Dancing

with Everything

The Art of Dancing on Behalf of Peace Part 2

“What is she doing? My 3-year-old grandson William’s voice echoed throughout the large meeting space at my 31-year-old son Kenneth’s memorial service. Hearing that voice, and the question that I imaged many other people were asking themselves, I stopped what I was doing. I went over to him were he was seated with his parents in the front row. “I’m dancing on behalf of Uncle Ken,” I said. “Would you like to dance with me?”  Without hesitation, he buried his head in his mother’s pregnant lap and shook his head vigorously no. But his 5-year-old brother Ethan, stood up, took my extended hand, and joined me. We danced together in a circular pattern in the open space. I lifted him up and we twirled around together. My breath quickened and my heart filled with joy. I’m transported back to when my youngest son Ken was 5 years old. Here in these moments of my greatest sorrow, tears remind me of the tremendous joy that Ken’s life had brought to mine.

Dancing and grieving share a similar status in western culture. They are both to be avoided in order to maintain ones’ composure. That evening, I thanked Ethan for dancing with me. Will explained why he rejected my offer. “I don’t dance,” he said with firm conviction. I asked him what he does do. He said, “I golf.”

Many people won’t dance, refuse to dance, yet, in these hard times– Alice Walker maintains “Hard Times Call for Furious Dancing!” Those of us willing to dance need to dance on behalf of those who won’t or can’t. The popular notion of dance is that it is an energetic celebration of positive moments in life, like weddings, birthdays, and graduations. Less well-known is that dance can also be an act of mourning, a full-bodied communal expression of life’s challenges and ways to grapple with them. It is a dual strength of dance that it can help us navigate all our milestone events, which are often a mixture of joy and grief, laughter, and tears.

What does dancing do for the dancer? What will it do for those of us grieving losses, hungering for peace? War and conflicts force people to leave their homes, and all they’ve worked for. If they stay, a good night’s sleep is impossible due to the noise and danger from the bombs. So, if we are to dance on behalf of peace let’s start with a simple gesture, the body’s language for what we sometimes don’t have words for.

Let’s start by making a fist and raising it in the air. That gesture expresses our determination to recognize the injustices of war, and our willingness to stand against it.  Seeing other raised hands lets us know we are in solidarity with one another against injustice. To be a peace maker is to know that peace cannot be maintained without justice. But we must let go of the fist, shake it out, and dance can help us do that. That fist that may have become planted in various parts of our bodies, constricting our breath, creating pain, interrupting our rest. Holding on to atrocities and our reactions to them, keep them alive in the world. We must let go, but as Soyinka Rahim reminds, we must do it with love, and that takes dance.

We need rituals for peace so that they will change us individually and collectively. Let me offer a story. In the mid 1980’s a man from Germany visited India and was introduced to a simple ritual, A Universal Peace Greeting from the Gaudi Foundation.  The words begin, “I offer you peace.”

And the gestures that went along with it used universal sign language, not the sign language we are familiar with that expresses words in the English Language. Through members in the InterPlay Community, this peace greeting got to me, and I began using it to start and finish classes I taught at the university and staff meetings we held at our behavioral health care clinic in Fort Worth TX. We began by saying to one another, “I offer you peace.”

In 1988, a student of mine was involved with Vivian Casselberry, a Dallas journalist who had formed an organization known as Peacemakers, and they were putting together the First International Women’s Peace Conference. Laurel called and asked that I join them and bring that sheet with the peace greeting on it to the planning meeting. I did that, and each morning of the week-long conference a different delegation of women from one of the 57 countries represented led the conference community of 2000 women in reciting the words of the Peace Greeting in their own native language. We spent a lot of time that week, back and forth to the copy room at the conference center, making copies of the peace greeting for the women to take back to their countries.

The outcome of all this? Barely a year later, November 9th, 1989, the Berlin Wall, which has stood since 1961, came down. Of course, we can’t know for sure that the Peace Ritual had anything to do with that. But I can say for certain, in 1988, though we focused quite a bit on it in our discussions, nobody thought there was much change of that wall being taken down.

