Community, Connection and Individuality

Tonight I've been to a Movement Medicine workshop with Susannah Darling-Khan. It always feels so good to dance, and emotionally I'm in a much better space than before I went. Something Susannah said really struck a chord with me - she was talking about how important it was to be individual, to be able to be different and independent, but how you also need connection, how we need to create communities of individuals, not of conformity. We were exploring this in the dance - dancing our own dance then connecting with other people, but it feels so much easier doing it in that context than creating it in our lives.

I feel there has always been a tension for me between being individual and wanting to be part of a group or community, the cost of community has been too much conformity and I'd rather be alone than have to conform in order to belong. I still seek community and of course have found it, to some extent with groups of friends, but it feels a long time since I felt the wider sense of community I sometimes experienced as part of the Women's Movement of the 70s and 80s. Although I often felt an outsider there too...