Glossary

Definitions & Expansions of Language at Dancing Mother

Afrofuturist bush mother
A mother living in the wilderness of possibility; a mother raising her children in the “wild,” away from the formatted learning system; a mother living in the messy, fluid, organic, raw majesties of life and creation; a mother birthing and creating in the intentional vibrations of Black Joy and expansion; a mother dreaming forward in all ways; a mother seeding and preserving the possibility of her fertility futures, and the futures of her children and her children’s children, and on and on.

Binahkaye
Pronounced bee-nah-kye-yaaaay; means “mother of mothers” and “dancing mother.”

Black birthing mother
A black mother who courageously births beautiful black children into a world that is at times confused about or at odds with how to love her and her children; a black mother, descended of ancestors who were enslaved, and who consciously births in liberated ways to honor the long-seeded dreams of her foremothers who held space in their own confiscated wombs that one day their daughters would have sovereignty over their fertility futures.

Choreopoem
A creative work that engages multiple expressions of movement, poetry, music, and other dramatic arts. The term choreopoem was first created in 1975 by creator foremother Ntozake Shange for her work, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf.

Co-creator
My preferred language for father of my children/husband/life partner/spouse.

Collaborative-Time
A moment that is shared together; live; happening face-to-face, either in person or virtually

Communiography
Movements that are created and expanded on in communion with other entities, such as ancestral mothers, other dancing mothers, starseeds, and more. A communiographer is a person who communes with these entities in the discovery of the movements.

Creator
Someone who translates the fertility abundance of the eggs in her ovaries and the radiant power of her regenerative life portals into creations for herself, her family, and the world; someone who births, initiates, and creates; a mother.

Dancing mother
A mother who dances to access the bounty of her body brilliance, commune with her fertility superpowers, ancestral mothers, and starseeds, and cultivate expansions of maternal intelligence.

Divine creation intelligence
The intuitive knowing that a creator sources when bringing her creations forth; the way of how a creation is born; see also fertility codes.

Economy of separation
The entities and structural networks that profit from the forced/coerced/systemic separation of mothers and children

Family learning lab
My preferred language for our “homeschool” practice that centers all members of the family as learners.

Fertility codes
The specific pathway through which anything is conceived, born and able to regenerate and reproduce; the way of creation for any living thing.

Freedom scripts
Embodied expansions of ancestral hymns from my foremothers; commonly referred to as “negro spirituals”; ancient mantras and songs coded for liberation; songs that a dancing mother sings to commune with her ancestral mothers.

Full presence mother
A mother who is with her children, and caring for her children, all the time.

Homebirth cesarean
A planned homebirth that transfers during labor time to the hospital, and then also unexpectedly leads to a cesarean/belly birth.

Invisible mother
A mother who is not seen, witnessed, honored, or celebrated in the world; someone who labors invisibly as a mother or engages in vital mothering spheres without any acknowledgement; mothers who are laboring from preconception journeys through the early seasons of sitting with possibilities. 

Kaleidoscope
Softer, reimagined language for “trauma” by Creator Zindzi: the fracturing effect of jolting life happenings which reconfigure the patterns of our being, birthing and becoming.

Liberation technologist
Someone who studies, designs, and implements technology platforms that are intentionally crafted so that participants in the technology can do so autonomously and without being exploited or forced to be consumers.

Lumens
The currency of the Fertility Abundance Garden; a measure of light amplification; round light currency.

Maternal intelligence
Intricate, specific, ancient, organic, evolving systems of knowing that mothers cultivate, share, and pass from generation to generation.

Matter
Also “mattering,” a word reimagined and initiated by creator Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur; to witness, name, and acknowledge the significance of a moment, memory, or thing; to bring into knowing; to unbury a truth or correlation; to recognize as a vital element in the creation or evolution of something.

Mother
Someone who gives birth; someone who feels they are a mother; someone who labors as a mother; someone who lives and creates within the frequencies of maternal intelligence; a creator.

Mother Mother
A mother who centers her mothering labors and actively devotes her life to the care of the mothers in her community.

Movement Constellation
A collection of communiographies that were seeded and sourced in similar or frequencies of creation; a body of related communiographies.

