Dance Like Everybody's Watching
Childhood photo of Little Ellen provided by Ellen Wong with permission.
by Guest Contributor, Ellon Wong: Co-Founder of We Are All Daughters Co., WooKnew? Podcast Host, Quantum Journey Guide
When I was a single-digit, I craved DANCE. It was the space I felt most free and fully me. It was how the excitement and exuberant passion I felt in my little body could find form and be expressed. Dance felt like life to me.
I was enrolled in ballet and tap classes at the time, but the rules, the formality and the positions felt as constricting as being in a straitjacket. And in those spaces, I felt too shy when given the invitation to move freely and express myself. I mean, what if I did it wrong? Everyone’s watching!
No, what my little body and soul craved was freeform dance and movement in the privacy of my own imagination. To make up my own moves, my own steps, my own wild, primal expression. Where no one could judge me or correct me. Where my heart could pour out of my body without the pain of embarrassment, shame or ridicule.
I sought refuge in my parent’s master bedroom to perform my secret “ceremony.” I would often feel giddiness just from the expectation of being able to finally be alone to unleash my inner dancing queen.
(Reflecting back, the feeling was quite similar to what I experienced each time I took MDMA before a rave, in the moments leading up to the roll. It is no coincidence that I found refuge in the warehouse parties of the late 90s where I could dance my ass off in the safe cover of anonymity and in the darkness of night.)
Just like performing a sacred ritual, I had a precise series of steps I would take. First, I locked myself in so no one could witness what I was about to do. Then, I popped in my cassette tape into the stereo. I rotated between a selection of traditional Chinese children’s songs and Disney songs. I turned the volume up loud enough to be fully immersed in sound, but not loud enough to cause alarm or a visit from the parentals in the other room.
And then... I would dance my little heart out. Arms waving wildly in the air, racing and twirling and leaping from one side of the bed to the other. Some days, I would make-believe that I was a princess dancing to call in her prince (thanks, Disney). I would grab a long gauzy scarf from my mom’s accessories drawer and put it on my head underneath my plastic headband, pretending that I had long, blonde hair like Aurora from Sleeping Beauty that I could twirl like an elegant train or cape behind me. Sometimes, I imagined myself dancing with woodland creatures and birds flying all around me, surrounded by trees in a forest in some faraway fairytale land.
I would get lost in these imaginative journeys, engrossed in the movement and the fantasy and how I felt in my body, so free and invincible, beautiful and powerful. I felt limitless as a small child, like I could do anything, be anything. That I could literally take up space with the bigness of my being. That I could be SEEN, and even admired for who I am. I was graceful, feminine, even pretty in these secret moments.
I felt loved for being me.
Recently, I created a movement meditation for the MOONDOSE monthly microdosing container I guide. The invitation in this meditation was to dance with our Little Selves, our inner children. I featured Rufus Du Sol’s “Make It Happen” and invited each of us to celebrate who we are and the inner child that showed up for us that day. As I danced with my eyes closed around my room, I felt my heart explode wide open as seven-year-old Little Ellen brought me back to one of her secret dance ceremonies in her parent’s bedroom. Tears streamed down my face as I ugly-cried to the lyrics –
Where were you when I was young
I wish I knew you then
I wish I knew you then
I'd ask if I could hold your hand
I would have loved you then
I would have loved you then
Love can change your life
Love can make it happen
What Little Ellen wanted me to remember was the shame she felt in expressing who she is. She reminded me of the secrecy she always needed to keep her safe from embarrassment by her parents, particularly her mom, who was a strict disciplinarian and enforcer of rules and the “right” way to do things.
She was inviting me to break free in my adulthood from all the ways I had held back from expressing my truth, all the ways I had silenced myself and shrunk myself to not call attention to my energy and my being. I don’t need that protection anymore to survive or stay safe. I don’t need to be embarrassed any longer for the passion and excitement I feel within my body. I can be vulnerable in the expression of my JOY.
We just celebrated the start of a new lunar year – the year of the Water Tiger. And this year, we are being invited to be boldly who we are. To live and to be in our truth. To be unapologetic about who and how we love. To be unashamed of our imperfections, our messiness in our healing journeys, our humanness. To recognize our duality on this plane, in that we simultaneously hold yin and yang, light and shadow, joy and sorrow.
I write this in the energy of the Leo Full Moon, a lunation that invites us all to drop into our hearts and to live and love from that space of authenticity and realness. Our purpose here is really just shining out that frequency of love within each of us – through our work, our relationships, our creations, our voices. We share that unique energetic signature in how we express our TRUTH.
This year, I promise Little Ellen that she gets to dance for all to see and witness her joy, the fullness of her expression of self. She gets to be bold, loud, colorful, flamboyant, bursting with love and with passion, and with no fucks given.
This year, she and I, along with our Ancestors, get to be FREE.
One of the ways I have the privilege of being in community with El is being an attendee in her powerful community containers. I invite you to find out for yourself how radiant, supporting and transformative they are for yourself. Upcoming, we get to join her for:
Ellen Wong aka @tripwithellen
MOONDOSE - Crew 02
A month-long microdosing odyssey 🍄✨🚀 2/27 - 3/27
