17. Wiggling, giggling and shaking my booty: The healing power of play

She has come here to dance.
Haven't we all,
in our own way,
at our own pace?
Sometimes imperceptibly,
seen only across time.
Maybe months
years
or even millennia.
Sometimes here and now,
wild and free
arms spread wide
welcoming the night
the stars
the moon
with all the joy
and sorrow
spilling out
of our twirling limbs
and shaking booties.
We have come here to dance.
We have all come here to dance.

I had always been good at play.

It’s why I flew hang gliders, rode mountain bikes, and joyfully skied my way through my teens and early twenties. And it’s why we moved to The Butte and played our way through a decade of parenting tween and teen boys (see Chapter 6). We hooted and hollered in wild, joyful abandon, flinging ourselves down the slopes on skis and down the trails on bikes.

But by the summer of 2022, after two years of a brain and body contracted in fear and pain, I had forgotten how to play.

I knew how to orient to my “moments of delight,” to slow myself down enough to take in the wonder of the simplest joys that life offered me. Those moments were my lifeline in the darkness. They let me know that underneath the seeming brokenness of my brain and body, I was whole and could still experience the beautiful feelings that made life worth living. That knowing saved my life.

But it was not play.

Play is an active thing. It’s a feeling but also a doing. Or maybe a doing that arises out of a feeling,

Dear one, I don’t need to tell you what that feeling is. We all know it deep down in our cells. All we have to do is close our eyes and remember being a kid, splashing in puddles, hanging from monkey bars, screaming in delight as we were propelled forward by a wave on our boogie board.

We squealed, giggled, stomped, and splashed our way through childhood. Even the hard childhoods. We know exactly what play feels like.

But then, for most people—maybe even you, dear one—time marched on and something changed. Play got serious. It got competitive. It became organized, structured by a world where there are winners and losers, “good” art and “bad” art, “talented” people and “untalented” ones.

Which often took the play right out of the playing.

The word “play” was still there, as in “playing tennis”, “playing football”, “playing the cello”. But was there still the feeling of play in those activities? Maybe sometimes. But often not.

Which is a huge bummer because play is magic. It does to fear what daylight does to trolls: sends it scurrying away. The two cannot coexist. Which is why it’s so good for our nervous systems and our health. Maybe even essential. And also why it’s considered an important pillar of nervous system rewiring. I got that message loudly and clearly from the programs I was participating in through “Curable”.

So I knew. It was time to remember how to play.

I started with the simplest things. Out in my horse pasture on sunny July days, I took off my shoes and wiggled my toes in the wet moss on the edge of the stream that burbled its way through the pasture. I stomped my feet and splashed in the water, giggling like a child. I put on cheesy French music, the kind I had listened to as a teenager in pointy shoes in New York City, and I sang along, laughing at the silliness of it.

I slowed down time, just as my somatic coach Michelle had taught me, stretched the moment as wide as I could, and let the feeling of that silliness, that joy, all the way into my body. I didn’t just feel it. I savored it. I let it swirl through my feet, expand into my stomach, fill my shoulders. And I let it soak into my neck and head, those parts of my body that had felt nothing but pain for so long.

It felt bright and expansive, light where there had been darkness, airy where there had been only heaviness.

It felt like taking “play vitamins.” Or maybe “healing play elixir.”

I drank that elixir whenever I could, looking at my world through childlike eyes and finding simple ways to wiggle and giggle. And with every sip of that elixir, my brain took a little step away from the abyss of fear it had been peering into for so long.

And I got a little healthier. So I spread my wings and started to invite play into other things I loved.

First, there was art.

As you know from chapter 13, dear one, I did a lot of art journaling in the spring of 2022. That was when I was still in the darkness of not knowing what was wrong with me or how to fix it. Art journaling, using simple materials like ink sprays and markers, was an outlet for my pain and my spiritual insights, a way to channel my experience and pour it onto paper. It was deeply healing.

But it wasn’t play. And play is what I needed.

So I decided to learn to paint with watercolors.

I had taken a watercolor class a million years before and never painted again. Jason found my old, nearly dried-out paint set deep in the underbelly of our always messy garage, and I was off to the races. Or at least off to the YouTube tutorial playground.

I remember my very first tutorial and my very first painting. It was of two round, fat birds with long stick legs, facing each other, with weird little pointy beaks. It was ridiculous. I loved it.

