As Safe as I Can Be

the limit is within

I was lying on the floor with my dance teacher pulling on my arms, as if he was trying to roll me over.

We'd been joking the whole time that a private dance lesson is really a therapy session, and this exercise was the most intense part, for me.

I was supposed to be surrendered, and I was in this position to show me how I wasn't. How I was moving my head, holding my shoulders, trying to turn myself.

I could feel the emotions trapped in those chest muscles, making me laugh in small short bursts when we encountered them in this silly exercise.

But when my teacher said "ok, get up, let's try it dancing!" I knew I wasn't ready.

"I need to cry for a minute." I knelt in child's pose and sobbed. I'm not even sure if it went on for a whole minute, but I let the wave take me, tried to go into the maximum intensity that was there for me then, and then popped up feeling much lighter.

I am SICK TO DEATH of telling the stories about why surrender is hard for me right now. Sick of going over them in my mind, sick of speaking them out loud to others, sick of the tragic facts that landed me here in this utterly perfect life.

The truth is that no story is in the way of my surrender, and no storytelling process will bring it back. No course of events has stolen it from me. No lack of security in the world will convince me not to cultivate the *experience of safety* because security (from my pathetic human standpoint) has never been available, and never will be.

The truth is that my body is still tense, still in fear, still bewildered and confused. It is up to me to not let this be a chronic condition. I've already reclaimed so much. That is why I'm dancing (WITH TECHNIQUE) and moving and hosting grief rituals. The body may be addressed on its own levels, the mind is but an assistant.

I want, on some subconscious level, to calcify, to protect, to stay alert to threats, to make this pain never happen again.

Success in this would be the greatest failure of my life, because the pain cannot be prevented, I can only live more or less surrendered.

I prefer being more surrendered, and sometimes it's more challenging than other times. But I am the one who makes it available to myself in any and every moment--it can never be more available to me through a circumstance than it IS in my body. A circumstance can only call to what I actually have. This is the uncomfy truth I used to ignore, demanding better offers from the world. Safety is required, yes, but so is my ability to experience it when it's there.

No circumstance can increase the range I have claimed in my body, and if I want circumstances which call to my full surrender, I have the primary responsibility to have full surrender in my toolkit. I must know my own surrender, and promise only what I can deliver in any given moment, to myself and others.

I'm noticing this on the dance floor and the dating landscape. Excellent leads are showing me the limitations of my own body and heart right now, helpfully pointing me to where the work within still needs my attention—where I am holding, grasping, trying for control.

They're leading with potent patient presence, and still I must claim my own speed, my own needs. Still I must claim responsibility for my own limitations. Still, I cannot blame anyone else.

Yes, I will dance with you, just gimme a minute to cry first. I promise, we will both have a better time that way.