Acceptance At Last!!!!!!!

 All my life I have been searching for the feeling of acceptance.  As mentioned in my first blog, I am an extremely athletic person and as such, have been on countless sports teams.  I’ve been on more soccer teams that I can remember, the church volleyball and basketball teams, and various intramural teams.  Needless to say, I learned the concept of teamwork at a young age. 

Regardless of these various teams, I have never had the feeling like I really belonged anywhere.  I’ve always felt like I was just on a team because that was my age group and was, therefore, the team I had been assigned to.  I have never felt a strong connection with any of my sports teams; that connection one feels when they are accepted as equals by those on the team.  Year after year I participate in these different sports and have yet to feel that acceptance from the other teammates.  Sometimes I might become decent friends with a few people on the team, but I have always felt disconnected to a large degree.

When I started belly dancing, I never thought about the fact that, in a sense, I was on a team, a team of all women working together to coordinate a dance that would both stun the audience and create unity between us.  By the end of the seven weeks of my very first belly dancing class, I still didn’t know everybody, but even without knowing the names of the different people in my class there was an unspoken connection between us.  I don’t know if I can fully explain what that feeling is.  If I had to try to put it into words, I would say it is a feeling of being welcomed, a feeling of being accepted without having to “earn” it, even a feeling I have never before experienced.  I had never taken a dance class before in my life, a fact that worried me for a while and made me initially feel out of place.  This fact didn’t matter to any of them though, because we were there to learn together, to celebrate together, to dance together.

I have now been in three different Middle Eastern Dance classes, and I’ve had the same feeling in each class.  Regardless of your size, race, life style, dance ability, or anything else that may matter in any other setting, people there accept you for you.  Belly dancing, for me, really in an escape from a secular society.  My dance class is  something I look forward to all week because it is 1-1 ½ hours of freedom.  Freedom from gossip, freedom from being judged, freedom from a society that doesn’t accept people how they are.  At dance I can be me, and that person is good enough just the way I am. 

I have finally found a place in this world where I belong.  I have found my escape from our secular society!  Have you??       

Cherish the good things in LIFE!!!

It will make ALL the difference!!!