When the poet and spoken word artist Andrea Gibson learned that their cancer was back, they danced. Not out of celebration, but because their body just wanted to move. They and their wife got up in their kitchen and put on music, and danced with all the feelings, danced with the fear, danced with the vitality that coursed through them, with the joy of being alive right now.
You can read Andrea’s powerful words and check out their aptly described “planet saving moves” right here.
Their post got me thinking about what dancing is, and why it feels so necessary sometimes. Outside of formal definitions and disciplines, I’d say that dancing is any movement that expresses energy and emotion. We dance when we get some big good news, when we are wooing a lover, when we are enacting rituals, when what we’re experiencing is too intense for words and only physical movement will do.
We all have seasons of emotional intensity, our private dramas and public upheavals. Divorce, depression, falling in or out of love, illness and injury, money troubles, vaulting ourselves toward our big dreams: things like these will come for us all at some point.
A quick survey of the intense stuff happening in the lives of people near me right now: One is helping her aging mother reluctantly move out of the family home. One has adopted a puppy to stave off loneliness. One is wrestling a dissertation into shape. One is experimenting with new medications to lift persistent depression. One is reimagining her identity as the last of her kids leaves home. One has recently stepped down as CEO from the company she founded and is embarking on a new role in her sixties.
Whether they are terrifying or exhilarating, constrictive or expansive, all big changes are challenging, and each of us has to figure out for ourselves how we’ll move through them.
Trying to maintain our equilibrium while big changes are afoot is a bit like walking a big, rambunctious dog on a leash while carrying a full, hot coffee. It pulls you all over the sidewalk. You dread crossing paths with any other creature. You’re too distracted and annoyed to think clearly. And forget about enjoying your latte on this walk; it’s more likely to wind up scalding you as it spills down your hand.
The dog is your big challenging situation, and the coffee is everything else in your life. Every ounce of your attention is going toward trying to control and contain that animal, and it’s hard to love its exuberance when it’s yanking your shoulder out of its socket.
I spent most of my life on that coffee-dog walk. But I’ve found a better way.
Imagine instead that you’re at a dog park where you can let the beast off its tether to run amok while you simply watch it from your comfortable bench, sipping your cup of joe and thinking your thoughts. By detaching yourself from it you can actually give it more of your attention — calm, curious attention — because you aren’t being hijacked by it. You can also feel more affection for it because its antics aren’t derailing you. And, most importantly, you get to enjoy your coffee while it’s hot.
Cute story, you might say, but what the hell does that mean? My responsibilities are not a cup of coffee, and my vindictive ex is not a Labradoodle. I have to deal with this stuff. It is real and it is hard.
You’re right. I’m not suggesting we plaster a Good Vibes Only bumper sticker over our hard things.
But here’s the thing. Stormy times will come for us all in one way or another. We can’t eliminate them and it doesn’t help to run away from them. It also doesn’t help to shake our fists at the sky and yell at the thunderclouds.
But I do think we can weather that storm with less collateral damage if we can let it be what it is, and find our own place to be calm within it.
This is how I dealt with my breast cancer diagnosis and the amputation of my favorite body part last year. There was plenty of physical and emotional pain in my cancer thunderstorm. New financial costs to bear and limitations on my ability to work. Discomfort. Inconvenience. Fear of dying too soon, and grief over the fact that my body would never be whole again.
When the tears came in a downpour, I didn’t try to keep my cheeks dry. I let my anguish rain all over my face. I let myself feel it all.
And when brighter moments came (which they did, every day) I gave myself permission to feel joy, too. I limped to Drybar with my sister to get our hair done when I wasn’t able to wash it in the shower. I savored the kindness of my neighbors who left an UberEats gift card in my mailbox, inviting me to call on them if I needed anything. I ate all the vegan ice cream I wanted. I tended to myself and let myself be tended to like a precious baby, and honestly, that felt good. I let it feel good.
In the past, I might have made my own suffering worse by viewing my predicament as cruel and unusual punishment and telling myself disempowering lies: This shouldn’t be happening. It isn’t fair. I can’t catch a break. My life is ruined. None of that was true.
I didn’t feel happy that breast cancer was happening to me, but I did allow myself to feel happy about the good things that it did for me. Among them: It gave me insight into a condition that affects millions of people. It connected me to new friends through a local support group. It showed me that love and care are there for me when I need them. It prompted me to appreciate my health and take better care of it. It gave me long stretches of time in bed with my creative writing, away from my desk. And above all, it reorganized my priorities and reoriented me to what I want to do with the time I have left on earth. Nothing goes on my plate now that I am not excited to eat. In retrospect, that is a gift worth trading my left breast for.
Here’s the thing. If we set ourselves the impossible goal of getting through life with zero drama and view any disruption as a personal failing or as a punishment, we will bring endless unnecessary suffering on ourselves. That’s just not how being human works. Chosen or unchosen, the thunderstorms must come because they shake us up and propel our growth forward. Growth itself is a kind of thunderstorm.
What if instead of hiding from the thunderstorm or trying to stop it from happening, we can run outside and dance in it? Be humbled by its power? Relish the aliveness of it all? Even trust that it has gifts to offer us, if only we will accept them?
It’s hard for me to say whether my life is stressful right now. If so, stress means something different, feels different, than it used to. In the past, stress meant chronic overwhelm. Now, it just means I’ve got some puzzles to solve. I still have lots of pressures. I’ve just doubled the headcount in my company, which is both scary and exciting. I’m trying to get back in shape after my surgeries. I recently got myself back on the dating apps, and am going deeper into my writing practice.
There is ambition and the risk of failure or loss in all of this. Some of it is harder than I’d ideally like. And that’s ok.
My thunderstorm is unique, a cosmic light show made just for me. It’s mine, and I wouldn’t trade it for anyone else’s. I’m letting it move me, and marveling at the beauty in those movements, even in the movements that express struggle or grief. Because the thunderstorm is life itself.
xo
Love you Maggie Langrick! Happy to share..