
Words by Hannah
What does it mean to break apart?
Twelve years ago, this month, my world shattered open and I broke apart.
I became a mother.
Frosted in naivety, given a blissful pregnancy and a fairytale homebirth, the last thing I was expecting was for motherhood to pick me apart bone by bone, chew me up and spit me back out.
The best part of four years following birth held places of such juxtaposition as I simultaneously experienced the deepest love and the darkest despair.
What is so often forgotten within the praise and exaltation of new life is the excruciating adjustment that takes place long after the event; not only the body of something but the mind, emotions and spirit are stretched, torn apart, scattered and re-shaped all within the same skin-body but completely out of conscious control.
Motherhood and birth is not the only journey where this happens of course. Death holds such similar shapes but within the becoming of a mother there is a real death of the self once known.
But what if breaking open just might be the best thing that could happen to us?
What would it look like if we never broke apart?
Consider that amongst the wilder world…
The chick never breaking from the shell, the bud holding in all its glory or the seeds of green simply laying still in the soils for all of time...
The kaleidoscope of life would be absent.
Humans need to appreciate and tend our part in that kaleidoscope. That we are not exempt from the ‘breaking’ but in fact it is imperative that we do, to grow shape and wisdom to our individual selves and also to our communities. The relationship is symbiotic.
More than anything it has been dance and it’s community that has given me a path of meaning in unfathomable times. Through dance, I have dissolved and disintegrated into the fabric of ‘everything’; fallen apart, been stitched back together and flown away all at the same time.
When I witness other dancers (or mothers) breaking open and falling apart I now understand. I know of the pain but I also know of what can grow and become through time...
Would I wish for a life where we weren't ever broken apart? Never.
Let us ramble together through the breaks and the tears... for the wisdom to find its way in.
“It’s hard to accept yourself as someone you don’t desire. As someone you don’t want to be. But give me to the Rambling Man. Let it always be known that I was who I am.”
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