Tonight is the final night of Dancing On Behalf of Peace. The event is FREE but you need to register at https://danceonbehalfofpeace.org/

The Art of Dancing on Behalf of Peace

In the midst of these contentious and challenging times, the non-profit organization I have belonged to for over 30 years, Body Wisdom, has joined with other peace-building non-profits and artists to host Dances On Behalf of Peace, an 11 day, half-hour virtual international gathering. I am honored to be a community collaborator and invited speaker for this celebration of Inner + Outer Peace and the Physicality of Grace. The series began Feb. 19th and will meet every evening at 8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific through Feb 29thhttps://danceonbehalfofpeace.org/ 

As you see this invitation you might think, as I often do, even after all these years of dancing on behalf of myself and people and situations needing healing, “Why dance? What good could this possibly do?  

Writer Alice Walker expresses it best in the title of one of her poetry books, “Hard Times Call For Furious Dancing.” She states something about dance that many people would say: “I have learned to dance. It isn’t that I didn’t know how to dance. I just didn’t know how basic it is for maintaining balance,” to have, what I call, a vital and satisfying life. And why is that? 

A visit to my massage therapist this week pointed out again, that knot in my right shoulder that I imagine would look like a tightly coiled fist if I could see it. I wasn’t aware that it was there, though it’s been there before, and it’s taken quite a lot of effort from her, and relaxation from me, to help it uncinch. I couldn’t feel it until her skilled hands found it. Tense muscles become numb, and feeling can only return when they, we, let go. 

I remember years ago accompanying Ilana Rubenfeld as she allowed what she called her “listening hands” to help a Jewish-American man release the tension in his back that had caused him a chronic 40 year, on and off, backache. When asked to remember when he first had the backache he related it to the time, as part of a military unit, when he helped liberate the camps in Germany at the end of World War II. The lesson I took from witnessing this session was– in order to have no more victims we must be able to let go of our reactions to atrocities and stop storing them in our bodies. It keeps the atrocities alive. Frequent dancing is one of the best ways I know to open our clenched fists, wherever in our bodies we have stored them. 

Last fall, I was out of the country, off the grid so to speak when war came to people in the middle east. A text from a student who lives in Israel and who regularly attends my online Friday InterPlay class alerted me. The other students and I were so relieved when he got on with us for a few minutes and he seemed delighted to see our smiling faces. After he left, we danced on behalf of David and his family and the dance and the lines of the song took me to a place that its lyrics suggested, “I decided to be happy, I decided to be glad, I decided to be grateful, for all I ever had.” 

That evening, I played the song again for myself and moved to it to reinforce those decisions that the song had encouraged me to make. “I decided to be happy, I decided to be glad. I decided to be grateful for all I ever had.” At first, I asked myself, how can you be happy when so many in this world are suffering? But as I danced, it came to me that how can we not be present to what everyone in the conflict is hoping for, for themselves, their families, their communities, and for the world. Could it be an obligation of those of us not living in the center of the storm to keep alive the loving, peaceful energy that the world will need in the future to get us all there? 

Join me this evening, and every evening at 8 pm eastern, 5 pm pacific through Feb 29th. The event is FREE but you need to register at  https://danceonbehalfofpeace.org/  

       

Art that Inspires Art and the Process of Grieving

Not being able to find an important citation online, got me into cleaning my art studio, which I hadn’t done for a very long time. I found the document I was looking for that had the information I needed and, a bonus gift alongside it. This rather crumpled yellow sheet contained handwritten notes and a poem I had written during a visit to the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan several years ago. I thought to myself, “What a fabulous example this is of how art helps us process our losses and our lives.” The museum was founded in 2004 and contains nearly 4000 Himalayan art objects spanning 1500 years of history.

