My chat with Anna Sarao, alumni of Culture Shock SD and creator of Body Rock Dance Competition, centered around her evolution from dancer to dance leader to event creator to dance leader coach (I’d say “Dance Therapist”, trademark pending). She is excellent at pulling her network together to learn, teach, and better communicate complex issues for growth and understanding. My Friends Are Fresh featuring Anna Sarao.
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Like many healers and mental health professionals, I endured my own journey through family trauma which began in 2011. I ended up putting myself in therapy and enrolling in psych classes to try to understand what was happening to me. I stopped caring about life and completely turned inward. Feeling depressed most days, I funneled whatever energy I had left into making art. Not sure how I started it – but I wrote stories, letters to my family, I painted, I put collages together and taped it into a book. It was like my mind was working something out… One day this book turned into a narrative. One of the most healing things that my art has gifted me was to create this play about the trauma that happened in my family. It would take 5 years, but inspired by Rob Bell’s “Drops Like Stars”, I eventually produced and directed this narrative about my family. The process…the writing, the acting, the audience discussions helped to give me the closure that I was desperately seeking during a really dark time in my life. This event along with hours of talk therapy helped me to stabilize my emotions and gain the traction needed to overcome. Which led me to what I do now – I recently graduated with a Master’s Degree in Marriage & Family Therapy from Bethel Seminary. I’ve been immersed in everything from the metaphysical, to the spiritual, to movement and talk therapy. While I cannot call myself a therapist, the work that I do through the container of : art making, mindfulness, movement, and coaching can be very therapeutic.
