where all of these memories are stored, from where all the truth has been spilling out individually and collectively — is only part of why I’ve been alternating between freeze and fight the last many days.

And it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized I was stuck between those two states. No wonder I was unable to write or do much of anything on my work lists — lists that really matter to me because they are all about the work I do in this world that is so important to me. This wasn’t for anyone else. It was for my somatic dance work so not being able to focus was troubling and confusing to me.

The real trigger

But there was still another layer to my freeze, in particular.

Remembering all of the violence brings rage for me. It wakens my inner Morrigan. She wants justice and she wants blood.

This sort of rage is sacred, as I’ve written about a lot over the last few days in many spaces. We must listen to it and find ways to honor it.

This is the energy of the fight response and we need it to not fall back into the amnesia cycle that Herman wrote about.

My freeze response is not productive. It’s the energy of amnesia in that it wants amnesia; it sits and hopes and waits for amnesia. Please close and lock that closet again, it says meekly.

Where was that coming from?

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Violent Men, Cruel Men

We’ve all known violent men and cruel men. We’ve all probably known more than one up close and personal.

But here’s what froze me: there are so many more than I ever imagined.

At the age of 57, I have recently realized that I have held on to a belief that this sort of man is rare. That the couple I have known are the exception.

They are not. (Side note: Sure, our current fucking government is almost exclusively this sort but that is still a kind of abstraction… I do not know any of those men in real life.)

Turns out that wherever you are, there are many of these men who hate women beyond my imagining, who see women as toy or product or property. Who think yelling at, strangling, raping women is “normal” or to be expected. Whatever. I can’t get into their heads. But they obviously see us as something very much less than themselves.

And wherever you go there are the men who say nothing, who do nothing in the face of violence, who excuse their friends, who laugh at the jokes, who don’t step in to stop it, who still, to this day, are not stepping up in any way.

We are surrounded by violence and it’s best friend complacency.

This broke me.

Part of how I survived this was the belief that it was so rare.

I can’t say that enough times. This belief was in my cells. There were times it kept me alive.

To be so wrong about something so important, well, I was devastated and I remain so.

How does anything matter?

This is the question that resides inside my frozen despair.

It’s obviously a dangerous question, especially for someone who has suffered profoundly life threatening depression precisely because of violent and cruel men.

I couldn’t write because of this question. I was having a hard time dancing because of this question.

I didn’t think I had the “right” to find, experience, or share any joy as long as this was a truth of the world.

Until these men and their powers were obliterated, there could be nothing else.

Of course, that is ridiculous for a lot of reasons. Firstly, I am not in charge of the world. Secondly, how? Thirdly, there will always be bad men. Period.

But again, this is what had me frozen and the outcome of that freezing was me believing that I could only think about and write about and live this reality. That it was somehow my responsibility (not alone, but still… mine).

Enter Japanese “Healing Literature”

A few weeks ago, I came upon the idea of this genre, I think, on BookTok. And I realized that I had already read at least one novel that would fit into this genre and that I loved it and wanted more.

These are works of fiction that deal with the harder parts of being human (like grief and regret) and do not gloss over the difficult but find healing in some way. They tend toward magical realism, which happens to be one of my favorite genres since college.

So I ordered this one and this one.

And as I was working my way through all of this pain and confusion and anger and sadness over the world and my “right” role in it, I suddenly thought of these books and the writers who wrote them.

I would never, under any circumstances, want these writers to not write these books.

Ah… and there’s the answer.

We all have a part to play in this world.

Some of us are built for the work of journalism and those people have been doing that all along. When you see them doing it right now, it’s after years of experience. They are ready. They are the right ones for the job.

Some of us are built for political and community building work and the same… they’ve already been doing it and they can lock in in ways that someone new to the work can’t.

Some of us are built for support, and I would put myself and my specific work here.

Artists, healers, listeners… we all have gifts that can support our communities through these hard times.

We provide rest and restoration for hearts and minds and souls that are weary.

Just like Japanese healing fiction, we create spaces where we practice the best of what it is to be human: compassion, empathy, love, beauty, truths, play, comfort.

These are the spaces where we practice the world we want.

With that thought, I can finally feel myself thawing.

There is still healthy rage, but it is providing the heat and the light I need to melt the freeze and to do what I need to do — to do what I love to do and what I am good at.

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Over the last couple of horrible days and then today, I realized fully how much I’ve been walking around in a kind of permanent triggered state. I say that in its true psychological meaning, not in some pop psych way where it’s used about anything that annoys or makes people uncomfortable.

And I’m guessing a lot of you reading this will say, “me, too…” to that statement. It saddens me; it enrages me for us; and yet speaking it and acknowledging it will allow us to work with it.

Of course, I’ve been somewhat aware of this for the past decade since an orange clown rode down a golden escalator and set to change the world in ways we could not have imagined even if we knew it was all going to be terrible.

Somewhat aware is not the same as fully aware and it took feeling the world on the brink of a nightmare for me to really notice this in my body and to get angry enough to change it.

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Before the golden escalator

This clown has been on the edges of our lives for a very long time. I’m talking about Gen X here, as I am one of that cohort.

But I have had some experiences that brought him into at least partial focus for me when I was only about 21.

My college boyfriend had gotten an internship for the spring semester at the Sands Casino in Atlantic City. This would have been about 1990. For that summer, he got me a job there so I could join him.

The orange clown (I will not be saying his name) was just getting going with his casino properties, but in the back hallways, his name was already said with a snicker. He was already a joke. His businesses were run poorly and everything he did was tacky.

There were also murmurs about the pageants… even then. There were whispers on the boardwalk. I know this because I got a second job while I was there: an internship at a local news station and I remember distinctly standing on the boardwalk, in front of one of his hotels, and the journalist and cameraman were making comments about “his” creepy vibe (to use a current phrase). Again, this was common chatter.

Once he rode down that escalator, the rest of the world was talking about him pretty vocally in the same way. We already knew. We always knew.

But I don’t think we could have foreseen the level of psychological abuse we were all about to be exposed to, and if you have this in your history at all and have worked on healing, I don’t think we understood what a personal unraveling this was going to be.

Pre Orange Clown

It’s almost hard to remember that there was a world in which our moods from day to day and our sense of safety didn’t depend upon the vagaries of a cruel and demented mind. I’m speaking on a world level, but a lot of us have known that kind of life before all of this.

Whether it was a family member or a spouse/partner or a friend, so many of us have lived parts of our lives with that sense of waiting for the terrible thing.

Even when things seem okay, we were waiting.

And this fried our nervous systems.

The world did not ever feel safe. We were constantly preparing for the worst and the aftermath. It was so hard to find any kind of joy or relaxation when we were just seeking terra firma with every step through our lives.

It took me all of my 30s to work through the resulting chronic depression and anxiety. I only really started to heal when I started to dance again at 40 and then embark on my teaching journey.

All through my 40s, things only got better and better. I assumed that would continue because I had worked so very hard that I was finally a person who felt hope and who believed in joy and possibility.

