How do I learn to believe again that I too am worth being loved? How do I believe that I too am worth being held with soft words? So many failed relationships broken by so many dark awful things. How can I feel worthy of loving myself when so many have taken my open heart and rejected it. How do I learn to trust myself again? How do I learn to trust another person with my heart? Why can I be so strongly a proponent of everyone being worth having love in their life but I can't always believe it for myself? How do I heal my heart? I can celebrate and cherish the love I see the people in my life enjoying and discovering. I applaud with my heart and soul for them. but at the end of the night I go home alone. and lately that's a lonely place to be.
Friday night was our Student dance recital. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I pulled out of doing a solo - postponed until I feel it with the energy it deserves. I went to have my friend Lindsay do my hair. It's become almost a ritual for us. and she is so good for my ego. and my hair. I felt a bit more confident and worth who I know deep down I am. It was a small audience. But one full of small miracles. My dad Jim had to have dental surgery we found out early in the week. It was disappointing for my mom and I not to have him there but there was a miracle there. In my mom's worry over me of late, she and my natural father PatDad have been talking. And so he hopped on the ferry Friday morning and took charge of boy herding and feeding right down to picking up flowers so that there were flowers there for my mom from Jim. It was pretty cool. Okay - it was way more than cool. Anyone who knows me, knows that's a pretty big deal. All three of my parents. It was like a little girl's earliest wish coming true.
The show started late. Candace talked to the audience of how it had been a rough while for many of her dancers with the craziness that is life - broken hearts, broken bodies, damaged souls. But that we were there together be it on stage or in the audience to experience support and joy through the dance. Then all the dancers who behind doors or the curtain or seated in the audience got up to dance with the their friends and family before making their way up to the stage - I got to boogie with my mom who looked stunning and of whom I am so proud for so many reasons. I didn't have enough MC material but managed to pull out bits and bobs from both the audience and my notebooks I'd brought. I told bad belly dance jokes, talked up the Mira Betz weekend in January 2011 and thoughtfully ruminated on some of the deeper life lessons I took away from Rachel Brice in October. Kenzie kept yelling things at me which helped with audience banter.
I know that I didn't dance particularly well or MC with the usual grace of articulation. there was a lot of talking about dance being a safe place for us - a place where we won't be perfect and it didn't define us but that but it was part of us, a safe place to be who we were deep inside. The evening was full of small miracles. I saw some beautiful dancing and two of my troupe mates perform their very first solos. The audience - though tiny in number was large in love for us. My eyes didn't react to the new line of eyeshadow I was trying - another small miracle for anyone who knows of the struggles lately with my eyes. My mom and PatDad were there together united to love and support me. And after a curtain call and more booging on stage, many hugs and love, late that night we went home to collapse into beds well earned. tired and happy for the gift of love and safety that the dance and community we have found with each other surrounds us with. Where will dance led me next year? What role will it play in my life? I don't know frankly. But I am forever thankful for the gift of sisters it has placed in my life and the journey it helps me on....