I still have it. It’s still ridiculous. And I still love it.

I was hooked. Painting became my playground and I painted every single day for the next two years. That’s how it felt, anyway. Realistically, I’m sure I had plenty of “red days” where I lay on the ground just trying to survive, not even able to sit at a desk and paint.

I loved learning about papers and brushes and palettes, slowly collecting the materials I needed, waiting eagerly for the UPS truck to deliver my next brush or tube of paint. I fell in love with colors I had never heard of. Like Prussian Blue. A drop of Prussian Blue on pristine white paper still sends me into a little whirlwind of wonder.

I didn’t try to make “good” art. While I liked learning and gaining new skills, what I really loved was playing. I loved dropping paint into puddles of water on my paper and watching, mesmerized, as they spread and melded, taking on a life of their own, creating swirls and patterns I could never have controlled or predicted. And I loved splashing paint. I loaded my paintbrush with color and tapped it to spray paint droplets all over my paper. It was my favorite part of painting.

It felt ridiculously fun. Almost naughty.

I’m guessing you can imagine the state of my desk, my walls and my carpet after all that splashing. But I didn’t care. I was remembering how to say “yes!” to playful impulses and let them take me all the way to gasps and giggles. All the way to the safety and joy my brain and body needed to heal.

Second, there was dancing.

I haven’t told you yet about this part of me, dear one: I love to dance. And I don’t mean dancing in a way that has a name or anything to contain or corral it, like ballet or jazz, or tango. What I love is dancing like a crazy lady, with terrible pop music blaring, wildly shaking and shimmying my body. That kind of dancing.

Which is why it was so sad and ironic that by the summer of 2022, not only could I not dance, but I was rigid and atrophied from head to toe, unable to move in any direction. It was the polar opposite of dance.

So it was time. Time to reclaim my dancing self.

I subscribed to an online library of NIA classes—a type of dance rooted in neuroscience and ancient practices like Qi Gong and martial arts that promotes brain health, joyful movement, and emotional expression. Which was perfect. Especially given that the library included a large selection of seated dance classes for dancers recovering from injury or illness. In other words, dancers like me.

So that’s how I started dancing: sitting in a chair, barely able to lift my arms higher than my waist, barely able to turn my head. But full of hope and optimism.

On “red days,” the best I could do was enjoy the music and visualize moving and dancing. On “yellow days,” I would try moving a little bit more—maybe a twirl of my wrists, some kicks with my legs, or a little wiggle of my head. On “green days”, I got all jiggy with it. I moved my arms, turned my head a little more, and undulated my spine. I even stood up and tried some actual booty shaking. Which brought me more joy than I had felt in years. (for a reminder about red, yellow, and green days, see chapter 16.)

But no matter which “color” day it was or how much I could move, I reveled in the music, and I let in the feeling of play. That was the real magic.

In the first few months, I could only dance for five to ten minutes. Slowly, over time, I increased my time by small increments until I could dance for fifteen minutes, then twenty, thirty, and eventually, years later, a whole hour. Which is how, one scary, hopeful, joyous butt shake at a time, I started dancing again.

It took years to fully reclaim my dancing body, my dancing self. But I did it.

I now dance with wild abandon almost every day, moving and shaking my body—and my booty—like the crazy dancing lady I was always meant to be. Sometimes, at my local dance class, I dance with such abandon that it’s possible I freak people out. But I don’t mind. Because I know how healing play is and I’m committed to taking my daily “play vitamins”—my very own homegrown, inside-out, healing elixir.

I hope I’ll never again stop dancing. Even when my body can’t dance, I hope I’ll still be dancing in my head and in my heart.

I hope I’ll still be dancing in my soul.

If you’re new here, welcome!

However you made your way here, I’m grateful you found me and happy to have you pop into my little world, whether it’s for a brief visit or a longer hangout around my campfire.

Accidental Alchemy is a serial memoir, so if you’re curious and have the time, I recommend starting with the Prologue and reading chapters in order for the full experience. You can access all chapters on my Substack homepage.

For the best reading experience, I recommend reading in a browser and on a larger screen. It makes it easier to enjoy the art and navigate through the chapters with the buttons at the bottom of each post.

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PS.. All art and poetry included in this memoir are my own unless I specifically credit another author or artist.