"Dance with Me"

with Vanessa Williams

Viewed October 6, 2001

As the title suggests, there was a lot of dancing and music in this movie. It was, however, more fundamentally about love, romance, home and family, and that was reflected in Questions 1 and 2. We decided that home is where we can connect with others emotionally, and where there's love and acceptance. And that that's not always what was available at the homes we grew up in, nor in the homes where we currently reside. It can be at a grandmother's house, a friend's house, or even at a Human Potential Center. Wherever we find that acceptance and acknowledgement and ability to be ourselves, though, that is a place that feels like home.

We also talked about Question 3, and about the times in our lives when we have felt muffled or insulated from really experiencing life. It seems like those times have occurred when we've been depressed over some important loss in our lives, such as a divorce, the loss of an important career, or a heartbreak. We noticed that although it can feel as though the years we spend in that emotionally cut-off state may feel as though they were wasted, they actually seem to have provided us with important insights into ourselves and triggered essential changes in ourselves that seemed impossible prior to that heartbreak. So in retrospect, they may have been necessary, even though they were very difficult.

Finally, one participant said that she has decided she's no longer willing to hold herself back from the risk of embarrassment, because she lost out on so much pleasure by trying to keep herself safe. Someone else mentioned Ashleigh Brilliant's comment, "Sometimes it is easier to do the impossible than to do the embarrassing."

Here are the questions:

DANCE WITH ME

  1. What do I think of as "home"?
  2. How am I not willing to "dance" with the feeling of love?
  3. How does deep sadness separate me from the moment?
  4. In what ways do I deny/ignore the realities of my life?
  5. On what values do I base my big life choices?
  6. How have I let the fear of embarrassment keep me from doing what I really want to do? How can I "keep on dancing"?
  7. How do I handle it when somebody assumes something about me that's not true?