Now to my history–when my husband and I visited the Rubin a few years ago we took part in an art activity that began with the docent helping us understand the art images of the protector goddesses that surrounded us in the gallery, Durga, with the power to destroy evil, Green Tara, mother of all Buddhas who helps us find liberation from suffering, and White Tara, known for maternal compassion and healing. The docent then left us to medicate, write and/or draw our responses. Each person brings to the experience whatever is up for them in their own lives, and with whatever skill we have, we create our own art piece related to its inspiration.

 

Here is the poem: Ode to Tara

When the demons overtook my beloved,

I became the grandmother goddess,

calling on all the archetypes of

Feminine Protection. First off to protect

myself, that I might survive the onslaught

of deranged forces. The test now is whether

love is truly stronger than hate, and

whether the forces of compassion can

outlast the forces of fear and dis-ease.

Oh Tara!

Fully enlightened being

Born of tears, now seated

in royal ease. Assist us,

emersed in our own vale

of tears, challenged by

many demons, of new names

and no names. Help us float,

as you do–– through

the dark times.

Grief and the Element of Space

Recently several people I know have had a loved one die in their home. This has caused me to think about grief and its connection to the element of physical space and objects that surround us. When my daughter Corinne was battling breast cancer and losing, she had young children. She was clear about not wanting to die at home. She said, “This can be the house where mommy was sick, but not the house where mommy died.” I had the sense that she felt the house would never recover from such an event and make it harder for the children to continue to enjoy living it in.

 

In the state of California, when you list your home for sale, you must disclose if someone died there. I was told that is because some people believe that the ghost of the deceased person might still be there to interrupt the buyers’ sleep. There’s little doubt that spaces, both indoors and out, can remind us of what has occurred there. When we had to let go of our dog Cody who had lived with us in our present house for 8 years, there wasn’t a spot on the three floors of the townhouse that didn’t carry a memory of Cody having occupied it. An image of him in the corner of the kitchen. A sense of his presence underneath a desk while we typed. Sitting on the couch watching television as though he understood the plot. 

 

To begin to reclaim the house as one that doesn’t have a pet, we took the objects that belonged to him–his toys, and crates, feeding bowls and the mat with his name on it, to storage. Whenever I look around expecting to see him, which still happens quite often, I reappreciate how intertwined he was with most everything we did in our daily lives. He was closer to us than any of our relatives and friends, a fact that many other doggie moms and dads confirmed by their empathetic expressions of sympathy and condolences, in person and online.

 

Since I see the arts as helpful to our grieving, I looked at what space means to artists. Visual artists might describe a space as “open” or “cluttered,” “symmetrical” or “shallow “each of which offers a very different experience to someone viewing it or standing in it. Architects know how to create spaces that feel expansive or cozy, comforting or inspiring. As a dancer, I can say we prefer “empty” spaces. My sisters could tell you how I always wanted the furniture pushed against the walls in our shared dorm-style bedroom so we’d have plenty of room to dance in the middle. Mostly the spaces in our homes need to serve what we want to do and feel there. 

 

Not everyone avoids dying at home. In fact, my friend Melody LeBaron, as a Space Clearing expert writes in her book, Transforming Death, of ways to create sacred space for those transitioning from this life and those caring for them. Using her experiences of midwifing 13 of her closest loved ones, she offers ways to prepare the space and yourself for a transformational experience.    

 

I visited an artist’s home recently after someone very special to her had become ill while visiting. The person was taken to the hospital and after a short while, died there. When I learned of this, I offered to bring some sweet grass and other herbs so that we could smudge the personal spaces of her home, a practice that my women’s spiritually group uses to change the energy in our spaces and in ourselves. Together we moved through the spaces and smudged the rooms including the pictures and art objects that represented family members and friends who have crossed from this life. Standing and moving through those beautiful spaces, with the light reflecting off the snow and streaming in through the windows, I felt gratitude that I could be a part of the clearing and reclaiming of this space of deep love and reverence. Remembering how much work it was for my friend to create these spaces in the first place, having downsized from a much larger home, I left inspired to see if I can unclutter my own living space to find mire emptiness or spaciousness to serve what I want to experience and feel there.      

