Dancing with the dock leaves

Dock leaves are a weed, you say?

I don’t care, they’re healing plants and they dance in the wind!

Swaying with them, following their moves in this little patch of land,

Trying to understand myself, mirroring the plants I see,

Rooted in my strength, reconciling with myself,

And feeling like there’s a reason to carry on!

Creating, and dancing and being myself,

Taking chances again, applying for roles in screen and on stage,

I’m hoping modelling will get better again!

Over the years I had lost my hope and light,

Not knowing there was still an ember waiting to be sparked!

~*~

Thank you for reading. This piece came to me after the last session of a movement-based mental health control group I was part of. Due to the nature of the research, I can’t say much about the sessions themselves, but I can talk about my own experience: after being suicidal for what has seemed like an eternity, and genuinely thinking that my acting and modelling days had come to an end, feeling unwanted, depleted and belittled, I found an advert asking for people to join a PhD research project which invited me to feel the fear and move anyway – so I did!

9 sessions later, one last little ember which had survived was sparked up again into a little flame, which I intend to nurture and grow into my creative passions again. The last session was an outdoor session, and the last exercise was to find something to mimic, have a dialogue with, and embody. A little patch of dock leaves had been calling out to me since we’d entered the clearing, especially when they danced in the wind, so I walked over to them an swayed away, and the rest you have just read!

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