Dance feeds my soul and makes it stronger. Dance summons self-love that locks shoulders and thighs with demons of self-hatred. In defiance of mental sabotage, dance lifts my chin, pulls my shoulders down, and primes my hips to strut. It tastes new flavours of physical pride, fierce and ungodly to the saints of decorum.
Self-love spoons and spills delicious movement from basins, urns, and ladles. It coaxes the curves of my arms to release cascades of seeds to the rich Earth. It propels my palms from heart centre to the sky, and in this moment, I feel both opened and open. I am an offering to myself and the world. This is me and here I come! I love myself and everyone dancing here with me.
Dancing with self-love, my guard is down, and I don’t need to shelter my heart in a bunker, shrinking in fear. As anxiety recedes, the energy of self-love catches fire, granting me courage to be seen, to bear light and warmth from a hearth I carry, that we all carry.
Self-love is the shimmy that five generations of white Protestant training has stifled. It’s the audacity to feel joy. It accepts feet, legs, hips, and arms that move in their own way as one body. Here, love lives in the syncopated spaces between our dancing hearts. It heals the hollows, filling them with care, attention, presence, and grace.
Leave a Reply