 

 

 

The Gifts of Story, Artmaking and the Connections They Produce

My writer friend Linda Meadowcroft has just released her compelling and meticulously researched biography, Ghost Eagles: The Spirit Journey of Artist Jan Beaver Gallione.  I wish for better skills in what I call, “writing about writing,” to communicate my excitement and gratitude for what Linda has accomplished. I have been a witness to this material as Linda has developed it through the years and I don’t have words to express my admiration for, not only her skills, but the dogged determination she has displayed in persisting for many years through untold challenges to bring this beautiful volume into being. 

 

Linda and I met in Pittsburgh nearly 20 years ago in Oct of 2005 at an artist’s workshop titled My Own Spirit Art, organized by Dan and Patsy Siemasko. A dozen or so of us gathered in their home to focus on spiritual art, on what I would now call, artmaking as a spiritual practice. Linda’s established claim as an artist to that point was as a violinist, while mine was as a dancer, improv teacher and performer. Yet both of us were working on early versions of books–in my case the first snippets of Warrior Mother. I still have a mimeographed invitation to a session Linda was planning at the time based on an early version of her current book.

 

As Shakespeare has suggested, there have been through the years, “many forces operating besides our devotion” to our individual work. Linda begins the introduction to her work with “I never met Jan Beaver, though I suppose you could say we were introduced by my dog Roxie.” Then follows an endearing story of how Linda’s ill-manner dog pulled her into a section of recently introduced native plants in Mellon Park and a plaque honoring “artist, poet, and educator Jan Beaver.” The lettering contained a tribute to her work on the Ghost Eagle Mounds in Wisconsin which she is credited with resurrecting. Linda knew nothing of the artist or her accomplishments but, I suppose we could say, how forceful the power of curiosity, and the blessings that accrue to the artist who follows that force. 

 

Linda’s deep exploration of the extraordinary life of a single artist illustrates for me the paradox that the more personal the story, the more universal. Linda finds many similarities with her own story as she learns more about Jan’s and we readers will as well. Secondly, as we learn details of how the artist in Ghost Eagles used her art to process her life, and the losses and trials of her day, she takes us with her, encouraging us to courageously care about what needs to be most important to us in our own time.   

 

Linda and I have stayed in touch all these years not simply because of our mutual interest in writing, in preserving the natural world, and in Native American culture. Something happened the day after we first met that has insured our connection would be lifelong. It’s known as a “Pittsburgh Thing,” but another woman named Linda introduced me to her neighbor, Pamela Meadowcroft, and she turned out to be Linda’s sister, who became, with her husband, a member of my improv troupe and to this day, one of my best friends.  So, its’ really all these connections that help books happen and get out into the world, especially by people talking about them and recommending them to their friends and acquaintances. I hope you will check out Linda’s book for yourself and become part of spreading the word about this book and the needed messages it contains.

Ghost Eagles: The Spirit Journey of Artist Jan Beaver Gallione https://amzn.to/4aOou87

 

 

Family Reunion

The sign that greeted visitors to the house we’d rented for our family reunion in Palm Springs read, “Welcome to Paradise.” As family members arrived by plane or auto or rental car on the various days of the 9-day holiday, the sign reinforces the notion that we were on vacation. It seems to be inviting us to “Enjoy the pool, soak in the hot tub, and explore hiking, beginning at the nearby trail head for Chino Canyon.” The group is larger this year, two adult grandchildren having brought their special plus ones to the gathering. It’s a first time for niece Heather from Reno and her son, Mathew, on leave from the Navy. They made it for the second half of the week. There was a surprise, very short last-minute visit from Rich’s brother Jay and sister-in-law Betty when they drove up from San Diego for lunch, a short hike, and a catching up conversation on the patio.

