This is my story about the long dance of motherhood and The Summer Long Dance.
The long dance of motherhood
My story with Movement Medicine actively started in 2014. I was nurturing my children aged 2y and 4y, working passionately as a primary care midwife and trying to find a way to live an 'adult life'. In between I was looking for a way to have some time for myself and there turned out to be a 5-rhythms series of lessons nearby. I started this together with a friend. We cycled to class every week. On the way back from one of the lessons I suddenly had a clear image: I am standing with my toes over the edge of the abyss and will fall, long, long, long way down, through the clouds.... That turned out to be true shortly afterwards, a rollercoaster happened. I divorced my then husband, I crashed while supervising a birth and quit my job. We sold our house and moved to another unknown area because the school located there was the only clear place I needed to be. 'I always had the wish to be a 'house-tree-animal' as we say in Dutch, which symbolises leading a nice and quiet conventional family life (although I wasn't that conventional otherwise)'. That wish completely exploded in and around me, and all I had was my heart to guide me. Not embedded in my body, no roots, burned out and surrounded by a storm in my head. So I wandered for some years, with the only reason to get up the obligation to take care of my children. They kept me alive. Literally.
It was during an evening (workshop) by Ya'Acov in Ghent that I first had the feeling that this (Movement Medicine) could hold me. I could carry, but being carried is not that easy. That this was where I could be completely, in a reciprocity of carrying felt like coming home. Since then I have been quite loyal to Movement Medicine. I did every workshop I could attend in combination with my family. I met my childhood love again. We found a home and had a (third) child together. Meanwhile, my body started to speak, because that's what it does, after I gave birth to 3 children and nursed them for years. My heart slowly began to sink into my body... I went to a workshop with Ben Yeger and David Mooney with a baby at the breast. Because how else could I do it, trying to survive while giving life? The not-knowing how, brought me to my own darkest ground. So that question became my guide, although it became milder or broader: How do I stay close to myself and connected to others, it became my Apprenticeship (AP) project. The strong desire to live (because there was only survival) gave me the strength to travel to Hungary for the modules of AP8. Away from my family so I could reconnect with myself. Because that's what it felt like then. As if there were 2 worlds: me and my family. As if the two could not be connected.
And so there I was in Hungary;
With (golden) singing, with music, with the dance and his floor, with nature, with sewing, with friendship, with love, with the sun and the moon, with tears and joy, I came back home to myself. First within myself. Cradling, in a bath full of love, that was AP8. Because that's what Yasia and David created. Lean Back and Relax became our AP8 mantra. And by this it turned out, to get moved (again).
I learned to be with myself and with my children. I learned to do the dishes in relaxation, I saw that cutting vegetables was also a dance. I saw that I could also do the same movement that I did with dedication on the dance floor, while catching a cry from my daughter or sons. I discovered that my daily practice was not about dancing for 1 hour every day, but about vacuuming for 1 hour - a big beautiful daily exercise in resistance and so staying with what is - as if I was dancing. I learned the magic of everyday life, I brought dance into my daily life even though there was no teacher to guide me. I filled my backpack with the harvest, literally from our vegetable garden, but also from all the Movement Medicine sessions to continue to harvest what I have harvested, over and over again, harvesting more and more the same and always different.
I love the dance, and I love everyday life. I find it a wonderful thing that Movement Medicine makes dance so everyday. It ensures that my worlds came and are coming together, closer and closer. It makes me discover different layers in and surround me, and at the same time discover that it is not so different. It has allowed me to dance and be a mother. It has allowed me to pass Movement Medicine on to my children without them having to participate in a workshop. Although I continue to invite them and from my perspective they add value to the dance floor in many ways.
In addition to the question 'how do I connect with myself and with others', I also walk with the question 'how do you be a human?' Sometimes I see a glimpse of the veil every now and then, and that is certainly through David's words 'You are a Dancer'.
And a Dancer, In my opinion, has to experience "The Summer Long Dance". But the Summer Long Dance deserves its own story. For me anyway.
It is a 72 hour - ceremony, it is daily life, it is a meeting, it is the sun, nature. It was the horses in 2018 and Dough in 2022 and 2024 and then also Claire. They are markers in my dance story. Each Summer Long Dance story tells the past, the present and the future. For me anyway. Because when I talk about that, it marks where I was and what I had to take with me.
In 2018: 8 months pregnant with my third child, my current husband's first child. I longed for a story together with my husband, and then I thought 72 hours of dancing together would count. Uncomfortable to be there, lots of sun, the rain on the tent during the last hours of the ceremony, the horses (I already said it), and 'big eyes' all the time. Looking at what Movement Medicine was, hearing the current Apprenticeship people meet in the yurt, we wanted it too, my husband and I. A big round belly in a white dress and that there were 2 other pregnant women. I remember that. And that we were really well taken care of. 'Take care of your body' It felt like they were only saying it to me.
In 2022: Not only Movement Medicine in my daily life, but also vice versa. I wanted to show my family what Movement Medicine meant to me and hope the bug would pass. And I thought The Summer Long Dance was suitable for this too. The children found the river, we quietly tried our own dance. It was challenging, incredibly cold, wet and an unplanned Short Dance due to Covid. It was a stretch, on many levels. But it was also about being supported as a family. That we matter, that we have our own role. I was so moved to see the children walking up front to open the ceremony. It was feeling that they have a place in the community. It was watching Movement Medicine in action, not on the dance floor, but how community moves, how decisions were made and communicated. We were witnesses and considered it a privilege. It was meeting Doug, a father, the co-guardian and a beautiful land, Hillyfield, where clearly not only children grow up.
The Short Summer Long Dance of 2022 was an experience that my own dreams cannot be projected onto my children. That a vision can be retained in feeling, but not in images. It turned out that Movement Medicine works best when I integrate it into my daily life. Because my family has its own path.
What brought me to the 2024 Summer Long Dance was my Apprenticeship family. It was the joy of seeing them again that moved me. We travelled to the Summer Long Dance together with 4 girls, and met a lot of other AP8ers there after 2 years. It was delicious! Dancing with them, that was all I wanted. I wanted to dance the joy, just party for 72 hours actually. But even before the opening I got a severe migraine. To my right the music box, to my left the medical team. Exactly where I was.
It made me slow down, sink, literally into the chair. I had to ask for help. To my AP friends, to the medical team, to Ya'acov. I cried from the pain, from the disappointment that I could not dance with all my might. I danced while sitting in my chair, wearing sunglasses and occasionally reaching for the hands of the doctor next to me. I had to surrender completely. Really completely. From the ground within myself, from the ground in that special land and sitting on the dance floor, I had no choice but to surrender and so, receive…
Sadness, pain, fear raged through my body. It was as if earth was going through my body. I soared, I screamed, I cried.
And there were suddenly fierce eyes. They kept me here. Their hands, their voices. Very clear Ya'acov came and said: 'Look at the Tree of Life! Go into your body!' There was no negotiation.
I knew what I had to do: Dance. My dance. In the circle of my AP family, in the circle of Movement Medicine, It felt like I received an initiation of something. I still don't know what, but I could take this back home.
Today, 17 February, is my eldest son's birthday. Today marks 14 years since I became a mother. I looked for a card for him and came across Rumi: 'As you start to walk on the way, the way appears'. And since the Long Dance 2024, it has been true for me: 'As I start to walk my way, my way appears'.
with love, Nel - Belgium
