Dancing Inside the Fire

Relational Healing Through Trial By Fire

Standing outside the fire

Standing outside the fire

Life is not tried, it is merely survived

If you’re standing outside the fire

I’m an outsider, an outcast. I was born on the fringe, by the smoke stack fires and the funeral grounds. It afforded me the freedom of spirit that still gnaws on my soul to this day.

Garth Brooks was on the radio and I was running in the creek til dark, peacocks crying in the distance below neon orange, pink and fire red sunsets. Ride Free was the cry of the soul. But freedom has a cost.

I was different and fully seen as different. I somehow didn’t fit and that somatic knowledge seeped into every crack in my confidence. I learned to take the abuse of others with a straight face, which became a somatic mask for decades. “Never let them see you cry,” but I fundamentally didn’t understand their violence, and still don’t.

To escape, I withdrew deeply into a private magical world, then stood upon the highest parapet to survey my solitary Queendom. But uneasy is the head that wears the crown…

In private, I took the comments about my body from my family and my peers so to heart that I began to actively despise and harm myself. Aren’t we all just people first..? When does being a soul matter..? Does anyone see or care about the deeper self?

I learned to love Death. Death and Pain were reminders that we always have a choice. Death rescued me from the Body, the source of all this pain. Pain brought me back, and made me Real again. There was so much relief in that. When nothing about Life could anchor me, Death and Pain were always there, asking, “Now..?”

Those days and nights, a wretch on my mosaic tiled floor, a pauper princess in a tower of fantasy, a black angel screaming at the gods…Death was my lover and my only friend in those days. Recalling those times, I had people around me, who were friends, but I abused their love. My inner world was too intense, covered by a veneer of strangeness so impassable that I couldn’t recognize love and true friendship, even when it was right there every day. Somehow, I was always alone.

That isolationism has protected me, like it does so many. The problem with being and feeling alone is that it eats you from the inside. Bids for connection come in forms that can be controlled: addictive behaviors, sexual deviance, partners that are easy to manipulate, or partners who are outright abusive.

For my entire adult life, I chose partners who mirrored the expression of Love coupled with abuse. This pattern gradually got worse until I found myself once again at the precipice of self-oblivion. I was pregnant with my daughter, and I wanted nothing more than for us to vanish forever. The only reason we are alive still today is because of my son. HE needed me, us. He became my anchor back to Life.

In my head, I’ve left so many times. But, I never gave up, not really. It wasn’t him I was abandoning, it was Myself. The only person I truly couldn’t stand here was Me.

Healing has taken years of celibacy, therapy, self-healing…I have WORKED at it, spending hours on myself like a full-time job: unwinding the cords and turning over every rock in the bottom of the dank swamp of the abyss within me, to come to know myself and why I made these choices that reinforced the victim narrative.

By tooth and by nail, I confronted my inner monsters and built relationships with them. I dug through my internal shadow realms and unearthed the buried treasures of my inner child’s dreaming, and the gifts I have to share with the world. For a time, I felt whole, healed and proud as a sovereign in a pure world. I thought I had done well, I thought I was At Peace.

And then, I started dancing. It broke me in 10,000 ways. The towers of invulnerability, my masking, my pride, it all came crashing down. Every time, fearful and anxious, or bold and resolute, I came crawling back for more. It was horrifying, painful, inspiring, exhausting and beautiful. It ripped me open and it ripped me apart. I would spend days following a night of dancing picking up the pieces of who I thought I was and trying to be something I didn’t understand: something new and actively forming, yet deeply familiar and true.

Dance has always been part of my life. Growing up, everyone I knew played music, sang and made revelry. Country and bluegrass and the community of singers and players, this was my life, and here it was again, and it lit me up just as it had when I was a child. For the first time in 30 years, I laughed like a kid, with pure joy and abandon. For the first time in many years, I felt my father’s spirit near me, and it didn’t cause me pain.