Our first Christmas holiday trip to Palm Springs was ten years ago, with many more since then, so there are traditions, old and evolving. We’ve gotten quite good at estimating, on our initial Costco food run, the quantity and type of foundational food essentials we’ll need. When it comes to meals, a rhythm develops with family members volunteering to cook or supervise others using their special recipes for egg casseroles, chili, salads, and cheese grits. Intergenerational dishwashing and cleanup crews led by grandson Ethan keep the place safe and sanitary despite the communal nature of the kitchen and its busy individual Keurig coffeemaker. For restaurants we always revisit Sherman’s, our favorite Jewish Deli, and Pacifica, the high-end seafood restaurant, which this year provided only a bar menu and an outdoor table given our visit was during their New Years’ Eve celebration.

Of course, there were as always, several rounds of golf, somewhat different this year since granddaughter Tori joined what is usually an all-male event. We non-golfers came back ecstatic about a new, but from now on, yearly museum event–a visit to the recently opened Agua Caliente Cultural Center. We had been watching the construction site developing in downtown Palm Springs since July of 2018 when the tribe began the extensive excavation of the site which contains the springs of the sacred waters from which Palm Springs gets its name. Opened just 8 weeks ago, this Smithsonian-connected site tells the story of the native tribes that have lived in the area for what they have now documented is more than 8000 years. No wonder it took so long to build this world class museum and its neighboring building, the Spa at Sec-he, whose name means the sound of boiling water.

Evening meals were often followed by game nights with grandson Will and his partner Nathalie leading us in rounds of Taboo, a game that lists the words you can’t say in describing whatever word you must get your team members to say. Buoyed by how well they did and how much fun we had, I tried out the word game I’d brought called Culture Tags, a game I’d played but never taught or directed. My grandchildren were patient with me as I introduced the game I’d learned from my African American women friends, and before it was over, we doubled over in laughter as we all became experts on Black Twitter. As a part of our New Year’s Eve celebration, we even tried an outdoor nighttime laser golf tournament at Winterfest. It turns out the family that plays together has the most fun ever!

It wasn’t as though trouble didn’t come to paradise, despite the name “Barbie Dream House” which was the name son Kevin gave it. My youngest sister Maureen had died in her sleep the night before we left for the reunion and my brother Miles needed to forgo the trip from New Mexico at the last minute due to being diagnosed with bladder cancer. Son-in-law Bill arrived from Nebraska with cold/flu symptoms and in an abundance of caution, elected to go to a hotel for the first few days. Meanwhile Rich took naps and made several trips to the pharmacy for over-the-counter remedies for his symptoms.  The small cluster conversations that happened on the back patio or in the cars when we were on our way to doing other things involved not only the joyful accounts of educational achievements, but the questions raised, and the uncertainties of what careers they will make possible in the future. I loved hearing the advice to 11-year-old Kyra offered by her cousins, and seeing the videos Kyra made, unbeknownst to me, of our trip to the grocery store.

I would say that family reunions are nether paradise nor dream. For this matriarch who remembers vividly those members gone from our sight and the childhood version of most everyone in the room, they are the connection of community and the rewards of a long life, as I see how things have turned out. For these young family members, most of whom have lost loved ones early in their young lives and who have had to deal with big challenges provided by fate and history, I’m in awe of the resilience that is now wired in. Their challenges have now become their gifts–for their own lives going forward, and for those lucky enough to know them and become recipients of what they have to give.

Finding Joy Amidst Evidence to the Contrary

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go.” The saleswoman in the consignment resale shop turns the music off, or down so low we can’t hear it. I’m fine with that because rather than get me in a holiday mood, the music seems to remind me of all I still have ahead of me. I’ve often wondered whose idea it was to have the most intense holiday celebrations, (Christmas, Chanukah, and Thanksgiving) so close to one another and to the New Year’s celebration which follows the end of the fiscal year. Living on the academic calendar as a student and then a teacher for many years, I got into the habit of putting off all preparations and thoughts of the holidays till after my grades were turned in. It was the only way I could avoid total overwhelm.