Everything changed with the entrance of this cruel, make-up caked, clown of a human (who would be comedic if not for him having real power). As the days and months and years passed, my mental health incrementally declined and along with it my physical health. Old pain issues returned. Hope exited stage right, only to return for a brief encore that never felt real because “he” was always lurking, always threatening his return.

I kept thinking my downward spiral would pass. I kept blaming myself. If only I could get back to old routines and ways of doing things, surely I would feel better.

But it wasn’t me. It also wasn’t just him and his actions but the devastating realization that so many people supported him, even loved who he was and what he stood for.

I think we are all still reeling from that and will continue to do so.

I’m done

As he was threatening an entire civilization with genocidal annihilation, I finally felt all of this and realized it was up to me to erect boundaries, to close doors, to stop giving him or his ilk any of my energy or attention. I’m in charge of me, as are you, unlike, perhaps, at other points in our lives.

This does not mean I won’t be working to help the world around me.

But I am one person with certain gifts and it’s my job in this life to use those gifts and not wish I had others. It’s my job in this world to help those right around me, where I (and we) have our only real power.

So I’m putting on blinders. Focusing near me. Doing what I can instead of lamenting what I can’t.

Enter RAYE

Books and music and dance have always been my safe places.

I would lose myself in my favorite books and albums and daydream of a better world and a better and calmer life. A life that wasn’t scary.

I truly believe this formed me into a compassionate human who was resilient enough to tolerate the storms to come. (There were definitely a few times I almost drowned…)

This is the me that was reignited through my return to dance and my subsequent teaching.

Today, I was teaching a morning class, and I had put this new song on the end of the playlist where I would normally be using something more avant garde classical for a process called “show me,” when I only observe.

I knew we needed that song.

I didn’t listen to it all the way through until I moved to it myself with my students, in that beautiful community.

And I SMILED and I LAUGHED and I moved so hard.

There I was. How dare I let anyone or anything take me away from me, take me away from my true work, take me away from the community of love and care that I’ve built around me over the last almost two decades.

I have had similar thoughts over the last couple of years but here’s what’s new: I am finally so finished with their ugly and vile and small version of this world. I will no longer try to change that for them; they can have it and they can have the consequences. Even more importantly, I am ready to protect the version of me who believes in a world where everyone is happy and taken care of and given space to live the unique lives that they choose for themselves. I am ready to protect the version of me that used to be called “too sensitive” and naive and bleeding hearted. Those are my strengths.

I realized then and there: they might very well blow up the world but I will be shaking my ass and laughing and being fully me while it happens and I will be doing so in a circle of humans while we all share our vulnerable selves and trust in that holding.

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Where to start? Throughout my life, I have gone back and forth and up and down and all around with faith and religion and spirituality and so many traditions, too many to list.

I have taken deep dives into the mystical edges of Catholicism, know a fair bit about all forms that Christianity has taken, studied Judaism as a possible convert long ago, and spent many years, on and off, in Eastern traditions, most seriously Buddhism, Tantric philosophy, and my favorite text of all, the Bhagavad Gita. This is just a glimpse of where I’ve traveled in this regard. There have also been stretches of nature based and myth based explorations.

I have spent long, dark nights — not those of the spiritual growth variety — inside the confines of an atheism that I could not figure out how to get out of and which only increased the dangerous nature of my long cycles of depression.

And lately, as I’ve written about, I have been trying to get back some sense of my Catholic self, especially my connection to Guadalupe and other forms of Mother Mary.

I’m struggling, but I have kept up with my Lenten practices and here we are, arrived at Good Friday, and I feel very little. I have learned some things about myself but not anything that couldn’t have come from some journaling based in reading of other sorts.

I am, mostly, stuck on this question: where does this need come from? Is it real? Is it a trauma response, as in me looking for a world of goodness and rightness and a certain type of rule-based living that rises above the cruelty I have known?

And if that’s the case, is there something else that would be more in line with a healthy version of myself? The me who is most definitely an innately curious creature who loves her special interests and obsessions.

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Tiny seeker

I have been thinking about these things for as long as I can remember. There are two threads running through my life with these questions, and they both showed up really early.

First: I’m in the car with my mother and sister and I’m about 11 and I think we’re on our way to something at my maternal grandmother’s United Methodist church. I can’t remember the conversation but I remember this bit of it:

My mother: What do you believe?

Me: That we’re energy and when we die we return to some larger energy. (This idea came from a near drowning I had when I was about six and that’s another story.)

This answer did not please my mother to say the least.

Second: the memories of going to Mass with my paternal grandparents when we would visit them in Florida and feeling an immediate connection to and love for all of that ritual. And the smells!

So all along, two things: doubt about the construct but love for the rituals. Or I would say, deep comfort found inside those rituals.

That’s making it sound trite, though, because the love of those rituals made me crave more and I read and read and questioned and thought and developed insights and created connections that, when I shared them with students in my movement classes (because we talk about everything) or with friends, they would tell me that I had made them rethink their bad feelings about their faith traditions, that I made them see things differently.

Becoming Catholic

I was raised on the edges of two religions — United Methodist and Catholic — and from the time I was small and attending Mass with my nana and often going to church with my grandmother, I felt a deep affinity for and “knew” that I was Catholic.

That didn’t stop me from wanting to learn about other things, as I’ve said.

I formally converted to Catholicism while I was at Penn State for my undergraduate when I was about twenty.

I loved that whole process, but it didn’t stick, of course, because (see the first couple of paragraphs).

But there was a time in my early 30s, when I felt like my depression might just kill me, that I stepped inside a Catholic church for the first time in a long time and I again felt that sense of comfort. That was the first step to me climbing out of that particular (and most dangerous of my entire life) depression.

This time, I focused on Mary and Guadalupe specifically.

I focused on her yes and her other virtues (not just those as defined by the church).

She remained a metaphor for me but she also felt real. I can’t explain it beyond that.

And becoming not Catholic

I’m not sure I’m ever “not” Catholic. For me, the thing that I can’t ever totally let go of is the idea of Mary. That last bit of goddess left in any of the Western religions, and for that reason alone, I think she’s really important.

But putting that aside, when I hit my last cycle of depression, it coincided with the rise of this ugly, deformed, hateful “Christian” nationalism that we’re currently having an existential battle with in this country.

And I am having that same existential battle on a personal level.

What is the point of this (or any) religion? Is there enough good left in it to justify participating or is it already lost as a tool of patriarchy, capitalism, and misogyny?

Who am I without religion? Who could/would I be if I let it go?

When I am reading (very progressive) Catholic writers like Merton, Day, Rohr (and so many more), they challenge me and I feel like I become a better version of myself, but I also balk at the idea that this better version of myself is possibly based in a giant delusion.

And I hear people from my past (and they are definitely of the Christian nationalist types) asserting that people without religion cannot have morals, as if they can’t arise out of our own innate goodness and an understanding that other people count as much as we do and we are all connected and thus our choices and actions matter beyond ourselves.

When I cling to these old ways of being in the world, am I saying the same thing? That people need religion to be good? Because intellectually I do not believe that.

