Open the Way to Love
I’d be aware.
There’d be a very clear awareness that
my creative energy—
like if I’m awake,
like if I have the energy to be awake—
my energy could be pouring into myself…
12 December 2021
I feel like I’m inside the most magical process right now. Sitting with myself, after so many years and evolutions, and transitions, and movements, and becomings— this is a deep, deep labor. I see now why it has taken me so long to arrive to this point of possibility as a creator, as a mother, as Mother Mother. I have had to grow into this capacity to expand, to accept and embrace all that spirit has been revealing to me all along.
My calling is like a stream of sound that began as a very low, barely audible hum that I could hear every now and then as a girlchild, but never quite place. Then in time, I began to notice in certain moments I could hear the sound more clearly—when I was dancing, when my feet were at the seashore, when I could see the sunrise. As I grew and came of age as woman, and then as artist, and then as invisible mother, and then as new mommy, and on and on until now, the sound—this calling, this knowing—grew louder and louder within me and all around me.
My life is a conscious dance with this aural awakening, this sound that I hear more clearly with each day. The more I hear, the more I feel, the more I see, the more I am called to be with it all, to be with all I create, to be with myself as a creator. To live inside the majesty of my fertility everyday.
This week I was communing with Mother Lucille Clifton insider her memoir, Generations. I love how she reimagines the form and tells her family’s story in a voice that is true to her brilliant, short-form poetic way. The whole memoir is about 50 pages, and some chapters are only paragraphs long. But the story is still so full, and it stays with you!
Mother Lucille’s creative reshaping invited me to look at Dancing Mother as a kind of memoir, a moving memoir. This is a story, a constellation, a galaxy of stories that are all in various stages of formation. The stories are ever being born, in their fullness, in their multidimensional majesty. These words, memories, videos, recordings, collages, images—it’s all constantly evolving, shifting, and clarifying its bounty and meaning to me as I grow along the spiral that is my life.
When I recorded this pillow-talk welcome note in the wee hours of the morning, I thought I’d be sharing more pieces inside this communion portal. But I had to really reflect on the labors that it took to bring these two pieces forward. The emotional labors to feel through so many different sensations and memories at once. The physical labors of searching in boxes and closets for old computers, cords, and external hard drives. The mommy labors of witnessing your children watch the you that existed before them, and realize they too have their questions about what they’re seeing.
When I mattered all of this I saw that it would take too much tech labor, screen time, and heart stretching to introduce 3 more pieces inside this communion. So the two pieces in this communion portal are the ones that have most aided me in sitting with what has been opening up for me this week.
After a very intense Soils Lab in the Garden last Monday, I unexpectedly shared with the sisters some of the sticky-icky parts of my story that I’m still discovering how to navigate, how to be whole in myself in the telling of the stories, how to not look away from myself in the telling of these stories. The memories and feelings sparked in the lab inspired me to do something I’ve been afraid to do for a very long, long time now—to look at the pieces in my archives that were born during that complicated season in my life.
Being able to sit and lovingly witness my younger, invisible mother self, and being able to be with myself now as I’m continuing to process and unpack so much today—all of this is necessary for me to do to get to the roots of the story thread: “I ran away to Trinidad to escape the trauma and heartache of unmattered protostar births*.” These sacred communions for Dancing Mother are making the way brighter, and wider for me to do so. I am so grateful for this moment, and for your presence with me inside this moment. Thank you!
Going to Trinidad was a radical evolution for me. Even though I didn’t have all the language—or all the courage—to say what I was going through or know how to ask for more support, I privately centered my mothering dreams and got myself to the place where I felt I could recover my fertility and restore my mothering-heart. There are so many nuances and threads to this journey. It begins before it begins. It begins everywhere. Mother Mother everywhere…
So in experimenting with how to tell this story with elements from my archives, I initially started selecting video clips from pivotal moments in the year leading up to me leaving for Trinidad. I had chosen 4 moments from 2009 and 2010 and then one moment from last week. But in really taking a moment to witness the footage from give thanks + The Mother Project for the first time in nearly a decade, I realized, this one moment is holding so much on its own. This one moment is also everything, all by itself.
