The End of The Driveway

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Photo by Leon Macapagal | Design by Delia Brett

This story is a reflection on memory and meaning — not a statement of blame or injury. My family and mentors offered great love and support; the feelings described here belong to an inner journey of learning how to walk my own path.

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I can still see myself there — a small girl, maybe five or six — sitting stubbornly at the end of the driveway.

I had a little red rucksack, tied to a stick like the hobo in a storybook.

I’d filled it with a few treasures, made my grand declaration, and walked out the front door.

“I’m leaving!” I announced, full of conviction and outrage.

I remember the tree, the ditch, the road, the school across the street.

I remember the feeling — a rush of independence, the desire to walk my own path, to live a life more adventurous than the one I knew.

But when I got to the end of the driveway, I froze.

Where would I go?

What came after the road?

I waited there for someone to notice. I wanted my mother, my siblings — anyone — to see me,

to care that I was leaving, to tell me they loved me, to invite me back.

But nobody came.

Daylight faded.

Someone finally called from the house that dinner was ready.

And I went back inside, defeated.

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That image has followed me all my life:

me, sitting at the end of the driveway, aching to walk into my own possibility, yet waiting to be seen, acknowledged, supported, loved.

Wanting independence and belonging at the same time.

The yearning to walk my own path —

and the fear that there was no ground beneath it.

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Years later, at eighteen, it happened again.

I was leaving home — going to theatre school, going to New York.I was going to live the big, artistic life I’d imagined since childhood —you know,

the kind where you picture yourself half-starving but in a Parisian café,

writing brilliance into the margins of your journal.

I had the dream, the drive, the fire.

I thought I was heading out with my red rucksack toward my destiny,

but somehow unbeknownst to me, I stayed — left behind, at the end of the driveway,

when everyone else simply got into a car or plane and moved on.

It seemed I still didn’t know how to even walk,

how to take one true step on the path toward my own nature.

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Then I found EDAM.

EDAM was the first place that felt like home after that aborted acting dream.

Inside this space of practice — with its warm, silky floors and the shadows of locust trees waving across our rolling bodies — I discovered the dance form called Contact Improvisation.

In the studio, the practice itself became the path.

The dance taught me that the path appears when you meet it with your whole body.

Peter Bingham, EDAM’s director, became a kind of mentor — a paternal figure offering a care and guidance I had longed for. Through him and through the practice, I learned trust at the deepest level: trust in presence, trust in awareness, trust that the path appears when you meet it with your whole body.

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Those early years were radiant. I felt seen, chosen, special.

And over time, through decades of work and devotion, I became exceptional at the practice.

I discovered joy, collaboration, power, and belonging that my younger self could never have imagined. I found the ground I had once lacked — built through presence, through contact, through moment-to-moment connection.

But even the most beautiful places can become still ponds.

Over the years, something in that culture, or perhaps in me, stopped moving.

Comfort, privilege, repetition.

No growth, no gratitude.

Slowly, without understanding it, I felt invisible again — no longer the favoured one,

I felt held back from stepping into my own leadership.

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By 2019, the old pattern had accelerated. The creative relationships that had once felt like family disintegrated. Projects collapsed. Debts mounted. My artistic world — and the identity I’d built within it — cracked open.

The floodgates burst. All the suppressed feelings of being unacknowledged, unseen, unsupported came rushing through.

I had always “risen above” — but now, I couldn’t.

I had to sink below the surface and feel it.

That breakdown opened the door to another path — one of transformation.

Through the work of Dr. Claire Zammit and a Women-Centered Coaching community,

I began to reawaken my drive and direct it toward healing, toward service.

I learned to use the same creative principles I once used in art to create transformation —

in myself, in my relationships and in the culture around me.

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And then, one day, I saw it clearly:

I was ready to leave EDAM.

I had folded my company, stopped writing grants a year or two before — but still, I was dancing there.

Still sitting at the end of the driveway, waiting to be seen, waiting for the path to appear.

This time, though, I knew what was happening.

I made the choice quickly but consciously, — as gracefully as I could at the time.

I communicated my departure with care, acknowledged the impact, invited dialogue.

And then… silence.

No acknowledgment, no thanks, no goodbye after twenty-five years.

It was a deep, familiar hurt —

like sitting at the end of the driveway again, waiting for someone to come and say,

“We see you. We love you. Stay.”

But nobody came.

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Meditation brought me back to that image this morning.

The same ache, the same stubborn pride, the same longing for acknowledgment —

but now, something new too.

A recognition.

All my life, I have been learning what it truly means to walk with integrity.

To walk away.

To walk a path according to my own nature, my own potential, my own possibility.

To walk with grace through my own life — one step at a time —

even when no one is watching, even when no one comes to call me in for dinner.

I see now that the path is made by walking it.

The ground appears beneath me when I need it.

And that small, undigested feeling of hurt —

that longing to be seen at the end of the driveway —

has been my greatest teacher.

Because to walk with grace,

I had to learn to give myself the acknowledgment I was waiting for.

To see myself.

To love myself enough to take the next step.

— You don’t earn the right to choose. You learn the right to choose. —

And in that moment of clarity, sitting in meditation, I felt it:

the child, the artist, the woman —finally standing, finally walking,

finally choosing to come home.

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Disclaimer:

To be fair, I don’t believe anyone meant harm. EDAM had never been a place that made a fuss over departures or anniversaries — its culture was one of quiet professionalism rather than celebration. And at that time, the director’s Parkinson’s diagnosis was shaping the atmosphere in subtle, unspoken ways.

Still, the silence landed with impact — an old ache echoing through a new chapter.