As a kid, I drank in every form of gymnastics and dance I had access to, eventually getting into yoga and martial arts. As Bhakti (devotional) yoga, dance became part of a larger dialogue with my broken past, parts of myself I had rejected, as well as my higher self and other spiritual archetypes. A pure expression which links the little ego self with the larger, Universal Self. There are no rules, no partners, no observers. Its just you playing as Shiva and Shakti, being life as life. It’s a beautiful thing!

Partner dancing is a whole other animal. Essentially, it’s a practice of Attunement. Because of my history, I’ve got no problems with Attunement in ONE DIRECTION. As a yoga teacher and leader in my work, I’ve made a career of “holding space” for others. Meaning, when I understand and accept a role in a dynamic, my attunement can be near flawless. Safe Attunement, for me, was both codependent and performative.

But to truly dance with another person, you have to show up. You have to risk, you have to be seen. Its easy enough to Follow in a binary dance (partner dance). Just follow. But following isn’t enough. Dance is a dialogue, a communication. It’s a narrative that is in the act of being written. No one knows how it will go. We’re in the Ring of Fire together, the realm of creation, uncertainty, the genesis of what could and what will never be.

Showing up as myself, not knowing how I feel, or what I want, not performing or having a predetermined goal is the hardest work I’ve done yet, including being a parent (another mostly clear, performative role). I know some people go out to have fun. Not me, I go out to win.

Why am I like this..? Its an internal competitiveness, driven by a deep insecurity of never belonging, never being enough. How does one rebuild a fractured psyche within a community? My mind wants to pick apart and analyze everything, but my body knows: this work isn’t going on in the head.

So, I focus on two things I can improve: becoming a better dancer and a better partner. And I try not to see the micro expressions. And I try not to guess at people’s intentions. And I try not to stare, to pick people apart with my eyes in my efforts to Learn, to remain Safe. I want to say, “I’m just so curious, and I feel so outside of all of this still..!” Everyone seems so together, and I feel like a child. Sometimes strong, sometimes feeble, sometimes good and sometimes shitcanned.

I fumble along, seeking only myself, or a betterment of self, meanwhile fully in doubt those even exist and halfway believing there’s no point to this work whatsoever. Still, we make mistakes. Still, we feel alone. Still, we die.

But, we need the self, the ego, it makes us unique and beautiful. It keeps Life moving. And every living being is a part of that process.

Life itself, experiencing itself as Kate, as each One of us, fumbling into the deeper mystery forever.

At 42, I still struggle with believing there’s some Good or Better or Right way, some way that will remove me from oblivion and set me into the light of approval and inclusion, but, maybe that isn’t the point.

Maybe the point is to be with Myself, to love her and to hold her in my own Grace. Learning to Love her and want for her Joy and Happiness is a new experience for me. Even feeling myself as myself without disassociating or disembodying myself is constant work. It’s the main reason I got into the work of Embodiment: to serve others who struggle like I have struggled (and still struggle). For me, it’s the paramount answer: the fundamental building block which will ultimately help reframe society.

Its always an inside job. We can’t control the world, and we can’t allow the world to control us. We have to stand up, and settle in, and become Ourselves.

This process isn’t easy, it’s one of the hardest things you can do, particularly if you have attachment wounds (60% of us do!)! Facing one’s own darkness and the pain of the past is brutal. Integrating these to become something more whole is wholly disruptive to the self we’ve built based on what we didn’t know and couldn’t look at previously.

Complacency is easy. Not making waves is easy. Going along is easy.

Most people will choose easy and then try to outrun or bargain with Death only as they feel its cold breath on their own neck. Although I wouldn’t wish the pain and suffering that comes with disillusionment upon my worst enemy, I know through experience it is one of the fastest and truest ways back to Self and genuine connection with Life.

Our lives are better left to chance

I could have missed the pain

But I’d have had to miss the dance

I wanted this love letter to be from myself to dance as an art and a practice of self-reflection. But something was missing. This is the most difficult piece for me, to expose my awareness and to expose others: there are dangers in Attunement.