I don’t need to rush, and squeeze, and try to tell the story all at once. There is no such thing as telling life all at once, the mothers say.
The stories are asking to breathe. I am remembering to breathe. This is a lot to be with. I celebrate my brilliance for keeping all the pieces of me in safe places. Collecting, and sifting, and revisiting my journeys—it is so illuminating, so healing.
The Open the Way to Love communion portal initiates a dialogue between two moments that are 11 1/2 years apart—my first performance as JOYISM! in 2009 and the transformative, liberating sunrise communion I experienced the morning after that deep-diving Soils Lab last week. These two scenes feature two different Binahs, and yet exist along a continuum of my becoming, a continuum that I am slowly, daringly, discovering how to celebrate in the whole story of me.
Thank you for being here and witnessing me.
See This is A sanctuary for Mothers to read about how my early invisible mothering journeys with protostar births seeded the dream that would become the fertility abundance garden + an EXPLORATION of thE word mattering created by araba evElyn joHnston-artHur.
One | give thanks + The Mother Project | 1 May 2009
When I think of where the idea to go to Trinidad was seeded, I often come back to this night. The first performance of my newly-formed company, JOYISM! I don’t like to call it a one-woman show, because I wasn’t alone on stage, and so many dear ones helped me produce the show. The evening consisted of 5 interactive movement pieces. The first two pieces, give thanks and The Mother Project are offered here as part of this communion portal.
Trinidad itself wasn’t explicitly stated or even consciously on my mind at that time—and it would be another year-and-a-half before I actually boarded the plane—but this show was the most expanded realm I had created to express my invisible motherself. As much as I poured into producing them, I knew the mother-centered choreopoems I was developing were a critical initiation, but they alone weren’t enough to really matter and witness the traumas, secrets, and wounds I was siting with. I knew I needed more space, new air, new land, new waters.
I didn’t know I was going to Trinidad, but I knew I had to go somewhere. I didn’t know that more starseeds would come and then go, and then light the way for me to go to Trinidad. But all of this was what was about to unfold in my life when the JOYISM! show is happening.
The reason returning to this night as a beginning of my Trinidad sojourn is such a radical act of healing for me is because Three was a collaborator in this performance. And he is (partly) who I was running away from too when I escaped to Trinidad to recover my fertility dreams. For years, for more than a decade now, the entire footage of this hour-long show has been stored on one hard drive to another. I always backed it up and saved it, but rarely did I watch it or really look at it. I had edited a few clips as work samples, housed them on a Youtube channel I no longer use, and sent them out once upon a time for grants or residencies. Beyond that, until this weekend in the labors of preparing the communion portal for Dancing Mother, I hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t been able to, watch this performance because it meant being with the sticky-icky, mucky-muck, at-times-gross memories still lingering when it comes to being real about all the shit that happened with Three.
In Soils Lab on Monday I started to mention some of these delicate knots I was still figuring out how to unravel. And I talked about not being able to look at parts of my own archive because Three was a part of it. And I have PLENTY of content without him, so I could easily dig into other parts of my story, and NEVER revisit the places where he intersects my narratives and my creations. But the calling, the invitation in Dancing Mother is to create this galaxy where a mother and her stories can be loved. How am I to birth such a world if I am too afraid to love myself and my stories in the process?
So here I am, looking at myself on this night, finally. Here I am consciously witnessing myself in all my visible and invisible glories, shining bright for my family and the audience, bringing all the Binah magic to the stage, giving my whole self over to the dance and dancing beautifully (something I see now more than I ever did back then…a whole other story there, obviously!), having a fabulous time launching JOYISM! for the world, hiding the very unhealthy relationship entanglement from the people around me, ignoring all sorts of flags and warnings about Three, longing for someone to affirm me as a mother, to give me the one thing that I haven’t yet learned I can only give to myself.
This is that moment. This me looking at that moment, at all of it, finally.
archival majesties | joyism! photo shoot in preperation for the may 2009 performance
Photos by my dear sister love, Elen Awalom | April 2009 | 14th & V Sts NW, Washington, DC | Fun fact: Elen named me “Kaye” as a derivative of my birth name, 20 years ago when we met at William & Mary. When I felt into my new name, Binah, I wanted to keep a piece of my birth name and the K sound + letter that had been such a defining element of my girlchildhood. I fused the Binah with the Kaye and that is how my name became Binahkaye.
