Blog Entry 6: Relationships and the Inner Tangle of Connection

Being inspired not just by the beauty around me, but by the inner connectedness of relationships—especially those tied to parenthood, and more specifically, motherhood—has been a powerful undercurrent of the past week’s experience.

Reflecting back to my childhood—as the youngest child, I received so much care, attention, and protection. It was, in many ways, a beautiful experience. But it also meant I didn’t grow up needing to care for someone else, which can make it harder to understand the perspective of a mother, or the weight and grace of that responsibility. My sister and my parents played a huge role in shaping who I became. Their influence was layered and constant—protective, sometimes challenging, but always formative.

I grew up surrounded by care, even if it didn’t always look or feel perfect. The covers they wrapped around me, both literal and emotional, gave me a strong sense of safety in the world—maybe more than I should have had. I’ve often trusted people easily, believed the best in people without hesitation. That kind of trust has come with its own lessons. Over time, through experience, I’ve learned to be more cautious, to slow down, and to consider things from multiple perspectives.

During my time here, I have been able to return to somatic practices and have enjoyed reading Making Connections by Peggy Hackney. Currently, I’m exploring how relationships with others mirror the relationships within our own bodies—which is a big influence for my choreography for the Iowa Choreography Festival.

In her book, Hackney introduces the idea of “associative bundles”—the way we subconsciously tie physical, emotional, and relational experiences together. We are constantly building internal maps, linking memories to movement, sensations to stories.

As I continued reading Chapter 2, I kept returning to a quiet, persistent question: Where do I return to these fundamentals in my daily life? Hackney outlines the patterns of Total Body Connectivity—not just as movement patterns, but as the developmental building blocks of our sense of self. These patterns begin with breath and evolve through reaching, grounding, differentiating, and integrating. Beneath all of them is a clear, unspoken truth: relationship is fundamental. Each pattern is about connection—connection within the body, connection with gravity, with space, with self, with others. We are relational before we are rational. Our ability to move, express, and become is shaped through connection.

Today, a simple, casual conversation unearthed something deeper. It helped me discover a hidden message locked in my heart. That exchange became a key. It unlocked an associative bundle I didn’t know was waiting to be opened. Suddenly, I was inside of it—inside the echoes of my own relational patterns. And from there, I could begin to witness my connections—not just live them.

We spoke about boundaries in personal relationships, about language—how it can feel like a trap to restrict, but unavoidable not to learn—and about the challenge of Expressing complex relational truths, especially in ways that can be received by someone just beginning to understand the world, like an infant. How do we speak of boundaries to someone who doesn’t yet have language? How do we hold our own needs while nurturing a space where another’s nervous system is still developing its own internal map? These questions lingered in my body long after the words were gone.

Connectedness—not just in time, but in meaning. In the way one moment flows into the next, one relationship shapes another, and how our internal awareness mirrors our external expressions. Movement, breath, memory, conversation—all pieces of the same dance.

That shift, that awareness, feels like a cornerstone of this residency.