The community of dancers is a microcosm of culture. We’ve got everybody, a true intersection of every kind of person. The beautiful thing is that we’re ALL dancers! But there’s one category of person which we pretend doesn’t exist, or pretend is well-managed, or is spoken about only in the bathroom in passing, or in sub chats or group texts: predators.

These people lie and manipulate. They push boundaries. They are unaccountable and unapologetic. And thanks to the blind eye of the community: they’re entitled. There is more than one individual behaving up to the edge of the line, which the community protects.

They’re “not all men,” but they are disproportionally cis men targeting cis women. 85% of domestic violence victims are women. The point being: women are not yet safe. Not in the Austin 2-step scene, not in the street, not in their homes, not with men, or even other women, and absolutely not in our politics…So, why is the onus upon us as females to be “soft enough,” to hold space for others, to give “not all men” the benefit of the doubt, when it is literally our lives, our health, our mental stability, our rights, which are always on the line?

One misread can lead to an STD, unwanted pregnancy, abuse, or worse. Sometimes when I leave my house, I am scared shitless. And I have skillsets, perspective and training. I have no idea how young females go out on their own, walk in to a bar, and be energetically, emotionally and somatically assaulted by male energy all night long, and still come back again. To be fully at risk and in danger and still smile as if everything is hunky-dory. Where is the line between innocent pursuit and predation drawn? And how do we as women, and largely as a culture, address this?

These are someone’s daughter, sister, mother. The core of human life: used and abused energetically, emotionally and psychologically as a course of process, and physically if the opportunity strikes. Do humans hate themselves, and we’re abusing the Mother archetype through our dismissal and degradation of the feminine, in some grand social complex which we can’t stand to face?

Women are getting smarter, and learning to respect ourselves better. We spot it earlier, and have tools to get out earlier. But what happens when the community harbors or protects a person who is categorically unsafe? Who protects the female who stands up for herself to an aggressor, but chooses not to leave the community, and forever has to navigate the lingering microaggressions of a man who moves through these spaces with entitled adroit?

When do we value personal safety over money, sex, status and clout? When does the herd choose to circle and protect the feminine? In our rabid individualism (which is glorification of the Yang or Male), we’ve forgotten one essential truth: a society is only as healthy as it treats its lowliest member. Glorifying and holding space for someone who is questionable, over someone who has been harmed by this person, reflects the cult of our own society: somehow, we’ve come to revere the predator. We’ve made space for him at the table, and we applaud his resolve and envy his acquisitions.

The Healing Power of Dance

Predatory behavior and the victim wound are rooted in our Attachment codes. Healing an Attunement or Attachment wound is messy. From a yogic perspective, these wounds enter us from the point of conception to 2 years old, and are connected to our Root Chakra, the base of our spine, our feet, legs, hips and the ability to release waste (and absorb nutrients). For many of us, men and women, we have strong numbing and disassociating in whole regions or local areas in our feet, legs and hips. These wounds enter us in a preverbal period, so the adult mind can’t articulate much of what these wounds are about. It comes as feelings, instincts and impulses, oral fixations, smoking and eating addictions, control issues, self-repression, tight jaw and neck, etc.

Somatically, dancing “churns” these subconscious waters. If a person is unwilling to examine their own motivations, this can activate their shadow and toxic coping patterns until they are forced by the external feedback to face themselves. When the general tone of the community reaction to these childish behaviors is dismissive, essentially the community is setting up an environment that favors predation rather than safety.

Somatically, a person who responds to their fear and insecurity by Overcoming and Seeking Control, will resonate in reciprocity with a person who Freezes and Fawns in their stress response. This is how abuse cycles repeat. Because a lot of responsibility was placed upon me growing up, my outward presentation is often of one who Overcomes and Takes Control. I am a natural Leader and there’s a Fearlessness in me that came pre-loaded (or grew from my previous obsession with self-erasure). It has given me the capacity to Endure. But, there’s also a wounded little victim in me who wants to take on shame and project blame to justify staying small and weak. She needs an Out or an excuse to feel safe. And there’s truly no better excuse than being Oppressed. This isn’t victim shaming. This is an acknowledgement of MY OWN psychological patterning that recreated subliminal abuse patterns for 39 years until I simply had enough and turned to face my darkness.

