Lady Gaga is a Genius (Just Dance)

"Just dance, gonna be okay. Just dance, spin that record, babe." -Lady Gaga



Thanks for all the feedback on yesterday's blog. I'm so thankful that I have the opportunity to draw from the well of wisdom and experience of my friends and readers. The words you had for me - both in the emails you sent and in the comment section of the actual blog itself - hit the nail on the head. I'm happy to report that today is a new day, and while I'm still struggling immensely, somehow I don't feel as fearful as I did yesterday. Why? Because I listened to your sage advice, I found and followed some of my own, and eventually I just DANCED!

Yesterday was definitely the worst day I've had since the death of my father back in July of 2008. Yesterday, I cried until I puked. I didn't even do that when I lost my daddy. Somehow, coming to terms with my own culpability in certain situations is just - well - heart wrenching are the only words I can think of, but that doesn't even begin to describe how much it hurts or how angry I become when I think of how much pain one bad decision on my part may have caused for another human being.

Some of you know I have struggled with self-injury since I was a child. While I've never been a cutter, I have hit myself and burned myself more times than I would care to admit. I even have some permanent knots and scarring from the old coping mechanism. Who knows exactly where the technique got its start with me? I only know that for at least two-thirds of my life, it was the only way I knew how to get rid of the rage and shame that lived inside me. Good news, though! Yesterday when I felt that extreme NEED to release the pain, I remembered that I have NEW coping techniques. I pulled up an old blog from the Joy Journey and I read. I read about how wonderful it felt to move... and I read the last sentence in the blog: Maybe tomorrow I'll try dancing! Remembering that moving makes me feel AMAZING, I trusted that if I could just get myself to the stereo and get a good groove going, I could move. I could let go. I could release the pain. I could shake it off. I could do something constructive instead of destructive and I could breathe again. I could dance. So dance I did! And after about 40 minutes of eyes-closed, dance-like-nobody's-watching, arm-flailing reckless abandon, I sank to the floor and cried a little more... then a few minutes later I got up and walked away and I felt better. Still sad, but better.

Yesterday I made a decision to move through the pain. I figured the least I could do was follow my own advice, right? And so in my pain today (which is a little less pressing than it was yesterday), I will dance again, I will release more of this tension and shake off more of this hurt. I will continue to hold on to the hope of tapping into my joy again, and I will leave you with these words from Day 27 because I could stand to be reminded of their promise:

I moved along the healing path even while I was afraid. I moved in my fear instead of denying that I was afraid. I kept putting one foot in front of the other and picking myself up when I fell along the way. Each victory helped me release a little bit of my fear, which helped me keep going. The more I moved in my fear, the stronger I got. The stronger I got, the easier it was to move in my fear. Moving in fear instead of staying stuck in fear is what saved my life and brought me to the truth... the truth that joy was a possibility, even for ME.