Day 12 Walkabout- Set My Soul in Motion

I am on hold with the Esalen reservations office. I am calling to cancel my reservation for the Vinn Marti Soul Motion workshop which begins on September 25th. I have known for a while now that I am no longer going to dance at Esalen with my tribe, I just couldn’t make the phone call before now because I don't want it to be true. I want to go, I also want to go home and celebrate my Lily’s 11th birthday. Recently Lily expressed to me how important it was that I be with her on her birthday. It happens to fall right between the workshop and my monthly classes at Tamalpa. Since returning to Canada, then turning around and flying back to California is not an option due to finances and logistics, I had to make a choice.

For the last two years I have danced with Vinn, each September, on the magical land of the Essalen people. I discovered Soul Motion within weeks of Chris’ accident, and I KNOW it was a gift sent to me from God, to help me dance my way through his injury and into my new life with grace. I am grateful beyond expression for Soul Motion, for all the family it has brought me, for all the lessons and joys.

Rachel and James, who are upstairs talking when the are SUPPOSE to be napping, are part of the tribe. I met James first, he introduced me to Rachel...a womyn who is frequently mistaken as my sister. We have had a bit of a funny relationship, intense at times. We live thousands of miles away from one another and yet here I am, in their living room, being given the honour of being present at the birth of the baby who will make them both parents for the first time.

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(My first time at Esalen, my first time dancing Soul Motion, my first time for so many things)

Rachel and James are not the only friends who I have become very close to through the dance. I met Jeremy, my first ever long term lover since I was married over 12 years ago, on the floor, in the dance dome on the Big Sur Coast line. I remember the first time he danced past me, his fleece neck warmer making him look a little like a turtle emerging from his shell, and emerge he did. This September will be the 1 year anniversary of our meeting, sadly it will not be marked by an anniversary dance in the dome. He has promised to take along the magic mushroom I felted for him and put it on the altar. If any of you reading this see it, please pick me up and dance with me round the room. I would be so very grateful.

There are so many more I have met, Aletia, JJ, Tory, Hollie, Josie, Phillip, Lamara, Shems, Katie, Elizabeth, Zuza, Walter, Mara, Jenz, Kincade, Jovinna, Lance and and AND...so many more I want to name, but I want to go see the beach before this baby is born, so instead I am going to go for a walk. I have a feeling that I will cry a little when I see the Pacific; imagine that just a hundred miles up the coast the tubs, lodge and dance dome are waiting for the dancers to arrive on the 25th. I will imagine you all sitting on the deck, long glass tables filled with abundant food grown by Tareck and Benjamin et el. I will imagine the fascinating conversations, the laughter, the luxury of only having to decide where to sit and when to go tubbing. I will imagine the floor of the big marshmallow dance dome, bodies strewn in warm up positions of 50 different kinds. I will imagine Vinn's voice, a whisper through the mic and over the speaker, repeating words that speak of presence and acceptance and “begin again”. I imagine this scene as I have witnessed it dozens of times, each time the same, each time different. I imagine all of this without me there. It makes me sad, it makes me ecstatic, it makes me all the things that exist between these two.

I will see you all in January. I love you

“Was there a time when you had to choose between two things that you cared deeply about?” is the question in 12 days journal #153