To be clear: I have never been in a direct physically abusive relationship. Not within my family or within my romantic relationships. But abuse isn’t just about physical violence. In some ways, the work of my life has been about recognizing and calling to light all the subtle violence that are the foundation of domestic violence. All those thousands of ways we judge and minimize, the ways we feel we’re protecting ourselves without a single thought about the Other. The brain wired for Protection above Connection cannot have Empathy that isn’t self-serving. This creates power games and sets people up for emotional harvesting. The obsession with image and acquisition of attention, sex and control as a means to bolster a weak and fragile ego. I was a victim of this, too. Its fundamental to capitalist society, so in one sense, we’re all victims of this cultural mindset.

In so many ways, we’re in a collective healing process around these relational wounds. But, if this scene has taught me anything, its that we cannot heal relational wounding Alone. We need exposure, practice, we need to fail in reasonably safe containers. We need to re-establish trust, and to be vulnerable.

We also need to See Things As They Are and Accept Our Role in our communities and society.

Clinging on to our shadows and our illusions and carrying them into spaces where others are seeking connection, fun and joy, is a form of abuse, both self-abuse and relational abuse. We’re not allowing our full presence to be here in Divine Play, and we’re not present for anyone else. We’re seeing them only through the context of whether they serve our narratives, or our hunger for approval, control, etc. We become intolerant to authentic feedback, because we can’t regulate around being Wrong or Rejected. And, we can’t grow.

Growth requires us to be natural and humane. Growth that comes from an adaptation of internal narratives and external control is a contorted form of self-adjustment. You’re trying to hatch, but the eggshell is clinging. Your wing can’t open, and you end up a gimp. Its easy to blame the world, our parents, society, other people, the community. Its harder and truer to look at oneself and ask the hardest questions: Who do I really WANT to be, and is there a place for me here? And discovering it through the pains of trial and error, rather than solely in the mind. This work isn’t easy, nor for the feint of heart.

Facing the darkness is the only true way to understand the light. Facing our own shadows, be it as individuals, or as a community, is the only way to fully understand ourselves. And anything that remains unexamined, undealt with, can easily become our downfall. That which we refuse to see doesn’t disappear. It grows and festers in its comfort zone: ambiguity and shadow, until it feels sure enough of itself to act. And, act it will. Festering is never enough, it isn’t sustainable.

Relational wounds require Others. So, harm will be done. The question is, what are we going to do with knowledge once we have it? What is our relationship to Care and Repair? I don’t claim to have the answers, but, I’m willing to get dirty down in the work. And I no longer fear oblivion, rejection or judgement.

Of course it hurts, that’s how we know: We’re Still Alive, and There’s Still Work To Do. For myself, I’m learning to balance the heaviness of this work with sufficient personal Joy, so I don’t get to my end and feel remorse. I will freely give of myself and willingly sacrifice to protect the innocent, but there are parts of me that are solely mine, and for the first time ever in my life, I’m happy to receive her, knives out, wailing and crying, or innocent and joyful, hopeful or wretched. This self-love and self-respect is the true foundation of love, community and collective healing, and I welcome everyone here, knowing with the light of joy in my eyes, that you’re doing this work too, whether in the light of awareness or in the shadow, and that we’re all in this together, in Life or in Death, and that it isn’t on me or anyone to “figure it all out” or have all the answers, but just to hold each other and ourselves when and where we can, and accept Pain and Pleasure as natural partners in the experience of the Mystery of Life.

You are welcome, and you belong, exactly as you are, Here and Now.

Its quite literally all we have.