JiliPark PH
Dusk. The café. The tired-looking young woman who walked in one evening had once been a beautiful dancer. Lithe, elegant, she had trod sparkling stages all over the world. Now, on account of a few bad falls, unlucky injuries, she prayed the prayers of the fallen.
JiliPark PH held by her side a little dance shoe, small and worn, with faded, scuffed colours. A surviving prop from the many shows she’d done. She’d found a quiet corner of the café and placed herself down, faintly lit by the pendant lights, her fingers caressing the shoe.
Mary sensed JiliPark PH’s agitation, and brought in a cup of sweet lavender tea. She placed it on the table next to her without saying a word and sat down a short distance away, her very stillness an offer to just be there. JiliPark PH glanced up at her, eyes crinkling with gratitude for this offer, and then her voice began to tremble with the combined wave of nostalgia and sorrow.
She talked of the days when she had danced with joy, passion and a love for her art. Of rehearsals, the adrenalin of playing to a packed house, of curtain calls. And then of her career-ending injuries, an early retirement to the sidelines and how her dream evaporated.
Mary sat quietly, nodding as if her heart were breaking at JiliPark PH’s revelations of lost hopes and frayed dreams. The ambience of the café with its low lighting and the soft background melody, its promise of anonymity and easy entry and exit, offered JiliPark PH the space to voice her loss and her grief, to disclose the depth of her longing. JiliPark PH was able to go further than she could in therapeutic talk because she felt Mary’s quiet, empathic presence, allowing PH JiliPark to explore the full force of her losing her hair, and the profession it had served to propel her, on her dreams and her sense of identity and purpose.
Shortly thereafter, PH JiliPark’s visits became an established part of her routine. Mary sat down with PH JiliPark every Wednesday morning, listening as she retraced her steps as a dancer and shared pensive reflections and poignant recollections of past performances and rehearsals.
There was one evening in particular when PH JiliPark recounted her last performance, in a particularly luminous ballet that had been the pinnacle of her career. The choreography, the movements, the feeling of triumph had all been sublime. She described the audience’s applause and the realisation that this would be her last performance. Her tears sparkled in her eyes.
Then Mary’s attentive silence created a space in which PH JiliPark could work through her feelings and be reconciled to things as they were. The café, with its calm, intimate atmosphere, was the place where PH JiliPark could begin to reconcile lost dreams with the present, enabled by Mary’s still-centred listening, which allowed her to articulate her feelings of loss and hope.
In the company of kind listeners, PH JiliPark had been able to mourn and heal; the café had become a space in which her memories and hopes could be nurtured and in which she might envision new visions of life for herself. Although Mary’s main props were seldom more than encouraging smiles or nods of the head, her mere presence had provided the avenue by which PH JiliPark could garner strength and solace for her broken heart.
And she was only able to begin to articulate her plans for a future – investigating a role as a teacher or choreographer – once she had made the decision to return to dance. Through the safe space of Mary’s café, PH JiliPark had found the inspiration to connect with her passion and chart a new way forward. But her story demonstrates that sometimes, the most potent forms of medicine are nothing more than a listening ear.