Good Friday used to mean something to me

So here we are, on Good Friday. This used to be my favorite mass of the year. It was deeply moving to me, especially that moment when, in silence, they would carry the eucharist out of the church.

This whole season is an amazing story, if it’s nothing else.

When you consider the world Christ entered into — a world with no ideas around taking care of the least — a world much like our own, his core messages really were revolutionary.

But do I need a story of this variety to teach me that now, in this day and age?

Do I need the idea of Mother Mary to make me feel safe?

Is there something else, another way, that would feel in alignment with who I am and what I believe possible in this world?

Do I really need to believe in order to have faith and hope?

Can I cut loose this anchor and trust in my own ability to swim?

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(Painting: Henry Ossawa Taylor, The Annunciation, 1898)

In a strange (or not) turn of events that I didn’t see coming even six months ago, I’ve been doing some actual practices for Lent this year. It’s definitely been a bumpy road.

And I wonder if Lent without serious bumps in the road is actually Lent? (If a tree falls in the forest sort of question.)

Regardless, I have had a good many days when I have wondered why I was doing any of the reading or Lent journaling that I was doing. I wondered if there was a point. I wondered if I even believed anything anymore (I mean, I have gone through a long cycle of pessimism and atheism recently. Longer than ever before in my life). And I certainly keep wondering about the role of a religion that centers a man and makes very little space for women at all.

Darkness

I’ve been wondering that, though, since I was about 11 and went to the city library’s religions of the world section and kept pulling books off the shelves, desperate to find a religious system that didn’t center any kind of human figure or that did not anthropomorphize their god head. Alas, this seems to be something humans are incapable of, and the best we can hope for is that the gods/goddesses are built around the best of our own inclinations.

Too often, of course, this is not the case. A minister I follow on Bluesky said it best, “A god that needs violent men in order to succeed is a god invented by violent men.”

So yeah, I have been working through some dark night of the soul shit, for sure, but what’s new? As often in my life that I’ve felt deep devotion and connection to faith, there’s been just as much time when I’ve felt the opposite.

For me, currently, I keep coming back to Pope Leo and his strong and direct calls for a stop to all things that maga believes in and is putting out into the world. I go back to Oscar Romero and all of the Latin Americans who developed the ideas of liberation theology.

And I go back to Mary, Guadalupe in particular. (Did you know she’s the only one who is represented as pregnant? She’s wearing a Aztec pregnancy belt.)

I go back to this idea that she was asked to do this incredibly dangerous and risky thing so that we might know a different kind of world … or that we might be given a vision of a different world: one that’s not built on violence and power but on compassion and inclusivity. (I have a lot to say about that but I want to get closer to my point here and you know my heart.)

So I am, for the moment, not in that dark space — or I should say, not in a totally dark space. There is a window that is open and there is some light coming in. I am also actively lighting candles.

I am, for the moment, focused on the best parts of this thing that somehow is a piece of the puzzle of my mental well being and has been since I was small.

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Light

I keep thinking about why I can’t get that same thing from, for example, personal development and self help sorts of writing. Why can’t I get it from all of the art and literature I love? What is it about theological discourse in particular that brings me solace and hope?

For me, I do not deny the dark parts, but the light… when I’m willing to engage with the mystical voices from the past (those well developed voices like Merton, Day, Francis and on and on the list could go)… when I am willing to release the hold that current day dark versions can impose, I can get to the core that is beauty and is the best of us.

When I’m reading Merton, there are times when I think he could see into the future, but it’s actually that he could so clearly see the present and the past that he could see the patterns, and the patterns, when it comes to humans, are always the same.

Not only could he see those patterns and clearly articulate them, he could articulate the type of candle we would need to light in ourselves to banish the dark and to go on with our work.

There was no naivete left in Merton when it came to this intertwining of dark and light in all humans. He just carried hope more stubbornly than I am sometimes capable.

He speaks directly to some part of me that is lacking (as we are all lacking in some way) and he doesn’t make me feel shame or even that I have to “fix” it. He shows me my weaknesses and convinces me time and again that I can be stronger in other ways. He believes our weaknesses are part of who we are and those parts are actually usable if we embrace them.

Newness

One of the things that has thrown me out of the dark and has me headed toward my own inner light again is a passage from my daily Merton readings.

He’s talking about how some people, regardless of chronological age, are living as if they are “old.” They live with old ideas, old memories, always looking backward, and are convinced nothing new is possible.

Then he says this:

The new (human) lives in a world that is always being created and renewed. S/He lives in this realm of renewal and creation. S/He lives in LIFE. The old (human) lives without life. S/He lives in death. (Thomas Merton, March 18, 1959)

And it hit me like a rock between my eyes: that in my despair, I live in death.

YES

Which brings me back to Mary.

Many many years ago... early in the heyday of blogging... I decided to do the word of the year that had just become a thing and I chose the word YES because of my Guadalupe devotion.

I ended up sticking to that word for many years because of what it was doing to my life. It changed my life in ways I can’t begin to list. My devotion to that word, to the idea of Mary, pushed me out of my comfort zone, made me choose the new over the old, and made me see that vitality and abundance of my own creativity.

The word is part of how I ended up dancing again, how I got my ass on a buss and went far away for trainings, and how I eventually opened my own bricks and mortar studio (which a lot of you might remember was called Girl on Fire… for Guadalupe).

I kept thinking about getting YES as a tattoo, but I eventually got the Dickinson quote on my wrist: “I dwell in possibility.” When I first got that, it felt like a yes.

But it’s not totally. It doesn’t have the powerful momentum, the PUSH, of YES. It does not have the birthing power of yes.

I need to add yes back into that equation. I can get stuck in possibility. The dwelling aspect can become so comfortable that it, too, becomes old.

So I’ve decided to re-devote myself to YES. Maybe you need to do something similar.

What is calling to you? What do you need to say yes to in your life right now?

This writing feels somewhat incomplete to me, but then we’re not at the end of Lent yet, and each day (even today as I edit), I can sense that the journaling I’m doing is leading me somewhere important — not any kind of end destination but perhaps a well lit place in which I can feel my devoted self again. That would be enough. For now.

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Starting in my late 20s and through most of my 30s (and I write this from the age of 57), I fought cycles of life-threatening depression on and off, with pauses in between where, at best, I achieved small-hints-of-happy-mixed-with-melancholy.

But those moments were short-lived and soon the serious depression would be back. There were also plenty of co-morbidities going on: an anxiety disorder that made me drop enough weight so fast that people around me started asking if I was okay, disordered eating that had started when I was really young (long, other store there), body dysmorphia that could be paralyzing, and a list of physical ailments, including my migraine brain.

I was a mess (and I say that with love for my younger self). I was lost. I was lucky I managed to stay alive.

There were therapists and there were drugs and none of it helped. Some of it made it worse. At one point, my medication mix created a cutting behavior I had never experienced before.

Over these years, I spent hours upon hours (enough, I always say, to have completed a doctorate) in university libraries in the area, scouring for understanding in the psychology section.

Soon I could do my obsessive research online and that’s where I finally started to get somewhere.

I remember the day I found my first bit of academic writing online by Bessel van der Kolk.

