A Personal Tribute by Hannah

It doesn’t feel like a time for words to make sense right now.

Why should it?

The world doesn’t make sense when shock and grief come to stay...

A love so huge deserves the disassembled stage.

It demands life to be a myriad of abstract feelings - a curious place of being filled with every memory of love and yet a massive emptiness all in one pulse.

It is so often truly scribed that words simply don’t have the capacity to express the heart. So what do we do? Where do we take this inexplicable, overwhelming pain?

The dance of grief - through the unexpected death of my mother - has taken me to the shores of water time and again over the last two moons to fall into her embrace and let my tears meet those of all tears ever fallen.

Water really is the emblem of grief we share in this world. There is something in her wild, unforgiving habitats that match us in our vast and dangerous emotion.

We are out of our depth.

Drowning in heartache.

Swimming paradoxically in the emptiness and fullness of everything…

More than any other environment we have access to, water feels the most perfect gift to humans for our grief. Perhaps the only other gift so intensely absorbing is that of music and song. Like water, it can move us into shapes of another, stir things so deep and allow our hearts to break over in beauty and awe.

This month is a dedication to grief; to water, to music, poetry and to the person who gave life and love of all this to me. Although this is a personal dedication it is also a tribute for all grief and all hearts. Hearts that have been broken so wildly open it feels like there is actually a physical tear scoring through your body.

For so many of you who have thanked me over the years for creating and holding the dance space turn your thanks towards my incredible mother who now walks beside me in spirit. She was the one who taught me the precious value of unconditional love and constantly inspired me to live upon this earth in the wisdom of a peaceful and gentle heart.

She was and always will be my biggest inspiration in this way.

She will always be my dance.