Jo Kelly was going through cancer treatment. Alone in many of the ways that matter most. A single mum. One child with complex medical needs requiring regular hospital visits. She had just been through a separation. The word cancer was so heavy she would not use it. She called it booby chat.

And then one morning, getting ready for radiation, she caught a glimpse of herself dancing naked in the mirror, half her hair gone, and she thought, this is interesting.

She danced to the hospital. She danced in the hallways. She danced in front of the radiation machine while the nurses watched on the cameras and their faces lit up. And she felt, from the very first day, what she described as literal ecstasy.

She did it for thirty days. It became a documentary. It became confirmation of the work she had always done.

In this conversation Jo and Rachel talk about what it means to actually feel your emotions rather than manage them. About school training the movement and the instinct out of all of us from the start. About why you cannot pour from an empty cup when you have never even been allowed to feel it fill. About the daughter who heard the diagnosis and said can you warm up the pizza. About the son who said if anyone can do this it is you.

And about Jo’s answer to the unspoken emotion question. That it was all of it. All the spectrum. And that it is all love, even when it takes the face of rage.

This is the most joyful and quietly revolutionary conversation I have had on this podcast.

GUEST LINKS

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