As I read it, I held my breath. Could it be that someone understood how to help me?

Could there be… hope?

Eventually I got to study with this man who threw me the life preserver that finally kept me from almost drowning over and over.

How it’s going

But the memory of my time with him is a disappointing one, to say the least, and I’ll get to that but first…

I think I’ve been thinking about this so much recently because of the files. You know the files I mean and I won’t write the names of those men out here.

When they first started dumping the files, I felt an obligation to stay informed. I didn’t read them myself, but I did read what some trusted sources wrote about them.

It was enough to have me walking around with my hair on fire. I was full of rage twenty four seven. I could barely stand being around my husband, who happens to be one of the kindest humans I’ve ever met so you can imagine how triggered I was.

And I know I’m not alone in any of that.

It took me a while to figure out why I was affected so deeply. Not that we shouldn’t be affected so deeply but it was interfering with my ability to live my current life.

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Those files are about everything. They are about how we’ve constructed culture from the family up to steal from girls and women.

From the time girls are small, the men around us steal our energy, our attention, our innocence. They build a world where they label themselves the protectors but they are the predators. They build a world in which they teach us how to “stay safe,” instead of creating safety, instead of being safe themselves.

From the time we are small, we are on alert, watching from where the attack might come. And it’s usually and most often from the men we know.

So instead of being what we were born to be — creative beings generating a world of love and beauty and connection — we spend a huge chunk of our time and energy just trying to survive men.

Then we often spend a huge amount of time, energy, and money doing things like therapy to “overcome” what’s been done to us by men and by the women who pick them over everything and everyone because they’ve been taught that proximity to power gives them their value.

Men center themselves in our lives and then dare to blame us for any loneliness or discomfort they have in their own lives. They blame us for their violence and their smallness.

Or if they consider themselves to be among “the good men,” they do nothing to stop the “bad men.” They do nothing to stand up against the systems that allow the bad men to perpetrate abuses and crimes and to even prosper at the expense of the women around them.

They do nothing about the systems that allow for bed men and that also, at the same time, benefit them, the supposed “good men,” which brings me to…

The incident

When I finally found healing through my somatic dance practices and started teaching, I made sure to constantly be studying, whether on my own or directly with great teachers.

So when I had the opportunity to spend time with Bessel van der Kolk, I was ecstatic. The man who basically opened up this path to me?! Yes, please.

(I won’t say where this happened out of respect for the place and other teachers there whom I greatly respect.)

There were probably about 40 of us studying with him. Most of the others were therapists and psychologists of one sort or another. Most of them were women.

There was Bessel teaching and his assistant was a male therapist.

I felt overwhelmed to be in the room with someone I respected so much and looked up to so much, and I felt a bit out of my depth with the other students.

So when I raised my hand to ask a question, I could feel my heart in my throat. (And remember, this was when I was early in this journey. Things would be very different now.)

We had been learning about how they used yoga with women who had been sexually assaulted. They were talking about hands on adjustments and giving a demonstration with a student lying on her back.

“Do you ever consider that the teachers in this situation should be women? Or at least that the students should be asked if they would be more comfortable with women?”

They laughed at me.

They laughed at me.

I was asking about consent and they laughed at me.

They said some disparaging and pedantic things with a tone that mean people use with someone they consider very stupid. They brushed me off and continued.

Days later, I would work up the courage to ask Bessel a question by myself as we broke for lunch. About someone else’s work I greatly admired. He again would laugh.

And say this, “Well, you know, Judith Hermann is very unwell…” at which point he did the crazy finger circle at his temple.

I left that training so angry and sad but couldn’t understand what had really happened. And I wouldn’t for years.

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How it’s going, part 2

This is all part of the same issue. It’s a spectrum of disrespect for women all the way to hatred of women.

In a culture where violence against women is normalized, there is no need to ever take women seriously.

And we come to find out that there are so-called gurus’ names in the files. It’s not surprising.

We are seeing that no matter what field they’re in, no matter their expertise, once men are given a bit of power, they take and feel entitled to more — in all aspects of their lives, from their jobs to their relationships to their own needs and desires.

And women (and girls) are not expected to have any say: whether that’s on a private island or even in a yoga class where we’re trying to heal from the things that men did to us in the first place.

Another way this shows up is the stealing of expertise.

Much of the groundbreaking work that is the foundation of the fields of somatic therapies and dance therapy and social work comes from the work and writing of women. But it’s not women who are deemed “gurus” or who are the public face of this work. The “big names” in these fields are predominantly men.

(Much like any field: men take cooking and turn it into highly paid “chefs,” for one other example. Look at any highly paid and highly respected field and it’s so often something that started as “women’s work.”)

We need a strike

We need more than one sort of strike, but specific to what I’m writing about here, I am encouraging you to stop quoting men.

Have you noticed that if you do a google search for any sorts of quotes that most of what comes up is by men? Try it with just about any subject.

I will be working to not quote yte men in particular.

I will also not be buying any books by yte men.

And I encourage you to look for and share the work of anyone but.

To help a bit, here’s a short list of books that are important in my field, some of which predate the popularity of van der Kolk and his contemporaries:

First and foremost, THIS BOOK by Judith Herman was originally published in 1992. She was on the edge of this work, saying things out loud that others hadn’t dared to yet. She doesn’t get enough credit. Her work is important.

The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller was published in 1979, and Alice Miller was ostracized for putting in writing much of what we now take as common wisdom.

The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild was published in 2000 and there’s a second volume in 2017. This work gets more into the somatic aspect of trauma and trauma treatment.

Bone, Breath, and Gesture is from 1995 and is a compilation of various writings from the field of somatics over time. The one I am linking to is volume one. This book demonstrates how so much of the original thinking in somatics based therapies was, of course, developed by women. (See my surprise face)

Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler was first published in 1972. It’s frustrating when we lose sight of the history of these thoughts and the originators are left behind. This book revolutionized how we looked at and talked about mainstream medicine. This started our understanding of how SHIT mainstream medicine is when it comes to the care of women. (And we’re STILL fighting this damn fight…)

This book, first published while I was in college in 1988, isn’t about medicine or somatics but it kinda is?… Writing a Woman’s Life by Carolyn G. Heilbrun is a book I go back to again and again. It’s IMPORTANT. It’s short and it’s powerful. It’s about the effects of cultural expectations on every aspect of a woman’s intentional expression and creativity.

When the body doesn’t feel safe

The ground of Peony Somatic Dance is breathe and wait. We focus on the breath first to drop into the now and to center ourselves in the current feeling state of our mind and body, and then we patiently listen for or pay attention to the messages of the body. Following that, the hope is that honest expression can emerge.

But what if when we breathe and attempt to pay attention to the body, we simply can’t?

What if we have a history of dissociation and that is still triggered?

What if it just feels scary to enter the body in this way?

All of these things can drive us away from something like a somatic dance practice. It can keep us from simple exercise. It can prevent us from truly enjoying the sensual aspects of life, because the body does not feel like a safe space.

How do we develop the body as safe space without creating more shutdown and numbness?

