What is Border Morris?
Border Morris is a style of Morris dancing that originated in the Welsh-English border areas but now refers more to the style than where the sides are from. The dances are boisterous and energetic, often using sticks and focusing on the impact of the performance. There are many sides that you will find by searching the internet. One of my favourites is Beltane Border. I love their aesthetic and the power and energy they bring to their performance. Costumes, make-up and fire all feature.
(This photo is by hulkiokantabak on Pixaby)
What does Border Morris have to do with grief?
My work as an End of Life Doula involves supporting different people in different ways to process their grief. Tending our grief happens in different ways for different people. In my life and in my work, I use creative media to explore and process grief, such as storytelling, crafting and gardening.
Border Morris is another creative medium through which we can explore life, death and our place in the universe.
The term ‘Border’ may originally have been connected to geographical location, but today it feels like a description of a liminal space, which is exactly where grief takes us. Many people in their grief describe time as having a different quality for them and feeling as if they are behind a screen with life going on beyond it, just out of reach. Border, to me, also suggests an alternative space, away from the mainstream where other ways of being can be imagined.
I am interested in weaving music and dance with the changing energies of the seasons and how our experiences of grief are changed and mediated as the wheel of the year turns.
Following the sun and moon, tuning in to what nature teaches us about life, death and rebirth.
Channelling the energies of those we are grieving for. Tending our grief by coming together to create something new.
What does tending our grief mean?
I use the term tending our grief to describe a gentle process through which we stop burying our grief or denying it exists. By turning slowly towards it, talking about it and exploring it through creative media we can work through it until its bitter sting mellows and we can move forward into a new relationship to the precious things that we lost.
Grief does not just come into our lives when someone close to us dies. Any type of loss we experience can leave us with grief.
If this resonates with you or sparks an interest...
This is your invitation
I am seeking the Others who are interested in what I want to do. People who want to dance, musicians, people with a passion for costume and theatrical make-up, Morris teachers and mentors, someone with a venue for us to practice in. Those with years of experience and those with none.
The one thing I ask is that you come open to the idea that this is a project for tending our grief.
This project is almost a blank piece of paper. All that is written on it so far are three things
- Soul-stirring visitations from birds
- Border Morris
- Tending grief
If you want to come and help shape it and bring it into being, please get in touch
