"This first photo makes me laugh - I was so excited to get the professional photos from my recent trip to a Contact Dance Convergence - a week long dance event. This was mine! The look on my face says it all really about just how terrifying this was! But I did it.. I danced for 7 days in contact with other people for 12 hours a day. A lot of the time I was thinking what on earth am I doing here and how can I escape! Particularly as an introvert.. That much human contact really pushed me to my limits.. But I learnt so much about where my limits are, how to say no.. and yes!! How to face my fears about not being "good enough".. trust myself.. and dance anyway!" - Facebook post 13/9/17
This really was a huge event for me. I've never really felt like a "dancer". That was what the cool talented girls at school did! Or so I thought, until I reclaimed dancing for myself. The voice of self doubt and low self worth can still get so loud in these environments. They can make me feel like I'm on the outer of groups and tell me that I'm different to everyone else...when really I'm pretty sure we are all humans here on earth! And we were all created with the ability to connect and dance. So screw that voice!
Dance has been a huge part of my healing process after divorce. Divorce left me feeling like I had left my "life dance" with someone, who I had shared most of my adult life with. It took me a very long time to adjust to that person no longer being my dance partner. Their physical body is no longer there, their touch, support and partnership is gone. It is the death of a shared dance.
The nature of my divorce was traumatic (which you can read about in my other blog "marriage and other happily ever afters"). Infidelity does a lot of damage to self worth. I felt for a long time that someone I loved more than anybody in the world had put me in a trash can and chosen someone else. I had become invisible. I had to work very hard to get myself out of that trash can, find my self love and dance my own dance again. Mind you I had not been on my "own" since I was 17... So it took some time to find my feet.
I felt like I had fallen flat on my face. Huge feelings of failure crept in and intense feelings of not being good enough. I put my heart and soul into my marriage and in the end it wasn't enough. I think people would have looked at my relationship and family and thought "yep they have it together" I think they would have thought our life dance was looking pretty good! I remember someone saying to me when I told them we were ending .."oh but you are like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman" .. yep and look at them now! I guess no one ever really knows what the next move in life may be.
When another person is involved in the ending of a relationship, it's really hard not to feel a deep sense of being devalued, to the core of who you are. I'll never forget the way my husband would look at his new lover, my friend. The look on his face and in his eyes said it all really. I remember thinking "he does not look at me like that!". It created a powerful force within me to compete. I needed to win him back to somehow reclaim my worth (bad bad bad for the soul) Competing against a woman and against "new" love is soul destroying and an impossible task.
As much as I knew logically, that none of it really had anything to do with me not being "enough" the connection they had filled me with pain and insecurities. I felt like I wasn't sexy enough, affectionate enough, loving enough or able to make someone happy enough. So I set to work trying to be more beautiful, more sexy, and a better lover. There is something about the catastrophe of losing someone that sparks passion. I wrote thousand page letters .. desperately I even googled ways to make him fall in love with me again! Because surely google knows! I sold my soul to try and compete with another woman.
After months and months of doing this though I had to stop. I honestly got to a point where my body said a big whopper STOP. It was sickening. If someone does not choose me, no matter who they are, they do not choose me. It is not my job to win anyone back. People make choices. And there was something in this scene of two women fighting over a man, that I did not want to be a part of.
Because really no matter how beautiful or sexy I made myself, the energy was always going to be ugly. Three people tearing each other apart doesn't create anything beautiful. I had to separate myself from these stories of "I wasn't good enough" "my marriage was already over" or "it was my own fault" before they destroyed me. That voice, whether they came from other people or inside myself, was only going to do one thing.. and that was completely destroy self worth.
I knew I had to exit this toxic trap.
So I did...and once Id overcome the practicalities of this exit, I gradually found my feet again. I spent alot of time reading and learning. I read so many books about relationships. I explored my sexuality, different types of relationships, polyamory, open relationships, singleness.. dating. I wanted to work out who I was and what creates a relationship where people feel loved, secure and free (And a relationship where an affair wouldn't happen!)
I set a goal to go on 100 dates (I'm not sure I actually achieved that.. but i've been on quite a few.. Lets call it research! ) and after many, many, many conversation with people there are so many similar themes in long term relationships around not feeling valued, listened to, appreciated and loved. And at the end of all those stories there is a very common theme around people wanting both security and freedom! Apparently its called the "Dance of intimacy"
The dance it feels like everyone is trying to learn the moves to.
So dance has become my new place for exploring relationships and concepts of connection, disconnection, communication and the feelings that arise when someone may "leave a dance". Its given me a chance to explore how my body responds to change and movement...which has been an important part of reclaiming my body and soul back from heartbreak. Contact dance in particular is so much like any relationship. There is that delicate balance of knowing the boundaries, being connected to self.. others.. and knowing when to finish the connection with someone. Endings are a part of all dances ...relationships... and life.
Dance has taught me that even when someone leaves a dance or it ends...
I am still enough and I am loved.
Self-worth and I will always be dancing.
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