How to deal with dissociation during movement

There are a bunch of ways to deal with this issue that are more gentle. Over time you can progress through them, but remember, it’s not a ladder. It’s a spiral.

It’s not a simple ladder because if we’ve had a lifetime of dissociative disorder, I don’t think it’s ever just gone. Extreme stress or vile political administrations can certainly bring it back. It’s so deeply embedded in our neurobiology and our body/mind revert to the oldest coping mechanisms because they’re the most “practiced.”

So these new somatic practices are never one and done. Part of maturing into our practices is understanding that the timeline on this is lifelong.

All of this is also why it’s important to work with someone with deep experience. After over 17 years of this work, I can tell when a student is distressed even if they aren’t obviously freaking out, for example, and I have a tool box the size of a castle that I can pull from until we find the thing that helps or soothes, whatever is needed.*

(*That said, I am not a licensed therapist. If you are just learning about these things for yourself, please get appropriate help. My work is in addition to that; it’s not meant to substitute for it.)

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Peony Somatic Dance methods of the gentle variety

This is just s small example of the tools I would pull from, but it might give you an idea of where to start. (You could also take a class with me, of course, online if you’re not local to Columbus, OH, or you can contact me about possible one on one work if you don’t feel like you’re ready for a class.)

So here are some possible ways of approaching a body that is not feeling safe:

Put all of your attention on your environment. Externalize your awareness. You could put on some music and start to identify items in your space. If you’re alone, you could do this out loud. “Chair, photo, clock” etc. You could add lots of detail if that felt good. As you’re doing this, allow movement to happen but keep your attention outside of the body and the movement. Maybe start by simply walking. Then add a bit of sauce to your walk. Build this bit by bit.

Touch and name your body parts as you move. This is exactly what it sounds like. Moving your right hand? Touch it with your left and say to yourself, this is my right hand. Give it a good squeeze if you prefer firm touch.

Attention to body boundaries. Just notice where your body begins and the space outside of you starts. This could be as simple as focusing your movement in your feet and feeling the floor. Or you could get on the floor and move around gently, feeling the feedback from the floor on your body parts. You could move with your back planted on a wall. You could also move inside a blanket. You could use a yoga strap, holding it and wrapping it around yourself as you move. There are countless ways to get more “loud” feedback to reinforce proprioception, including working with other, trusted humans, which brings us to…

Place your attention on another body. This is best done led in a class or you can do it with a loved one at home. You can try mirror movement: each of you taking a turn to lead. Keep things really simple. Another option is to start with super simple contact improv like you see in the photo above or as seen here.

Again, there are so many ways to deal with dissociation even when it can feel a bit scary. (And again, experienced guides are so very necessary.)

Let me know if you have any questions or insights!

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This was long enough ago that I could hear the clickety-clack sound that the film was making as it was fed through the projector. The light was flickering.

So when I started to see spots, I didn’t think much of it at first. I assumed there were imperfections in the physical film strips. I rubbed my eyes and waited for it to go away, and instead, it just kept getting worse. Then those spots made their way across my field of vision.

When the film stopped and the teacher turned on the overhead lights ((ouch!)), my friends both looked at me and immediately asked what was wrong. They alerted the teacher, who didn’t hesitate to send me to the nurse. I got there just in time to start throwing up. Soon the pain descended and it took everything in me not to cry or yell from the intensity of it. I was sent home.

And so started my migraine journey. Or so I thought until I read something recently that changed even this part of my story.

Early understanding

I am 57 years old and I was about 14 in that memory, and to this day, I suffer from my migraine brain, though it has evolved over time.

Lo and behold, that evolution started much sooner than I have ever thought.

Our understanding of migraine is still rather limited, since it is mostly women who suffer and we certainly would not want to waste medical research dollars on a disease that affects mostly women (and that’s another post so we’ll just leave that shorthanded for now).

But our understanding has evolved compared to what we knew or understood or believed when I was only 14 years old. At that time, the big advance was trying beta blockers on me. They did nothing. Over the coming years, I would try new things as they came out but I stopped trying new things by the time I was near 30. The side effects and inevitable disappointment weren’t worth it to me.

So I settled into a life of lost days and lost energy and lost opportunities, as migraine attacks were frequent (though not as frequent as they are for some). I could easily lose an entire week of days out of a month.

When I went to college, I was given a letter from my neurologist asking my teachers not to count my absent days.

My migraine attacks came with severe photophobia and vomiting that could go on for many hours, sometimes every 20 minutes. The only thing I could do was get into a dark room and wait it out.

I would often punch my own head to try to find some sort of pain that could override the migraine pain for even a moment.

The worst thing that has come of migraine for me, besides all this lost time, happened in my last year of college. After going to a specialty eye clinic, having MRIs, seeing another neurologist, having my heart checked, and more, it was determined that a loss of vision was due to migraine.

That loss is still there. If I close my right eye, it’s like a stretched cloud floating at just below halfway point and slightly to the right of center of my left eye.

During my last semester as an English major, it was hard to keep up with my reading as my brain had to rewire around that loss.

Misunderstanding

Over the years, I tried everything from supplements to herbals to dietary changes. I kept track of stress levels, food, water, exercise, weather.

I was trying to solve the mystery. I was trying to understand what I was doing to cause this.

And, of course, those things do impact migraine brains but there is nothing that we can do — no “perfection” we can attain — that will suddenly give us normal brain health.

That’s a lie of the medical community who loves to blame women for their problems.

There is nothing in my list of chronic illnesses that allopathic medicine has ever been able to help me with.

It turns out that that list of chronic illnesses is likely all connected.

People who suffer from migraine brain have a litany of other issues. Of course they do, because migraine brain is more akin to epilepsy than to any kind of “headache.” It’s a different brain.

Headache is one symptom of migraine but it’s not even always present.

Evolving understanding

The other day, for some reason, I started getting a lot of doctors on my TikTok feed talking about all the symptoms of migraine that people don’t understand are symptoms — and how migraine is not what we thought it was.

So then I started to dig into actual research and that’s when things started shifting for me.

One thing I learned changed my idea of migraine brain being attached to hormones (hormones do play a role but it’s just a role — not the leading star as we’ve been taught):

Often we know who will develop migraine not just because of heredity (which is a thing), but because early in life, migraineurs will have colic or extreme car sickness.

Extreme car sickness.

I could barely go longer than an hour in a car without vomiting when I was little. And now as an adult, there are drives that even being in the front seat doesn’t help.

My husband and I moved to Vermont and I was motion sick all the damn time in those mountains. Even walking on a sloping parking lot at a farmer’s market almost made me lose my lunch. There was no way I could live there. I am a flatlander not just by birth but by necessity.

After more reading, I started to really connect dots and see how migraine brain has affected my entire life in ways that I was basically ignoring and pushing through.

Because we’re taught to push through, right?

I follow this really smart disability activist who mentioned that most people who suffer from migraine do not understand that they have a damn disability. Hearing that made me GASP out loud at my phone.

