I hope you’ll dance…

There’s a fire in my throat and behind my eyes. It builds throughout the day and it’s not superficial scratchiness or an annoying tickle. It’s deep and it’s low and it brings with it a weight in my chest, a heaviness that challenges me to stop at 3pm when there is so much still to be done. My blood tests show depletion and exhaustion and early signs of my body starting to turn on itself. It’s enough to make me worry for my future, panic even but my body through the fire and exhaustion is saying that it’s time for dancing. Hilarious I know, laughable and ridiculous. It’s not time for celebration or a parade, I’m unwell and we are nowhere near the end yet but the more I feel the nudge, the more I explore the breadcrumbs and clues the more I see that we are in fact at the time where we need to be dancing. Dancing through the upcoming holidays, dancing to the end of this year and into the next one. Dancing despite what the numbers on the doctor’s report say. Dancing at the end of every one of these long hard days and in every possible moment that opens itself up for something that resembles dancing.

There could be dancing in the car on the way to and from work. Dancing in the kitchen and with our children out on the lawn. We need to call in the kind of music that makes our bodies move on their own, the basement party vibes of prohibition times and someone to twirl and dip us until we have sore cheeks from grinning. It’s time to dance and play and move and live- not because the hard stuff is over but because we need to survive and stay well until it is.

It’s been two years. We’ve been at war for two years now. Whether we believe the threat to be a virus, or something else, we as a collective have been under threat for two years. The threat may have been less obvious, less tangible than tanks rolling into town but it has been there unwavering, day and night since the Pandemic was announced. The threat has been reported, measured, speculated over, on our TV screens at breakfast and dinner, in between and within the storylines of the shows we watch for fun, on our phones throughout the day where we scroll to zone out, at the water cooler and on the sidelines of our children’s sports. It’s been everywhere we have looked for two years solid, it has not gone away, there has been no reprieve, no breather. It has evolved and changed, the face of it remaining obscured, if not invisible. It has been each of ours individually and it has been all of ours together.

We have been under threat for a substantial amount of time. Going through the motions, making it through our days, doing the best we can with what we have, feeling and holding it all for ourselves and for those around us. We have shielded our children, imagined many possible future scenarios and tried with all of our might to hold on to the present and the hope that all of this might turn out ok. We have listened to countless versions of what is ahead created by countless people with countless agendas and layers of their own stuff piled on top. We are tired of processing and figuring our way through and that’s understandable. We are running out of reserves and that was always going to happen. Our resolve, our hope, our ability to hang on is wearing thin and that is why it is time to dance.

The stress, the weight of all of the unsteadiness and unknown has layered itself into our normal. Stressed, under threat and uncertain has become our normal and if we don’t work, prioritise, make sure to dance, move and play it will potentially become all that there is. In the same way and for the same reasons that it has been so important to listen to our bodies’ need for rest during these unprecedented times it’s important for us to honour our innate need for play, for laughter and for joy even in, especially in times like these.

We need to find space- create it and protect it- for laughter that comes from our bellies and takes us out of our heads, for play, for movement, for silliness, for being really and truly in our bodies and really and truly with the ones we love. To let our collective hair down because keeping it pulled tight up on top of our heads is not solving the problems of these tough, dark and uncertain times. We need to do it for ourselves, to top ourselves up, to keep our energy flowing, to prevent coming to a depleted, exhausted stand still. We need to do it for our children- to keep the light alive, to keep the image, the embodiment of what we want for their futures alive.

If we’ve been working on saying NO for a while in order to allow rest, to come back to centre, to move away from wearing busy as a badge and productive as proof of our worth. It’s time for discernment now- for deciding purposefully to say no to those things that drain our energy and leave us with nothing and yes to the things, like dancing, that require our time, energy and presence but repay us immediately by filling us up with exactly what we need to keep moving forward.