Dancing and working through grief

 

Today has been hard. Although this is a personal post, I feel that I want to share it. Because an area of great interest to me is the effects of trauma on dancers. 

Yesterday my grandma passed away. 94 years old so a wonderful age. Yet I was at work and not with her at the time. I am currently rehearsing for Nutcracker performances next week. I decided to keep working because I know that my grandmother would have wanted that. She supported me greatly through my training to become a professional dancer and I know she was very proud of the career path I chose. I felt that after her passing I would feel more connected to her by continuing to dance than returning home. Yet there were a couple of moments when I lost myself a bit today. Felt pulled down by the weight of the loss.

Dance for me as always been a very spiritual process and I feel as though it connects me to something deeper than the surface level of life.  As I process all the waves of emotion that come with loss, I feel compelled to do some freewriting of words that a emerge from me during this time. 

My intention is in time to use these words as inspiration to create a solo choreography, exploring the process of grief and connection with my grandma.

Relief

Pain undone

Pain dispersed

Processing

music

magic

angel

sky

discovery

light 

love

imagine

believe

beyond

Time 

present

deny

dictate

dance

deepen

loss

lens

unhealed

complicated

trauma

agitation

jarred

classic

hand

movie

cashmere

custard

cardigan

cranberry

parcel

dark chocolate

cake

laughter

My intention for the last 2 days was to work on my AOLs, research and get a lot of other admin work done after work. Yet I haven't felt able to do it in the evenings. I have found when I am alone, I just want to call my family or sit and think. It's hard to admit to yourself that maybe that is what you need to do right now. Sometimes we need to take time and I have learned from past experiences that unless we take that time when we need it, we are likely to suffer later as a result of trying to push down the pain.

So tonight, I accept where things are at and know that tomorrow there will be another opportunity to work my way down the to do list.