CELEBRATE

"On the night you were born,
the moon smiled with such wonder
that the stars peeked in to see you 
and the night wind whispered.
'Life will never be the same.'"

Nancy Tillman

The season is about celebration, this is the core of every winter holiday. And today in parts of the Western world, we celebrate an end to a decade, and step into 2020 with hope, with excitement, and with a what fresh hell was 2019?!
All the more reason, then to feel celebrated, and celebrate ourselves - how we’ve grown, what we’ve survived and how we’ve thrived, what we’ve given and received. 

But something happens as humans. That something is called the need for reflection and witnessing in order to integrate. 

Is celebrating ourselves up to us? Yes and no. If we don’t celebrate ourselves, it’s going to feel very hard to feel celebrated by the world around us. But if we don’t also receive feeling celebrated, if we don’t have it witnessed back to us, reflected back to us, mirrored in our interactions etc. it’s going to be very hard to have a felt sense of this truth. (Disclosure: this is why I live for birthdays! I want to make everyone I know feel deeply seen in their magnificence, and I want to feel the same!)

My actual birth was less than ideal. It was an emergency situation and at the time of my birth I was not celebrated. Was I wanted and cherished and loved and taken care of during my life? Yes. But upon arrival? Not so much. I now recognize that I get to re-write the story, that I am wanted and received and celebrated on this planet.

And so I am re-writing the story for myself, through dance, through my mindfulness and awareness practices, through my Shamanic journeys, but really through my community. When I am with humans I love, I am created conscious containers to really 
witness and celebrate who I'm with- long walks and talks, cuddle sessions, check-ins and probing, insightful questions, in which I can revel in who they are, and receive how they celebrate me,  as I am. Words can help with this endeavor, but words can also fall short. Touch, being present, and all the ways humans communicate, can be magic here.

In Awaken The Dance, there is often an invitation to find a partner and take turns letting ourselves be witnessed in our messy, glorious humanness. We witness each other's expression,  we behold the person dancing before us with our whole being, we mirror back to them, simply by being open and present, that they are wanted, received, celebrated, We switch roles, and then we let the roles of beholder and beholden go, and this magic happens where all of life becomes a celebration! There is no you and no me, there is the celebration of we. It's pretty dang magic.  

May you be danced into the New Year, and may you seek out magical moments to witness others and celebrate them, and to let yourself be seen, as you are, and deeply celebrated.