Recently I was named an expert in a Rent. article. Check out the featured article: How To Create a Peaceful Home | Rent. 

​This article provides a variety of thoughtful suggestions to help create a calming ambiance, achieve tranquility with visual elements and music, maintain your space’s energy, make an altar, utilize calming scents, avoid sensory distractions, incorporate natural fibers, prioritize comfort and self-care items, add personal or inspirational items, and more.

It is wonderful to have a space to call your own and to shape to your needs, and even shared spaces can be shaped to your needs. But reading this article also reminded me how important our space is at The Spiral Goddess Collective. In fact, we only exist because of this space in the Clark Building at 16 State Street in Downtown Bangor.

Before I discovered this space and grew SGC here, I taught dance, yoga, and embodied movement practices in all kinds of spaces (I still do). I taught high-octane fitness classes at the Bangor Region YMCA, free yoga classes on the UMA-Bangor campus and via Zoom, and I taught many other practices that I have further developed since opening SGC in 2022. And we have grown because of our amazing, talented curators and teachers who have expanded our offerings.

Our offerings—weekly classes, workshops, and retreats—are unique and empowering. And they are even more impactful because of our space.

The Spiral Goddess Collective space—our Spiral Studio—is a sanctuary, a haven a home away from home, a community center, a safe space, a brave space. It is a space to connect with yourself and to connect with other people in our community. And it is a space to connect with ideas that are bigger than we are—all of the knows and unknowns of our universe, all of the richness of our world.

As I read this Rent. article, I was struck by how many suggestions are elements of our Spiral Studio.

The plants help breathe life into us as we move our bodies and minds.

The soothing sounds from our stereo or from Sen’s sound healing instruments create a calm atmosphere for rejuvenation. (Or the eclectic music in our dance classes that provide motivation to leave it all on the dancefloor!)

The art—on the walls, in our oracle deck collection, and in the sacred objects—inspire introspection and conversation. Many of the objects hold special significance for me—my grandmother’s tea set and my mother’s paintings, for instance.

Our bolsters, blankets, blocks, and other tools (like our Neuro Balls!) help us to take care of ourselves and each other.
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Our healthy snacks, teas, and treats—the very popular ginger chews and Andes mints—provide sustenance and joy.

The natural light on sunny days, the fading and shifting light in the evenings, and the colored lights that fill the space in the darkness provide a variety of seasonal sensory experiences depending upon the time of day and the time of year. And all year long, the view of downtown Bangor and the Kenduskeag River remind us of our shared past, our present moment, and our hope for the future.

Our Spiral Studio includes so many peaceful elements and an array of colorful inspiration. It is truly a space like no other. It is a space for movement, for connection to ourselves and others, for community building, for resourcing ourselves and supporting causes like Bangor Pride, mental health awareness, and healing and recovery that meets you where you are.

I think we have created the perfect home away from home—the third space where you set aside work and embrace play, finding joy and comradery, peace and presence, well-being and balance. When you climb the four flights of stairs, the sanctuary that greets you is worth the effort. It kind of feels like home.

When I was nine years old, my mother took me to see A Chorus Line, the movie, in the theater. It was a special treat that has stayed with me all of my life. I remember my mom saying something like, "now, there are a lot of things in this movie that you aren't going to understand because it is for adults, but I know how much you like to dance and I think you will really love this movie." I was all in, of course!

Since that special viewing, I have seen this movie countless more times and I know all the words to all of the songs, which I have been known to sing loudly and obnoxiously at times. When I was a little older, and my mom wanted to be hired at our local newspaper, we would drive by and she would sing, "yes, oh yes, I am a writer! . . . let me write for you. Let me try. Let me write for you . . . ." So, obviously this movie held special meaning to me and within my family, but also toward my identity as not a dancer. Oh, I could dream, but I knew very early on that I would never be a dancer, especially not the kind that could audition for something like A Chorus Line! And since I, like my mother, am a writer, this song line is always ever-present and ready to bust out of my subconscious or my mouth.

By now you might have an inkling of why this this blog title echoes this song, but you might be wondering why I changed the word from dancer to artist. After all, I certainly have been able to claim my identity as a dancer! Again, not as a dancer like the ones I emulated and idolized in A Chorus Line, but as a person who loves to move to music, who loves to dance, who loves to create and teach choreography. It took me a long time and a lot of work to recover this part of myself and it is my passion and mission to continue my dance-related self-care practice and to teach dance-based classes and organize events that provide other people with a safer container to find their own love of dance and movement.

I still have trouble calling myself a dancer, and proclaiming it freely. For a long time I had trouble claiming myself as a "real" yoga teacher, a "real" belly dance teacher, and a "real" writer because I did not feel like I could authentically claim this title. When a student or friend says something like, "I'm kind of a writer" or "I want to be a writer," I am quick to reinforce their self-efficacy. But, like so many things, it is more difficult to adhere to my own pep talk.

It is even more difficult for me to proclaim myself an artist, which I am trying to work through. Because what I do when I create and teach a JourneyDance playlist, when I teach a yoga class, when I put together a syllabus, when I write a book or a blog or a website, and when I created The Spiral Goddess Collective–is art. All of these things tap into my creativity and flow out of me as if they have always been there just waiting to be born. One of my favorite quotes is from Ranier Maria Rilke, "You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born." I am always waiting for the future to be born, and when I get tired of waiting, I push my images out into the world. Now I am able to push other artists' images out into the world–whether they call themselves an artists or not!

As Shoshona Currier, Director, Bates Dance Festival writes: “The value of the artists goes beyond the shows they create. Their work resonates throughout society in critical and creative thinking, collaborative work environments, problem-solving, dreaming. Artists change space.” And this is how I think of my art–the arts I describe above. And this is where I circle back to A Chorus Line. When my mom took me to see that movie, she planted a seed for a life-long love of dance (even as fear, shame, and self-doubt tried to separate me from this love). But there was another, more important seed planted by that film that I did not link back until much later in life–a seed of social justice.

In A Chorus Line I was exposed to a kind of diversity that did not exist in my sheltered, middle-class world at that time. The cast of characters auditioning for the chorus line were Black, and Puerto Rican, and gay, and too "old" to be dancers. They were pursuing their dream and pushing back against the barriers that society put in front of them. They were personifying grit, ambition, drive, passion, and hard work. I was all in. My mom was right, much of that film went over my head at nine-years-old, but the important stuff sunk into my heart, my bones, my muscles, my sinew.

The value of the artists I saw on screen, emulations of the artists on the stage, created work that resonated and fostered my creative and critical thinking. It allowed me to dream and, eventually to claim many parts of my identity that have helped me to continue to birth my images into the world. So, yes, oh yes, I am an artist and I am excited to bring this vision of art into downtown Bangor and ARTober through The Spiral Goddess Collective (and some of it in the slideshow above!). I'll be posting more about the art that decorates our Collective space though I do consider the space to be a work of art in and of itself.