dreams at the altar {A Dancing Mother Story}
Dreaming motherhood, my first trimester with Bloom.
Photo by Colin A. Danville
The Scene: I am nearing the end of my first trimester with Bloom, my first born. I am holding space at the Community Movement Clinic that I facilitate on Sunday mornings at Joe’s Movement Emporium. Some days, like this one, no one comes to dance with me, and so I spend the time (since I’ve paid to reserve the space and all) playing inside my own creative sanctuary.
In a few days it will be Valentine’s Day and I will have my first prenatal appointment with my midwife. This is the furthest I’ve ever gotten in a pregnancy, and hour to hour, minute to minute, I vacillate through extreme panic that any moment is my last moment with this baby, and extreme joy that I’m having a baby and that I’ll finally get to meet my child.
A big part of my sanity strategy is dancing through the constant fears and anxiety that come in waves and make me feel like I might sink beneath the hopes of my mothering dreams before I have a chance to realize them. Inside the dance I am able to temporarily untangle myself from an intricate web of fears, and center my energies into fully believing that being a mother is possible, even for me.
The movement keeps me present with the reality that in this moment, I am a mother, my baby is alive and growing inside of me. The dance is gracious in this way, in that it doesn’t force me to choose sides. It doesn’t give me ultimatums. I can be a whole person, who is both really really happy and grateful, and also really really scared and on edge.
But the movement makes it so my fears don’t hold my moments hostage. And the movement gives me room to cultivate more joy for my baby without having to pretend or deny the way my breath is trapped for those few seconds it takes to wipe myself every time I use the bathroom.
In the early weeks of my pregnancy, dance is truly a lifeline. When I dance I access a space of intuition, power, and possibility not readily tangible in everyday moments when my previous fertility traumas clamor for the mic in my mind. The movement rituals I perform everyday keep me afloat in the turbulent waters of my memory. Twisting and bending, spinning and gliding, arching and swaying, I imagine a beautiful future, a beautiful life, with a baby I have no proof will ever make it into this world.
