Dance, I love you!

If there’s one piece of advice that I could give everyone today it is this one by Elizabeth Gilbert:

Artwork: @abbey_lossing

“Dance. Right now. Stand up out of the chair that you are seated in, or the bed that you are brooding in, or the couch that has taken you captive. Put on some music and dance. Yes, even though you don’t feel like it. Dance. Dancing is free. It is available at any moment.

You sometimes don’t even need music, but music is almost always available to us these days. (There is probably music stored on the very device that you are staring into right now, in loneliness and silence. Release that music and dance.) You can dance from a seated position, if mobility is not yours. If you can lift only one arm, dance that arm. You can dance and weep at the same time. In the first year after Rayya died, I danced every single morning. Dancing is the only reason that I did not sink into all-consuming despair. I am here to tell you that there is no day of your life in which you cannot dance.

This is a picture that my friend @gigimadl took of me dancing on the day of Rayya’s cremation. Dancing is a way that you can talk to the dead, and feel them, and move with them. There is a weight of grief that often wants to settle in your bones — a weight that tells you a story of weakness and hopelessness and being frozen. Dancing tells the true story — that there is nothing in this universe that is not moving and changing at every moment. Move with it, even if you are in tears. Dancing is the opposite of collapsing. Dance. I love you.” - Elizabeth Gilbert