In 1973, when I was five years-old, my family and I moved to Mendocino, California, where the lone neon sign hung over the door to Dick’s Place, the dive bar on Main.
The only real industry in this historically preserved village was tourism, barely, and it had a population of a thousand, made up of wealthy retirees, starving artists, and descendants of Portuguese fishermen. We came from Salinas, like John Steinbeck before us, and planned to leave an impact by way of Mendocino’s First Presbyterian Church.
Having a benevolent minister for a dad with an open-door policy in this eccentric little town meant all kinds of people came in and out of my early life. I distinctly remember coming home from school one day to a stranger sitting at the kitchen table and casually asking, ‘Are you here for dinner or do you live here now?’ Friends always wanted to hang at my house, not just because I was a joyful, fun kid, but because my family had food and functional indoor plumbing, not guaranteed in all Mendocino homes.
There were multiple communes in Mendocino, ranging from conservative religious zealots to hippies who left San Francisco when all the sit-ins stood up. Not far from my dad’s church there was a naked school, which is exactly how it sounds. Many of my peers were raising their parents instead of the other way around, and by elementary school, a lot of kids were on hard drugs, often introduced to them by parents and teachers…
I was rather late to the party, not trying marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, or LSD until eighth grade.
When my mom caught me tripping, she grounded me and made me miss my junior high graduation, thus ending my short-lived relationship with substances. I can still hear my mom’s voice through the bedroom door, after I’d snuck back in through my bedroom window, ‘We’re glad you’re home, Kelly, we’ve been waiting for you.’
My family was a safe haven for many Mendocino kids. One of my childhood best friends revealed, while going through substance abuse programs as an adult – A.A., N.A., all the A’s she needed to survive – that she had been ongoingly molested by her mother’s boyfriend and that ours was the only place she could go as a kid where she felt safe to bathe, eat, and be loved.
Unfortunately, violence found me anyway. It was January 1981. My friend’s house was loud and hot. Everyone was using psychedelics and booze. I was thirteen. He was seventeen, a friend of a friend’s big brother, a stranger. In those few minutes, I felt the last of my whimsical, self-confident spirit flee my body. I had been sexually assaulted, and it took me years to understand what had happened and decades more to find and reunite with my spirit. To save any part of me that remained, I knew I had to get out of Mendocino…
At fourteen, I moved by myself down the coast to an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Monterey.
This scholarship girl from a hippie podunk town did not fit in with the wealthy, worldly, high achievers. School had always come easily to me, but there, lost, lonely and reeling from trauma, I was desperate to control everything I could. Getting straight A’s in advanced level courses became imperative. Also, to control and punish myself, I became fanatical about everything I put in her mouth and developed a severe eating disorder. Not coincidentally, this was also when I found ballet.
Between the shocking ‘boom boom’ trauma of the assault and the ‘drip drip’ trauma of a childhood where I often felt unsafe and boundaryless, my spirit had split from my body and ballet did nothing to repair this connection.
I had always loved dance and found pleasure in movement, but this was my first formal dance education. Ballet masters relished how I ruthlessly managed my body, with all severity and no softness, in and out of the studio. During this time, I started to feel like I had no right to need, no right to simply exist; I was dying by slow suicide…
My Modern European History teacher, Monika Howell, saved my life.
I spent hours in Mrs. Howell’s residence on campus, under the pretense of seeking academic help we both knew I didn’t need. Instead, she offered me company and a loving mirror, and a soft place to rest my weary soul. After junior year, I rejoined my family, who had finally left Mendocino for San Diego. There, I attended my third and final high school and during my senior year I suffered a nervous breakdown.
At the time, I was dancing under an ex-prima ballerina, heavy-drinking, unceasingly critical, ballet master. She was watching me slowly die, but when I tried to pull away from ballet, she screamed, ‘Kelly, you know you’ve got to dance!’
At that point, instead of quitting all of life, I quit ballet.
Yes, I knew I needed to dance, but there had to be another way. Dance should heal, not hurt; it should give life, not take it…
Following my divorce from ballet and graduation from high school, I planned to attend a small liberal arts college, but the only financial assistance they offered was telling my parents to sell their car and move to a cheaper town, so instead, I attended the University of California San Diego.
There I studied French Literature, completing an honors thesis in poetry, and with the inspiration of a lovely man, I started learning modern dance.
In the spring of 1990, the Bloodless Revolution went down in Budapest, and several months later, I arrived there to teach English as a Second Language. Hungary had been Communist for decades and although they technically were a democracy when I landed, the culture shock was profound. I went on to teach ESL in Brazil and Russia, as well. As I roamed the world, I continued seeking my spirit, gone missing so many years. At this point, my body was also in crisis with frequent flare-ups of Ulcerative Colitis, an autoimmune disorder that gravely affects the gastrointestinal system. Just keeping my body nourished became a challenge.
Upon returning state-side, I met and nearly married a wonderful man, and continued with modern dance. While I learned much from these adventures, my spirit was calling me to find the life and dance meant for me, in San Francisco. Since I was a young child, I knew I would end up in the City by the Bay, but had been waiting on a green light from the universe; a sign that my skin was thick enough to handle all that would be required of me there. Ultimately what got me there was a cult…
During my travels abroad, I encountered a traveling Christian theater group that staged morality plays.