 

I hear the salesperson apologize to a new customer entering the store. “I’m sorry, I forgot I had turned the music down,” she says, and she turns it back up. “Are you ready for Christmas, the woman asks. I don’t answer. As a grief advocate, I know this time of year to be the most challenging for those who have lost loved ones to death or some other type of absence. There is no getting ready. This time of year, is the marker of that grieving reality, and coming together we must confront it. 

 

It’s not just the lack of snow that mocks the disconnect of our reality from the sparkling Hallmark scenes and Christmas caroling of ads and greeting cards. Foreseeing the empty seats at the holiday table, or the chaos that will ensue as other family members attempt to fill a pivotal role in the social gathering brings dread rather than excitement, and lots of columns of advice on how to survive the holidays. Perhaps we need to go back further in history to the ceremonies on which many of our holiday traditions had been based. Back to the realities of the natural world, the time in the northern hemisphere that is the longest night when our world is plunged into darkness. 

 

I had an art-based experience of the Winter Solstice this past week, thanks to a musician friend, Elizabeth Jett-Downing and her Eco-spiritual rock concert. As a member of the movement choir, I was honored to celebrate in three parts in a “Tree Dance,” the Spirit of Darkness” the comfort and restful quality of darkness – the “Spirit in Nature,” paying homage to the immutable vitality within the evergreen tree that occupied the center of the space, and the “Spirit in Us,” recognizing that the divine is incarnate in every plant and animal and in us. 

 

There is no expectation to begin in merriment. We begin in darkness and follow the light as it builds and brightens the room. As the dancers connect with one another and light the tree in the center of the space, the darkness is overcome, and our spirits are lifted. We’ll carry the joyful reassurance of this enactment with us as darkness continues to wain and light returns slowing throughout the coming months till the warmth of spring and new life arrives. 

 

As I travel to be with family members this holiday season and remember together two sisters who have left us this year, I’m wishing for you that wherever you gather and with whom, peace joy, and love will light up your spaces, and carry you forward into and through the new year of 2024.  

 

Transformational Travel

Costa Rica had been on our bucket list as a travel destination for so long, I’d lost track of how it got on the list in the first place. What we know about the country has come to us through National Geographic images and video programs of exotic birds and animals still flourishing despite all the challenges to their habitats. We elected to join a touring company that partners with National Geographic to learn more about the country from the guides and experts whose job it is to love the natural world and teach people how to care for it. As we traveled around the country in a small van over washboard roads, through rapidly changing unpredictable weather with a dozen or so other people from the US, Mexico, Canada, and Great Britain–we began to understand how visiting those places changes us, its visitors.

 

With six other members of our group, we’re floating down a narrow river in two inflatable rafts, paddling only when directed by our guide, Carlos. Rich and I had chosen this activity among the myriad of possibilities because, rather than white water rafting, this lazy river version would allow us to see more wildlife and slowdown from the frenetic pace of our regular lives. We’re wearing the recommended river shoes, and it doesn’t take long to realize the wisdom in that attire–the boat takes in water, and our feet are getting wet. Sitting on the edge of the raft is extremely uncomfortable for me, and I begin wondering if I will be able to stand or walk once this part of the adventure is over. Someone suggests we switch sides, which doesn’t seem like that could make a difference, but we do, and it does. I’m now comfortable enough to focus on why we’re here–to bask in the beauty of the rainforest and discover it’s treasures.

 

Carlos is a bundle of positivity. Extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the animals and plants he is a part of the process of what’s saving them and their habitat. As we drift from side to side and hold up to get a better look at a monkey or bird Carlos has identified, I’m realizing this trip would be of little value without him. We need him to first see what we cannot, and then, teach us how to notice the flutter of a leaf, and tend to the subtle sound of a chirp or the sound of a dramatic howl. And some wildlife are still alive because they camouflage themselves. A sleeping owl’s markings match so well the tree trunk she sleeps on, they appear as one item. Slowing down is a prerequisite for each discovery.  