Multitudinous mothering entity
A mother who moves through the world and navigates spaces while attached to or in close, physical proximity of her children.

Protostar birth
A protostar is a star on its way to becoming. Our sun, now a main sequence star, was once a protostar. A protostar birth is when a mother gives birth early, before having the opportunity to give birth to the miracle of human expansion, because that newly evolving life has transitioned inside her womb. 

Revelation of one’s motherself
The moment a mother realizes her spiritual, emotional, and biological calling to be a mother.

Ringshout
Mother Mother reimagines the traditional ringshout, a repetitive, counterclockwise movement processional that was created by enslaved African ancestors on plantations in the American South. She expands on the ancient wisdom of the people who tricked their masters into thinking they were singing church hymns, but who were really communicating with their deities and ways of life that had been forbidden to express openly. Mother Mother engages the mystical brilliance of the counterclockwise spatial patterns and realizes the ability to travel across parallels of time, just like her ancestors did when living in bondage. With each ring around the circle prayers, dreams, healing, and sacred awakenings of the heart are seeded, watered and loved into being. See also saltwater ringshout.

Ringshout synergist
A keeper of the ringshout; someone who is practiced in the majesties and miracles of the ringshout; someone who reimagines and expands on the possibilities of the ringshout.

Sacred nourishment
The labor of nourishing one or more babies from the breast; a celebration and mattering of the full-body intelligence and labors it takes to create and sustain the creation of mother’s milk; and the performance of sacred nourishment labors for the growth and well-being of new humans.

Sacred storyteller
A storyteller who gathers the brilliance and majesty of her creation labors and translates them into stories. 

Sacred Return
A more imaginative, heart-centered language for “postpartum,” created by creator Zindzi Janaan.

Saltwater ringshout
A ringshout ritual performance and immersion to bring forth sweat, tears, and other saltwater from the body; a ringshout gathering of mothers by or in the sea.

Sistership
{Meaning expansion initiated by Creator Zindzi Janaan} “Sistership is the vessel that carries us from self to sanctuary. In this vessel we consciously foster, fuel and fertilize each other's majesty, as best we can. It's not perfection. It's practice. It's a wobbly orbit. It's majestic…The Garden is a sistership where we consciously celebrate each other's fertile majesty even as we explore and expand our own. In the spirit of such, we acknowledge that we are greater together ... better together ... more creative together. And that our togetherness sustains us, in and out of time and space.”

Sitting with possibilities
My softer, preferred language for “pregnancy”; a terminology that matters the delicate diversity of outcomes when being present with the many ways a life seeded in the womb might evolve.

Softhouse
An intentional world for soft living; a place where softness is celebrated and practiced in community with other creators; a refuge from harshness, pressure, and acceleration.

Soft-Time
Self-directed engagement; individually determined engagement, “in your own time.”

Soft-Time practice portal
An interactive platform for self-guided, continuous engagement inside a particular practice or discovery focus that includes resources, activity prompts, recordings, and other tools to support creators in deepening in their practice at their own pace.

Spiral movement galaxy
An emerging movement practice, virtual dreamscape for choreographic and autobiographical creation, interactive movement space, and community of dancing mothers radiating the light of their own stars, and discovering the possibilities of their collaborations along a spiral pathway of expansion.

Starseed
A starseed is the physical and energetic matter of a future human being or future creation. It is the radiant life energy found within each egg that is preserved in a mother’s ovary, and from which all human life and all creations originate. A starseed is a newly forming being on its way to becoming human, or dream on its way to becoming realized in the world outside of your body.

Supported free birth
A birthing moment at home where a mother feels freely into her vast maternal intelligence, labors and intuitive practices for bringing her baby into the world, while being lovingly witnessed and supported by her chosen circle of people.

Systems of togetherness
The conscious creation of life rhythms, spaces, networks, family practices, community structures, and enterprises that prioritize the sustained proximity of mothers to their children, of sisters to each other, of loved ones living and being together as much as possible; the opposite of the economy of separation.

Visionary space activator
Someone who activates spaces; a person who can read the energy of the space and translate it through their movement; someone who transforms the energy of a space by dancing and communing with the seen and unseen entities of that space.

WordsBirth
A place where language is born, created, expanded on, and evolved over time; a living dictionary.