The Labyrinth
I search for my way back onto the path, and find something even better.
On June 16, 2001, I attended an extraordinary ceremony. Held out in the woods in the middle of the night, it was hosted by my Wiccan friends.
It was a Labyrinth. They warned me that I would be blindfolded for part of it, and have to feel my way out.
After half a year of drowning in lawyers, police reports, car insurance bullshit, MADD meetings, medical appointments, Traumatic Brain Injury, PTSD, and being undermined by some of the very people who were supposed to care for me the most, I was going down by the head. So my friends thought this ceremony would be good for me. Might help me gain some clarity after my life had been knocked 124 degrees sideways. Might help me figure out who the bleep I was now.
They were absolutely right. But not in any way I ever could have imagined.
To: The Parentals
From: BellaDancer
5/16/01
5 months after being rammed by a drunk driver
A friend of mine is doing this neat ritual in the woods... it's a rebirth/renewal ritual. She has invited me because she knows that I'm really struggling to express/realize the new person I’ve been forced to become.
I know I have drastically changed in a lot of ways, but I am really not sure what that means or how to express it or how to go about being this new person. I keep on either treading water, hoping something will inspire me, or resorting to The Old Ways out of frustration.
Talking to William yesterday, I think I figured out a lot of my aversion to being in the dance community of late. (Not wanting to go to Student Night even though it’s the last one before the restaurant closes, not wanting to participate in other functions...) I think I am making a very big separation from The Old in order to fully experience The New and not fall back into the ruts.
I had this huge realization as William told me about his conversation with Dakini. He hadn't heard from her in a while and asked if she was OK and she listed a million things she was right in the middle of—every single one of them to do with dance-dance-dance.
And *BWONG!* It hit me.
That that used to be me.
I wasn't doing anything anymore unless I was dancing. But now, all these months of injury when I couldn’t dance at all, I have had to learn to appreciate a million other things in life.
I realize now that I don't wanna go back to eat/sleep/breathe dancing. I am enjoying the other aspects of my life and don't want the old crazy schedule to interfere with it. I still wanna dance, but it's not my sole purpose in life.
I was thinking about it in terms of writing. I will go through periods of write-write-write... stay up until 3 in the morning and regurgitate. Whenever I'm not at work, I'm planted in front of the computer, food in hand, writing. But then after awhile, I will have spewed myself out, so I will have to put it away in order to go experience life, to have something to write about.
I think the same thing will happen with dancing now because I want something else from it. I want to BE something else when I dance. I want to transform it, and I want it to transform me. I think maybe that's why her dancing hasn't really changed since I first met her.
I don't wanna get stuck in that rut again. I don't wanna get dependent upon What Works and just keep rinse-repeating at the same gig every weekend, maybe put it on a stage occasionally. I have all these ideas in my head, like a Cleopatra costume and an Egyptian-painting-type dance to dramatic music.1
I wanna see videos of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis again cuz they were so dramatic.2 Their dances were full stage or video performances, not just dancing between tables, dodging waitstaff and chatting while absentmindedly shaking my stuff.
I don't wanna limit myself to being a permanent fixture at a restaurant. I want to really SAY something when I dance. Something different from the usual: “Oh, look at me! Look and my shiny, pretty costume and look at all the tricks I can do! Now put dollar bills in my belt and I’ll see if I can shimmy too fast for you to catch me…until I let you—teehee!”
That’s fun. And it pays the bills.
But it’s not remotely enough for me anymore.
I know it will come. All of this is so new, it's only flitting about in my head in bits
and pieces. For once, I'm not all frustrated about that, it's just fun to let them flit, knowing that there's not much pressure. Of course, the pressure comes from knowing that one restaurant is closing, the other is precarious, and I only get lost wages for a year.
Then what???
That's what I'm hoping will alight on me in the woods in a few weekends.
I guess it is a very old, old, old ritual where they blindfold you and you have to feel your way out. Then you are sent off into the toolie bushes to find enlightenment. Along the way, the guides ask you profound questions and there are various stages that you pass through....
Sounds cool and mysterious and dramatic and colorful enough to spark my imagination, so I'm really hoping that it will help focus all this stuff that's been swirling around in my head. Help me find my new path.
I know writing will be an intregal part of it. I have so much to say... so much to share... but I'm still in Experiencing Mode. However, I will bring my journal, which I've gotten really religious about. And I have saved all the emails I sent to everyone in the beginning of all this, so I will have some bread crumbs when I’m finally ready to look back and see the whole journey.
Cool stuff is afoot. It's just not quite ready to alight upon me yet...
Love you guys! Have fun quilting and golfing!!!!!