Because again, we’re just taught that we’re meant to suffer and suffer gladly, and then there’s all that internalized ableism…

Just this past week, I had what a I call a “baby migraine.” As I’ve entered into menopause, the pain aspect is definitely less but still pretty bad. I ignore it; of course I do. But it’s the other stuff that had me struggling this past week: the extreme brain fog, the inability to think very clearly, the skin level nausea (hard to describe), the sticky eyes, the eyes that don’t want to focus, and more.

My training to just buck up is deeply embedded and I worked all day regardless. And that’s a lost day in a variety of ways, because after pushing through, the post phase is even worse. I am exhausted two days later.

I cannot begin to get into the lengthy lists of migraine brain symptoms here or the list of typical co-morbidities. That would be a book. But if you suffer from migraine and haven’t looked at the literature in a while, I encourage you to do so.

I want to move onto the thing that has me rethinking everything.

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How this all connects to neurodivergence

I have suffered from chronic depression for most of my life. I clearly identified this for myself when I was 9 years old. I didn’t use that word but I did know that something was wrong. I have also had long cycles of generalized anxiety disorder.

I have been diagnosed with all sorts of mental illnesses, depending on the inclinations of whatever therapist I had at the time. I have chronic PTSD, for sure. But beyond that, my brain has always felt like a mystery to me and many clinicians (most of whom can never get over the fact that I’m not an addict once they get to know my story).

So one day, I was reading an article about a mother who said something about time to her son and he responded in a way that floored her. She found it so antithetical to how she thought about time that she took that information to his therapist and it was the key that unlocked him having Asperger’s. (That was the term at the time and I want to use it because of the history of my own story.)

Well, I was stunned. The way that boy perceived time was exactly how I did and I did not understand that there could be another different way.

This led to years of research into neurodivergence and I came to understand myself that way. And it helped. I accepted my differences and I started taking care of myself in ways I had always resisted because I thought I was just too freaking weird.

That weirdness, I came to learn, was not only a gift to me but also was a large part of my survival.

So you can imagine how I reacted when I saw that migraine brain is also associated with time blindness (or can be).

And then I learned that there a lot of migraine specialists out there (not necessarily in the United States because we’re always so slow about this stuff) who are starting to see migraine brain as just another kind of neurodivergence.

Time blindness. Sensory sensitivities to the max. Missing social cues because of other symptoms.

All these things and so much more… were my migraine brain?

Who cares? What’s the difference?

Why does this even matter?

To this day, there are things I need that I will deny myself because I think I’m just being weird or that my neuro-difference is just not enough reason. I push myself. Sometimes very hard.

Again, internalized ableism showing up right there.

But for some reason, when I think of the things I need and then relate those things to taking care of my migraine brain — well, I’m just more likely to do them.

The pain and other symptoms of migraine attacks are related to inflammation and that’s something I want to avoid as much as possible.

Throughout you may have caught me saying “migraine attacks” and wondered why.

We do not have “migraines.” We have migraine disease/disorder/brain.

And when symptoms accumulate, we have a “migraine attack” much like an epileptic has a seizure.

But here’s the thing: even when we are not having an attack, we still have migraine. It’s always there.

It has been part of our wiring from the start and it has affected our wiring. (I don’t like the wiring metaphor but you get my point.)

Why it matters beyond me

In the current political landscape, we are seeing the rise of and acceptance of eugenics based ideas. It’s all being spoken out loud now and very blatantly.

Wellness culture has been a big purveyor of those ideas.

We act like health is an individual’s responsibility when it is communal.

And we definitely believe that only certain types of healthy bodies are “good” bodies.

I am only now really learning more and more about all of this and am not the person to speak on it. Again, go to that link and start listing to that activist. There is so much we all have to learn.

My point (and this is a bigger point than I thought because I’m having a hard time writing this): accepting that I am a disabled person is part of deconstructing this eugenics based culture and that’s the first step to making space for all bodies, all humans, to exist happily and to thrive in whatever way they can and desire.

My migraine brain has stolen countless years from my life. It has made my life hard. And I was taught to ignore that.

But no more.

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The overwhelming quality of my despair

There is some shame in admitting that I have been so overcome by despair as we watch the current administration enact its vile cruelties that I have not been able to take actions that I might otherwise, nor have I been able to come to any sort of understanding for myself concerning how to live in this world right now.

As someone who spent decades overcoming and getting to a place of managing debilitating depression, this current reality has triggered (in the true psychological sense) so many core causes of my depression that I thought I had processed. It’s been startling, to say the least.

There are days when I’m a bit better, certainly, but most days since this admin got started, I have felt like I am attempting to do everything through mud. Even the thing that got me out of that serious and life threatening depression, on most days, feels impossible to even consider doing. I’m grateful that I at least have to teach my methods or I don’t know if I’d ever manage to do them purely for myself.

Again, all of this has caused some serious shame.

Who am I?

Where is the part of me that, while at university, built an organization to provide services to the homeless in the surrounding area? Where is the part of me that would argue with such passion the rights of all humans to happiness and some level of comfort and ease? Where is the part of me that would never back down?

I know that that part took a huge hit in those years of depression, but I always assumed she would still be accessible if things were really dire. Which they are. But she doesn’t seem to be.

I don’t remember what happened the other day to make me think this, but suddenly it hit me who I was acting like and I did not like it one bit.

Freaking Frodo

Every time I rewatch LOTR, I get to the second movie and start to, yes, hate Frodo. I find myself so annoyed by his scenes and want to get on with the other characters.

We’ll take a step back: I understand why Frodo is how he is. Of course I do. He’s carrying the ring, blah blah blah… and as time goes on, the weight of that starts to alter him.

But my god, does he have to be so damn whiny!? (And please, I am partly making fun of my own reaction here… give me a sec…)

Sam is the hero. What that man has to put up with! He is cook, maid, EMT, and cheerleader all in one, and he never falters. He stays true and he holds strength for both him and freaking Frodo. We all love Sam, right?

So the other day, when I was contemplating my despair, I suddenly yelled out:

I am being freaking Frodo! (I don’t think I ever say his name with some sort of qualifier first and I’m being polite here as it’s usually a string of expletives.)

I am caught in my despair. It makes sense to me now more than ever that I have such a negative and visceral response to Frodo: he is a mirror of my own shadow.

It’s like I’ve been carrying that ring for years and I can see nothing clearly. Everything is dark. Even good things are seen and experienced through a veil of darkness.

I don’t want to be freaking Frodo, which brings me to the Bhagavad Gita.

The timelessness of despair

After a few days of sitting with this Frodo identity that I didn’t want, it suddenly struck me that I and Frodo are both Arjuna. And if we are both Arjuna, this tells me that despair stopping action and making us someone we’re not meant to be is a rather timeless and very human problem.

If you’ve never read the Gita, it’s the story of Arjuna, who is a prince and warrior. He has come to a battlefield where opposite his army is the army of this cousins. It also includes uncles, teachers, and friends. These are people he cares about.

As you can imagine, he does not want to fight these people, but circumstances have brought them all here, to this impossible place.

Arjuna does not realize that his chariot driver is actually the god Krishna in disguise, and in the moments before battle is to begin, these two have a conversation about duty, purpose, and action.