Two | Open the Way to Love | 7 December 2021
Our sacred story sharing went so deep in Soils Lab the night before. I awoke before the sun still swirling with so much that had been talked up in my awkward, messy story layers. I didn’t fear that I’d said too much. I am very practiced at being vulnerable, at being naked. And in the Garden we hold each other, we witness each other with love. But I was sitting with my admission to myself, to the group, that there were pieces of my archive, of my stories, of my creations, that I was willfully looking away from because of the difficult memories it brought up about Three.
Gentle, sister-loving witnessing aside, there was a part of me that was like— WHAT, Binah??? Really, Mother Mother?? You not gonna even look at your creations ‘cuz of his ass?
Yes, that was where I was when I opened up my truths in the lab. I didn’t like how it sounded, but I was proud of myself for being so honest about it. I was grateful. This is why you created the Garden: to be able to tell yourself the truth about yourself, and be witnessed with love by other mothers.
So my body was also not feeling the truth of the matter either. I woke up to a very stiff lower back, almost painful. I felt heavy and not really excited about the new day. I was still in a foggy sort of space from identifying the real blockage around looking at all of my archives. And this energy had collected in the base of my spine, in my booty, the place where I give life.
I got up and started drinking my water. I was also constipated and needed to encourage movement internally too. I imagined my movements clearing my cells, my blood, my air of all the old things I was holding on to. I thought of these microscopic waste particles gathering and being swept cleans like bowels after a good elimination. This thought inspired more movement.
These heavy feelings didn’t have to just sit in my blood, in my bones. There is a way out, a way to love…
I began moving in gentle hip circles, trying to loosen my tight back. I slid the curtain halves to one side and turned my body to the still dark, eastern sky. The movements began slow and with some effort, but I welcomed it. I knew I had to dance. I had to move my body.
It was while inside the small booty rotations that I found another type of motion that created great relief for my lower back. I’m calling the movement that was uncovered low-tide sun waves. It’s like small forward scoops in the pelvis that alternate seamlessly from side to side. I did this over and over, and felt my back softening, felt the warmth building in my heart as the sun rose to greet me. I remembered the power of bathing my heart in the first light of the sun, of being able to heal the hurt places within, and regenerate a way toward love in the process.
I drank more water and watched as the sky was now painted in deep oranges and purples. My internal warmth began to build as the orange-yellow, fire light was expanding. Spirit invited me to capture the rest of my movements on camera, and that’s what is included in this communion portal.
At some point in the movements, the energy rises as I feel my power to shake loose the hurts, and anger narratives, and shame pockets that have been encoding my fertility centers. I start chanting, Open the way, open the way, open the way, it’s a brand new day.
I’m still sitting with this process, and witnessing myself, but the revelatory and healing moment for me was activated through the softening and warming of the movements. After the sun was bright and yellow-white above the trees and the rooftops of houses, I had an elimination and felt pleased to see the shit I was holding literally moving out of me.
This sunrise communion helped me loosen a tight hold on something within, something buried deep and that was creating a hardness where there needs to be softness. I felt the Yes to finding my way into my archives with love, to being able to gently trace the roots of my stories, to facing the pieces of me that I had been hiding from for years.
After this washing off I came back to my room and munchkins were still sleeping. I sat in the warm vibes of my sunkissed space and wrote about the experience in my journal. I felt a sense of readiness come over me. I was ready to revisit the film from 2009, and many other moments I haven’t been able to speak on, or write about, or watch without looking away. It was from this sunrise communion that I felt the way to love open up for me. The way to loving all of me, bright and clear, loud and inviting, is through seeing, mattering, witnessing, all of me.
Image notes: Invocation + Call to Witness | Mother Emerging | January 2013 | photo by Colin A. Danville | Invisible Labors: Almost 2 moons along with Bloom, still holding my breath every time I go to pee, doing 3,000 booty rolls daily to suspend the fear frequencies for a little bit everyday so that I can practice believing that I will get to meet my baby this time.