Practice as a Way of Life

It has been almost a year since I last wrote, and what a year it has been. The internal challenges I faced in determining who I was (am) as a mother, a single parent, a woman, a teacher, a friend, a daughter and a sister have been powerful and forces for tremendous growth and change. Throughout all of these battles with my sense of identity, the one constant that I had control over was my hoop practice, and it sustained me, when nothing else could.

During the first few months of 2010 as I began my journey as a single mom. The intensely quiet times when my boys were not with me became spaces for 5 hour hoop practices that allowed for openings to grief, compassion, anger, exhaustion, and stillness. My practice not only strengthened my hooping, but helped me to become comfortable in my own solitude. These practice session led me to find a place where I did not need to hoop for 5 hours to feel comfortable with the silence.

In the HoopPath, Baxter talks about three essential stages of learning: Belief, Strength, and Grace. I can see myself in each of these stages as this year progressed. I recall calling my Dad at one point early on and literally saying, “I just can’t do this.” I had momentarily given up, but he quickly gave me the “Coach Mac” pep talk I needed to have BELIEF. I took that belief and taught my first hooping workshop up in NYC at Union Theological Seminary and began to find my STRENGTH.

I have been blessed with the most amazing family and friends that anyone could possibly imagine and I can’t recount the time they held me up throughout this year as my strength wavered. My gratitude to every person in my life is so immense that I could never possibly express it in words. In this year of on going self discovery, the people closest to me saw the best, and most definitely the worst of me. Ruminating, ruminating, ruminating... anger, anger, anger... crisis, crisis, crisis... And here they are still by my side. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

I don’t know when exactly the shift started happening to GRACE and I know that as in hooping Grace is always something to be worked toward, sharpened, enhanced, but I know there is an essential difference in my way of being and interacting with the world. I can only relate it to hooping, to HoopPath, and say that I have shifting and entering this point of grace. It is because of these loyal, loving people in my life and my hoop practice that I am here. I know that like maintaining my hoop practice, there are steps I need to take on a daily basis to maintain the practice of living in this more authentic way that has started for me. Grace can not be maintained with out the continued strength behind it. Strength comes through practice.

The other morning I opened the box of Christmas decorations, fully prepared to deck out the house before the boys came home from school, but instead I was left to slowly pull out memories of past holidays from a small plastic bin. They were mostly joyful memories, but the ache in my heart was tremendous and tears spilled silently down my face as I first unpacked each item with great tenderness and care, and then gently put it back into its place. The box remains unopened on the living room floor, a sign of the further growth, grief, and internal work I still have in front of me. Practice, Practice, Practice.

The practice is ongoing, never-ending, infinite if I hope to continue my growth as a hoopdancer and as a human being.