Arjuna, like Frodo, is pretty freaking whiny.

Basically his argument comes down to, “But I don’t wanna… it’s too hard… why me…”

Sound familiar?

Eventually Krishna reveals himself to Arjuna as the God he is and convinces Arjuna that this is his duty, that he must fulfill his dharma (purpose), regardless of the outcome.

So I am reminded of Gandalf, when Frodo complains that he wishes he’d not been born into this time:

“So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

So do I, Frodo, so do I.

And that brings me to Krishna:

Considering your dharma, you should not
vacillate. For a warrior, nothing is higher than a
war against evil. The warrior confronted with
such a war should be pleased, Arjuna, for it comes
as an open gate to heaven. But if you do not
participate in this battle against evil, you will incur
sin, violating your dharma and your honor.

Religious language aside, we each have a part to play no matter the evil in the world, and to not play that part is to separate from our own essence.

To not play that part is to lose ourselves.

And to play that part, to do the work we are here to do, to do what we can do, is to open a door into the best of us. It’s to enter into the joy of our own being, which is a joy that overcomes despair and leads to more joy — for us and for those around us.

So yeah, I’ll be rewatching LOTR and I’ll be rereading The Bhagavad Gita because obviously the lessons have not quite stuck.

(And a photo from a time when my open heart and warrior nature were more activated:)

So today as you read this, imagine I’m just getting started, that this is the tip of the iceberg. Part of the iceberg that’s underwater is all the stories I could tell you about how students’ bodies (and minds and spirits) have changed over time doing tummy circles fairly consistently.

Fairly consistently means many times a week, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a LOT of time. I tell people that even just one minute in each direction will create changes. And that’s the truth.

(Side note: I’m having a bit of anxiety about this even now… I KNOW after I release this out into the world, that I’ll think of tons of things that I missed. AND if you, as a practitioner, think of anything I missed, please let me know!)

I’ll be looking at this from the perspective of three of your main bodies or sheaths: physical, emotional/mental, and spiritual/energetic.

First, why I start with these

Creating a ritualized beginning to my classes is vital to creating a sense of immediate familiarity and safety.

Peony Somatic Dance asks a lot of us when it comes to vulnerability and authenticity. Starting class the same way every time tells our bodies and brains that this is something we know how to do, this is something we can do. We’re okay here.

It also creates a sort of Pavlov response, of course, and so we can take these out of our classes and into our personal practice to initiate movement when we’re alone — which can be extra challenging. As soon as I sit down on the floor and start these, I am pretty much locked into continuing, even if I feel resistance that day to any kind of movement.

The Physical Stuff

To start, tummy circles do all kinds of magic to your physical body.

• Because we do the circles in sync with the breath, they make us immediately aware of how we’ve been breathing and what we need to do to improve our breathing.

• In a more abstract way but still powerfully physical, tummy circles immediately drop us into our bodies. There are days when they actually remind us that we freaking have bodies.

• They’re great for warming up as they create some heat in the torso and get the muscles ready.

• If you have tight hips, over time tummy circles will start to naturally relax and elongate all the muscles creating the tightness. This includes and also goes for your psoas muscles.

• If you’ve never met any of the muscles in your torso (i.e., your “abs”), tummy circles plus focused breath will eventually introduce you.

• They also rock when it comes to helping with healthy digesting. If you’re feeling like you’re in a phase of hyper-digestion (to put it nicely), then simply do them much slower with much more shallow breath.

• And of course, these are great for your spinal health and mobility. In Chinese medicine, they say your true age is equal to your spinal flexibility and strength.

The Emotional/Mental Stuff

How the heck do tummy circles affect our mind and feelings? Well…

• Doing this repetitive movement with the breath quickly clears the mind. Or helps us to notice how messy it actually is up there.

• They always put us in touch with what we’re feeling. This part is extra powerful when we are first starting to do them and when we’re going through something extra challenging and have to do a bit of compartmentalizing to get through our days.

• Tummy circles are a great and gentle emotional release valve.

• They bring us right into the now. This is a big part of their magicks.

The Spiritual/Energetic Stuff

Tummy circles are simultaneously working on three energy centers/chakras. Well, more like four or… all of them. ((ha))

• First chakra: of course, tummy circles ground us. Connecting us to the energy of earth and self (and when done with others, kinda plugging us into the circle, if you will).

• Second charka: the motion of the tummy circles and the breath are like water, connecting us to our inherent creativity and stirring it up. (I often get ideas during tummy circles.)

• Third chakra: when done correctly, they stoke our inner fire… the fire of will and the fire into which we can throw whatever we no longer need. (You can even imagine throwing crap into that fire as you do these.)

• Fourth chakra: they start to generate energy upward into the heart center.

• Fifth chakra: audible breath and the motion continue to pull the energy up and into our throats.

• Sixth charka: doing tummy circles with the eyes closed, allows the energy to be pulled up into our third eye area, stimulating the pituitary and pineal glads because…

• Seventh chakra: finally the energy reaches our crown, driving upward and connecting us to all that is, before finally dipping back down into the ground and starting all over again.

Discovering them over and over

They might seem simple. They’re not. There are depths to tummy circles that it takes most students years to discover. And there are ways to play with them, changing tiny variables here and there, that are endless. They are never the same twice because you are never the same body and mind and spirit coming to this work.

The energy of the tummy circles creates a multitude of differently planed spirals. You can visualize yourself sitting in the center of all of that as it emanates out from you in every direction and then gets fed back into you.

Like I said, powerful stuff. (Go here to see a video of their basic form.)

And they are no less powerful if you do them in a chair (check out this video). Over time, I would encourage you to slowly work your way toward the floor but in the meantime, the chair version is just as good. And if you love them on the floor, try them in a chair once in a while. You’ll be surprised.

The idea, as always, is to do old things in new ways… finding little bits of change to experiment with and to observe.

It started immediately with my nana, Lillian Rose. But it was her older sister, Ardelle, who taught me about actual flowers.

Ardelle could grow anything, and along the side of her house in Erie, Pennsylvania, she grew the biggest begonias. These were tuberous begonias that needed to be dug up every year because they wouldn’t survive the winter.

And she did that. Year after year, she dug them up and saved them in sand in her cellar. A cool place accessed from outside, under giant doors that I couldn’t open.

One of my happiest memories was being given the metal watering can, only half full because it would have been too heavy otherwise, and told to water each plant individually.

But it’s another memory of Ardelle that has shaped my sense of self to this day.

Her golden kitchen

I don’t think her kitchen was actually golden in color but it glowed golden as the sun hit the windows just right. And as the light poured into the room, the air seemed to fill with glitter. As a child, it felt like pure magic.

I must have been about 4 in this particular memory.

I felt very lucky because I was spending the night at Ardelle’s. And it was pretty much just me and her. My uncle Doug tended to stay downstairs with his radio, books, and cigarettes. They lived in a flat that they rented a floor of in their younger days, but since I’d been around, they lived in the entire building. She occupied, mostly, the second floor, and he the first. (And I think a lot of women would be jealous of this arrangement now. HA)

In this memory, she was in the kitchen cooking our dinner. At first, I stayed in there with her, dancing and twirling in that magical light. Doing anything to make her laugh because she had the best laugh in the whole world.