I remembered liking them; they were entertaining and didn’t clobber the audience with theology, and they had a California branch! Only after I was sleeping in a pile of people on a floor of a church basement in Los Angeles, did it become apparent that the members were worshiping the playwright. When I tried to leave, they had me followed, so one morning I took my belongings and fled. From this, I knew I could trust my instincts and take care of myself, and in 1995 at age twenty-seven, I bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco and have lived there ever since.
I was finally in a place that felt like home, but my body was in crisis with frequent flare-ups of Ulcerative Colitis, an autoimmune disorder that gravely affects the gastrointestinal system. Just keeping my poor body nourished became a challenge; it had already been through so much trauma, and now this. I longed to pursue my passions, Embodied Arts, Psychology, and Spirituality, as my art, and a means to heal and reunite my wounded body and spirit. One day in a beat-up VW Bug outside of the post office in the Mission District in San Francisco, a friend asked me how I intuitively move my body. No one had ever asked me that before; my body had always been told how to move by the rules of the dance. Paying attention to my instincts, my natural gestures and articulations, expressive face, and pittering feet, brought me to Brazilian folk dance. The first time I tried the soulful, exuberant dance, it was a revelation, a homecoming, a MASSIVE YES! Finally, I was able to claim my sensuality and sovereignty in my body and begin to heal from trauma and years of disembodied sex.
Finally, my spirit was finding its way home…
In 1997 I first danced in San Francisco’s Carnaval parade and not long after, assembled a dance company to join me. Thus, Hot Pink Feathers was hatched.
The dance numbers I created were a combination of Old Hollywood and Latin flare and, after attending Tease-O-Rama, a burlesque convention in New Orleans, I knew to name my dance ‘Carnaval meets Cabaret.’ Witnessing people with all body shapes, genders, and ages reveling in their bodies was inspiring. I wanted more! I taught myself all parts of showgirl production; costuming, choreography, booking gigs, and training dancers. The women in my company weren’t all dancers when they showed up to the first rehearsal, but they were all looking to empower themselves and to connect.
I was creating a place where women could feel safe, seen, and sensual, where they could reclaim their bodies and reframe how they saw themselves. For the first time in my life, or at least since the freedom of early childhood, I found a way to reveal my true, radiant essence and thereby show the way for my sisters. My dancers and I were reveling in our bodies and receiving what we desired through empowered movement and safe, sacred witness. I was onto something big.
Hot Pink Feathers’ first paying gig was at a holiday party for sex workers, held at Marlena’s, an old San Francisco drag club. We later reached the semi-final round of America’s Got Talent and toured in Margaret Cho’s variety show, Sensuous Woman. Hot Pink Feathers was named Best Dance Company in San Francisco and I even headlined burlesque festivals all across the world and was a five-time finalist at the Burlesque Hall of Fame!
Every year, my troupe’s contribution to Carnaval got bigger and bigger, culminating in me being named Queen of Carnaval in 2008. Then forty, I think I was the “oldest queen with the grouchiest intestines in the history of Carnaval.” (No fact checking was done to confirm this). ;)
Of course, new ventures take years to make a profit, so even while pouring everything into the dance company, this showgirl worked a series of odd jobs to stay afloat.
I became a psychometrist (or neuropsychological testing technician), an ESL teacher at an adult school, and, as part of her ongoing soul study, I even had the opportunity to apprentice with a local astrologer. In all ways I was looking for ways to heal and to change, and to bring that experience to others.
The hustle and stress eventually caught up with me. Even though I had been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis many years before, it was manageable until 2010 when burn-out left me so acutely ill, I was hospitalized while visiting Argentina. Wasted away to a mere eighty pounds, I barely made it home alive. After spending a summer healing in my mother’s care, I was ready to do whatever it took to restore my spirit and body. Through years of training in emotional, neurobiological, and relational transformational modalities, I have finally been able to address my various traumas holistically and am now skilled in walking beside other women as they address theirs…
Now I am mindful of how I use my precious energy and encourage others to do the same.
I fully dedicate myself to those healing practices and my embodiment of them in psychospiritual burlesque. In my online intimate group program, Burlesque from the Inside Out, I get to mentor students from all over the world as they build soul-nourishing, conscious burlesque acts that leave them feeling alive and at home in their bodies. I also offer an online introductory course, Being SEEN On Your Own Terms.
It took shimmying across decades and continents to get this far in my healing embodiment. Now my mission is to offer this peace and wholeness to others. In addition to my online programs, I co-produced the documentary From the Inside Out, and wrote an instructional guidebook, How to Create a Burlesque Solo: THE BOOK. I also teach this psychospiritual reconnection and deep embodiment in a non-burlesque format, through my Mystery School.
As I heal, I hold space for others to heal. I believe that NO ONE needs to remain frozen, invisible, collapsed, or ill from the variety of traumas they have endured. I teach safe and joyful repatterning of these traumas which allow us to see ourselves and each other into existence.
I think that we CAN be fully embodied and sovereign, our spirits and bodies united at last!!
. . . . .
Written in collaboration with my surrogate writer Sarah Zimmerman (@sarahzwriter). If you’re interested in your own personal tribute, find Sarah at mymoderntribute.com!