Looking forward to seeing you soon!
XXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOOOO
Me
Knowing love, I will allow all things to come and go...
To be as supple as the wind, and take everything that comes with great
courage.
Life is right in any case.
My heart is as open as the sky!
~Mira Nair, Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love
5/16/01
Journal
Robes & masked figures, lantern light in the toolie bushes? Sounds cool. I hope I find enlightenment, clarity for my new path.
I’m going to do a thank you party only, not a show.3 I’m having a hard time about this whole limelight thing… For me to basically be the headliner of a show that day.
Gah.
I don’t want this big ego thing. That’s why I really like the idea of having music going all afternoon and having an open dance floor where anyone can perform, anyone can dance together, anyone can ask anybody anything and learn. I wanna open the dance floor and I wanna close it, and that’s it. Everybody keeps asking when I’ll be back to performing so… there it will be.
But I wanna have times of live music, and a time to say mushy things to everyone. Maybe it will be good that it’s not on a stage, because then it’s more of the community thing I’ve been longing for. I think it’ll really show the change that I feel happening inside me, the change I want to make in our community. So different from the competitive “Oh Look At Me” shows…
I’m scared right now. So much is changing in me so drastically, at such rapid speed. It’ll be good ultimately, but I feel very vulnerable. Exposed. I don’t want the old rigid armor back. I want a glowing, vibrant, flowing layer of protection, with the ability to pick up the sword if need be, and keep it calm and sheathed otherwise.
Oooh…a transformation dance. Maybe I’ll start out with cabaret first…then “cocoon” during the hafla and emerge new as the butterfly with wings. Double veil? Hmmm…dunno.
What do I wish to say? Because I really wanna SAY something with my dancing.
And so I do.
I did eventually play with those Cleopatra dances, and with everything else I had begun envisioning during all those months when I could only dream of expressing myself through movement-to-music once more.
I use a lot of wings and flying motifs in my dances now. A lot of cocoons and transformation. I dance The Phoenix as much as I write about Her, and of course…with as much belly dance that dominates my style, there’s a whole lot of Sssssserpentine…
“Serpent’s Kiss”, Colorado Springs 2009:
And yessss. That snake moved in such a lifelike manner, plus I handled it in such a way that we totally freaked out a bunch of people in the audience. At the end, I drew it out of the basket and pressed its fangs to my heart. Tsssss! Alassss…no video of this version.
This is a later version of that dance. When I performed it again in Chicago 2014, no Cleo, no snake, but all sssssserpentine…
I never could have created this dance—no. I couldn’t have created my Tejedora dance style or my Elements System4 without going through what I went through in the aftermath of my car wreck. Without going through some of the awful things that happened in the later years as my career was falling apart from a second TBI, and then a third when I got rear-ended again.
And without going through The Labyrinth.
The ritualistic one my friends offered to me… and all its other twists, turns and sssspirals throughout my life ever sssssince.
…Hackles raised, I strode past him, trying to appear calm as I made for the next bend in the road.
When I glanced back, he was gone.
I shuddered, then darted down the path and nearly passed right by the next pair of torches. Skidding to a halt, I peered between them, searching for what the Labyrinth wanted to show me.
At first, I mistook the snake for a pile of logs, but then it moved, so I paused to watch it slowly work itself out of its old skin. The remainder, a sheer, crinkling husk, wound its way back into the woods. Fascinated, I watched the methodical undulations until the serpent finally emerged. It drew itself into a coil with its head dancing before me above the sinuous pile of its body. Remember thisssss, it hissed. The Ssssspiral Danssssssssss…
"I will," I promised, awed and intrigued as I backed away down the path…
~From Beware the Minotaur - a taste of that night I spent in the Labyrinth
Although I’ve altered this magic-filled night into Fantasy and posted it over on my fiction publication, this story is true:
COMING UP: The difference between my fresh PTSD from the car wreck vs. the effects my TBI had on the layers of Complex-PTSD I’d been building up since before I could feed myself or wipe my own butt. CATS, DOGS & TANGLED THREADS
© 2025 Hartebeast
The video I made about my nightly bath time meditations as I healed, and that thank you party where I barely performed. Instead, I launched what would become our idyllic dance community comprised of exiles and smaller, outlying groups. The Oh-Look-At-Me crowd was NOT thrilled when I put my foot down and insisted that this event was not a performance recital.
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Holy shit Alexx!
Not only is ‘Labyrinth’ the right word for this ordeal! But I also watch your last dance routine at the end and WOW! It was fantastic! You were so in-tuned and controlled and precise with your body movements — it was amazing! :)