Eventually, I made my way to a chair just outside the kitchen door. My favorite chair. And I sat, swinging my legs and singing.

Dancing and singing were (are) my favorite.

I was making up songs, singing about what was happening.

I stopped. I had a moment of self consciousness and I stopped.

And from the kitchen, Ardelle laugh yelled, “Keep going! Sing more! Why did you stop?”

So I started up again.

I started up again because with those simple words, she told me that what I was creating mattered.

Shutting up

Ardelle died a week before I turned 15. She was only 70. Losing her so young (really… her sister, my nana, lived to be 97) was devastating to everyone who knew her.

I dreamed of her and her house well into my 30s. I wish I still dreamed of her.

Often in those dreams, I would be on the second floor living room, looking for her, and she would be floating outside the window, laughing. I would wake up crying, feeling as if I had just lost her.

Before she died, though, the process of shutting up had already started for me.

Singing was so precious to me that I hid it. I did not trust those around me to treat it with the love and compassion that Ardelle had. So I would only sing in the basement when no one was home, and my singing stayed in the basement until a few years ago when I gathered the courage to take voice lessons.

But all of those years of shutting this part of me down did a lot of damage.

I know my writing voice was altered, that I was editing before words would spill out of my pen or onto the page in college out of my word processor. I have still not been totally open in the way I want and need to be.

Even so, my voice has been stronger than it would have been if not for Ardelle.

And now as I type this, a sweet white cat with one blue eye and one amber sleeps on my legs. Her name is Begonia.

Back in 1991, I was living in Chicago, attending grad school at DuPaul. My area of expertise was shaping up to be American literature that arose out of the Holocaust. And it just so happened that the Art Institute of Chicago, late that summer, was putting on a giant exhibition called Degenerate Art.

With a quick search, you can read more deeply about all of this, but I’ll give you a quick overview.

Nazis, of whatever time, are not fans of any art but classical art that supports their idea of culture. So you know, nothing imaginative and certainly nothing that promotes anything but hetero normative ideals. Oh… and white supremacy ideals, of course.

Modern art, in particular, which was on the rise at the same time as naziism, was extra targeted.

Eventually, the man himself (a frustrated artist and small man… like so many fascists) gathered all the modern art they could get their hands on and put together a show of over 600 works.

In order to, well, make people feel angry about the art, they did a couple of things. First, they crowded the walls with it, creating a sort of sight chaos.

Second, they let in too many people at once, herding them through tight lines. And third, they cranked up the heat.

When the Art Institute decided to put on this show, they found as many pieces as they could from the original. They didn’t overcrowd the people or turn up the heat, of course, but they did display them more like the original show so we could get an idea of what it was really like.

And to this day, there’s rarely a month that goes by that I don’t think of that exhibit. And now especially, there’s rarely a week.

It can feel like the arts need to take a backseat during times like we’re living through.

But if you look at history, it begs to differ.

If art weren’t fundamentally important to the human soul, would Hitler and his crew have gone to all of this trouble to degrade it?

No. Of course not.

All of the arts have the potential to expand our minds and hearts and to, most importantly, expand our empathy toward those not experiencing a life like our own. Art teaches us about our humanity. Art teaches us about the beauty of diversity. Art teaches us that complexity is a gift.

And therein lies the danger.

As one of the sickest humans ever to be quoted just recently said (and I won’t name him), don’t get caught by “the sin of empathy.”

I am familiar with the mind gymnastics that people will go through to make that make sense for themselves, but they are wrong, period. It is an immoral sentiment. They are taking all that is good about Christianity and deforming it in the name of their own fears and their own small hearts and minds.

Art challenges us and it calls out parts of us that need to be worked on. It forces us to face our shadows so that we might fully delight in our joys.

So yes, we must dance through fascism.

And dancing, in particular, is extra important in that it keeps us grounded in these bodies and in this world right here and right now, rather than committing the grave error of thinking that we should be focusing on something that (might/maybe) come after we die.

That’s what it comes down to: fascism is death and art is life.

When I was little, we would spend a lot of Saturday nights at my maternal grandmother’s house and then attend Methodist church with her in the morning. She was a teacher in the Sunday school.

Wilda Vickery Peterson was one of the kindest humans I’ve ever known, and my belief in a social justice warrior sort of Christ really comes from her (to begin with. Later in life, I found Merton and Day and so many Catholic mystics but that’s another story).

My grandmother had a large kitchen and in one section there was a chalkboard, which everyone loved, and a table surrounded by windows. It almost gave a small sunroom effect.

And I would stand at those windows in the good weather and stare out at her large vegetable garden. What mystified me was this: at the end of that garden, year after year, there were always a couple of rows of gladiola.

October 1917

Wilda was born in October of 1917. She was born into World War I still raging. She was born as the Bolsheviks were completing their overthrow of the Russian government. She was born mere months before the Spanish flu would explode all over the globe.

She would spend a big chunk of her 20s living through and having her first daughter during WWII. She knew what a victory garden was through direct experience.

And she would live through the rest of the century — past her own century mark — seeing too much change to list here. She would not pass from her human form until June of 2020 at the age of 102 and a half.

I bring all of this up to say that she saw more than what many of us are seeing. She, too, lived through times that felt “unprecedented.” Over and over, actually.

And yet she was covered in and surrounded by flowers on her wedding day.

And she grew those few rows of gladiola every year until her oldest granddaughter could stand and admire them out her kitchen window.

Gladiola — a “magazine” of sorts in her honor

I have been thinking for a couple of years of writing here on Substack. There were reasons why I kept not doing it, but I have satisfied my own sense of what’s right and good and admire so many writers over here that I know it’s time.

I will still write on my website and will replicate some of that writing and there will be material on Substack that is not on my website, because I want to write more broadly.

I will write about movement and the body, of course, but also my love of literature and flowers and anything else that is feeling like it must be written, anything else that I am geeking out about and need to share for the joy of sharing.

And this space will be called Gladiola: Move. Write. Plant. And it will always remain free of charge.

I realized that those two rows at the end of that practical vegetable garden are the perfect metaphor for the times we’re living in, when we can sometimes forget that beauty for beauty’s sake still matters. When we can forget that we must also feed the heart and the soul and that sometimes the best food for those things are often materials and experiences we start to think of as “unnecessary.”

Gladiola is also perfect for its meaning. Flowers have carried meaning for as long as humans have loved them, and the gladiola is about strength, resilience, moral integrity, and remembrance. Perfect things for Wilda to have planted in so many ways and a perfect name for what I hope to share.

My larger garden

And for those keeping track, this Gladiola will be part of the growing garden of my work: Peony Somatic Dance, of course, is my core passion and my true work in the world and is named for my soul cat, but there’s also Lillian Rose Movement Project, the name under which I create choreographic community experiences, which is named for my paternal grandmother.

May this garden continue to grow and continue to nurture others.