 

We would learn later about the technology that had threatened to wipe out these diverse animals and plants–the power chainsaw. That tool was brought in to clear cut the forest and make room for dairy farming in the 1950s, deforesting large swaths of the landscape. Carlos brings a piece of technology that is saving the rain forest and its inhabitants–a telescopic lens. He invites us to become like the National Geographic photographers we’ve admired. He places our phone cameras on his telescope and creates the intimate closeup images that allow us to begin a relationship with sloths and monkeys, Macaws and Toucans. 

 

We have a small mission on our journey, to plant two trees, one for each raft, in one of the open spaces where the protected riverside foliage is sparse. These outfitters have pledged to plant a tree for each raft of visitors they bring down the river and it’s our turn. I elect to not trudge the uneven ground in my water shoes and stay in the boat to become the photographer. 

 

As boatmates climb on the shoreline and dig the hole, Carlos tell us we need to name our tree. 

Now I get it. We are involved in a ritual, a tiny part of the reforestation projects that Costa Rica has become famous for. Once we name this tree, we have a relationship. Someone mentions they’d love to return to the spot in a few years and see its progress. I suggest the name “Delores” after one of our tour mates who, while posing for a picture the previous day had backed up too close to the edge of a cliff and fell 20 feet into a ravine. It was our group members combined willing efforts that joined together pulled her up and out. The fact that she survived, unscratched and unscathed the following day, (not even a bruise or sore muscle) convinced Carlos that she would be the perfect model for what we wish for our young tree. At dinner that evening images of monkeys and sloths, Macaws and Toucans join the images of family members on our phones that we share with one another and bring back to share with people in our own communities and countries. 

 

Grieving to Overcome Hate

I didn’t see the National news item when it was broadcast across the gigantic flat TV screen at the airport this morning. But I saw its effect in the eyes of my traveling companion. As he described its message to me, the churning sensations in my gut reminded me of other unwelcomed and unwanted flashing news announcements that have occurred at airports. I learned the outcome of the 2000 Gore vs. Bush election while traversing an airport waiting room. That was in the days when presidential candidates accepted their loss gracefully, and left office, although more citizens may have voted for them. 

9/11 happened shortly after my husband had boarded an airplane and its flight plan was interrupted, leaving him stranded on an airport tarmac, and me wondering if I would ever see him again. Then of course, there’s the Covid shutdown, where the flight I was to travel on, along with all the others, was cancelled and life as we knew it was postponed indefinitely.

 

“We’re on vacation,” I remind myself. I’m celebrating an important milestone in a three-year creative journey, having turned the manuscript for my upcoming book over to its editor yesterday. Someday soon it will become, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us to Grieve and Live Our Best Lives.” We’re stepping away from our screens, from the big societal news that can, not only interfere with our celebrations, but overload our capacity to grieve when added to the personal and family losses many of us are already grieving. In fact, as a grief advocate, what I know about grief is that we often don’t realize the impact, the effect on our small bodies, that news from the big societal body can deliver. 

 

Last night I had the honor of co-hosting, with representatives from 100 organizations, an online event, Gathering of Grief, on the Reimagine platform https://letsreimagine.org/ As hate and divisiveness permeate our cultural life, we gathered to “mourn all that is disconnected from Love. We used the arts of music and storytelling, and ritual flower arranging to transport us into that” space between the worlds” where the better angels of our humanity dwell.  

 

An American Muslim woman spoke of the dramatic and traumatic effects on her life and on her religious community after the terrorist attacks on our country on 9.11. While the initial response had been for the US population to draw together in solidarity, members of the Muslim community were singled out and attacked, verbally and physically, “to go back to where they came from.” After Covid, there were references to the “Chinese Virus,” and people with an Asian heritage who looked Chinese were persecuted and treated as though they did not belong in the country of their birth or adoption. Now there is a war in the middle east between a terrorist group and the Jewish state of Israel. Palestinian students living in the US were recently fired on as they walked down the street in a New England town, speaking Arabic and English. One of them is not likely to ever walk again due to his injuries. 

 

The news I wished I didn’t have to know– the City Council of Oakland CA in attempting to join several other cities in the country in passing a resolution calling for a permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, ignited a firestorm of hostility and conspiracy theories against Israel from demonstrators. The Jewish councilman who attempted to amend the resolution was booed by anti-Israeli demonstrators, who condemned the language as “anti-Arab.” Some demonstrators spread the conspiracy theories that, on Oct 7th the Israel Defense Forces had slaughtered Jews to justify an invasion of Gaza.

 

My husband and I have a small condo in Oakland, and the non-profit Body Wisdom we support is headquartered there. It’s been my happy place for over 20 years. To see the hate that springs from conflicts and divisions far from home, and originated before most of us who are living now were born, come so close to our home, and its effects reflected in the fear and anguish on the faces of my Jewish husband and our Jewish friends–my own personal sorrow is magnified 1000 times more.    

 

In the group poem we created last night during the online Reimagine ceremony Gathering of Grief, attended by 500 people or so, the line I contributed was “the only thing stronger than hate is Love.” I hope that’s right, and I hope by grieving together, enough of us can get ourselves to that place of Love that will overcomes it. 

 

Being in Gratitude

To introduce the theme of celebrating gratitude to our online class for caregivers this past Tuesday, my co-author and I Christine Gautreaux decided to read the two acknowledgement pages that the book we use as our syllabus contains. There are two because we kept the original page from the first edition, Stillpoint: The Dance of Selfcaring, Self-Healing which I authored by myself, except for the 22 people I thanked for their help with that version, and the stillborn version that came before it.

Christine read the second acknowledgement page for Stillpoint: A Self-Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, Time to Breathe and Reclaim Joy, the revised edition that she coauthored with me. We gave thanks to one another and to the dozen or more people who assisted us with all it takes to produce and publish a book. Remembering and recounting these people and those experiences was joy-filled and enlightening, as being in a state of gratitude usually is. This was especially true for me as I’m preparing my next manuscript to become a book and be released out into the world. So, this morning I began thinking about who would be on this new book’s acknowledgement page, as contributing to what will soon be The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives.

An Interplay friend and colleague Rebecca, who lives in MN came to mind. We hadn’t spoken in a while, so I reached out for us to get online this morning to catch up. Rebecca had had some icky technology issues recently and was unable to receive any of the three emails I tried to send to her with the zoom link in them. The workaround was that she found an old email with the link and clicking on that she connected.  We spoke of many unpleasant things having to do with technology, the difference between a hack and a scam, and can you have both at the same time? How can you tell if malware has gotten on your computer and taken control of what happens when you touch the keys? There can be viruses and identity thieves and at some point, the notion that life is just not worth living sometimes came out. This prompted me to select a small section of the manuscript I had just completed to physically demonstrate it to Rebecca. She enjoyed my demonstration of my favorite Jules Feiffer carton, which plays with the question, “Is life worth living?” She asked me to do it again so she could perform with me. We were in the middle of moving together onscreen when my apple watch posted a warning, “It looks like you have fallen.”

This “big brother is watching out for me” technology had sent me warnings before, so I knew to click on the item that says, “I didn’t fall.” I did this, and went on with our movements, but somewhere in the process, I must not have click on the right thing and a sound went off. A message came asking if I needed assistance. I tried to answer no and click it off several times but shortly I saw that the county’s 9.11 office was telephoning me. As I answered the call, in laughter and deep gratitude, I told them. “I didn’t fall. I’m dancing! I didn’t elaborate but I could have added, “and I’m most grateful that I still can.”

Wishing you whatever you and yours need to be in gratitude this Thanksgiving Season.

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TOUGH INTO TRIUMPH

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