Along but not Belonging

I spent the last weekend at a women’s drum camp in Ontario. Oh, wait, that’s womyn’s not women’s. It was three days and two nights of drumming and dance workshops with women drummers and dancers. I have been wanting to attend something like this for some time now. Lori Fifthian, who is actually from the Ann Arbor area, is nearly famous for the work she does with drum circles. She makes her living by going out and conducting drum circles for groups of people as a way to help them connect, build team skills, etc. I sat in on two sessions with her, and she is all that and more! I also sat in on drum sessions to learn about new drums I have never tried before, including the frame drum and tambourine drum, and I went to a two-hour African dance session where I sweat more than I have in the last two years and had fun at the same time (I do remember sweating that much when I was loading and unloading the moving van, but that was NOT fun, or at least, not as much fun).

I went to this drum camp because I want to facilitate more drum circles here in my town. I want to open up some community activities that involve drumming, and maybe work more with groups like Lori does, only I just want to do it as a volunteer with non-profit and human services kinds of organizations. I thought that by going to a camp like this, I would learn more about running different kinds of circles and get ideas from other facilitators. This is exactly what happened, so I got what I wanted out of it. Only, it was kind of a strange weekend, at least for me. Not necessarily bad strange, but a kind of I-can’t-quite-place-this strange. Here’s what happened.

I went by myself. No big deal. Not like my husband could go with me (although he did offer to go and stay in a nearby motel and I could commute each day…). But, several times throughout the weekend, when I told people I was there alone, they seemed a bit shocked. “Oh, that’s cool!” or “Good for you.” I guess I didn’t realize I was making a kind of independence stand or statement of any kind, but it seems that’s how they took it. And everyone else did seem to be there with someone else. They came as couples or in groups. If they came alone, what I noticed was they had been there before and knew facilitators, organizers, other attendees. They called one antoher by name, said the, “Do you remember when…” and “Wasn’t it two years ago when…” lines to one another. They were “in” with each other. And me, I was “out.”

Now, mind you, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I knew I was going by myself, and I have no problem with that. I felt totally comfortable from the moment I got there until the moment I left. I never once felt awkward in any space I occupied the whole time (okay, well, at night it was a bit awkward sleeping in a dorm room with women who snore louder than my husband, and I’d wished I’d remembered earplugs…). But, the entire weekend, I didn’t really try to connect with anyone. I did introduce myself a couple of times to women who were there, who I sat next to, stood next to, drummed with, etc., but I never really shared space with the same women twice. No one went out of their way to invite me into their groups of friends, or called me by name when they saw me. I sat alone when I ate every meal, and only a couple times did a group come in and join me, but did not include me in any of their conversation. Once, a woman came up to me in the afternoon and sat with me for lunch. We had just been in the African dance class together, and, quite frankly, I was starving after the workout and just wanted to feed my face so didn’t care that I was alone. But, it was nice of her to join me. We had some fun conversation, laughed, talked politics (she’s from Canada), and discussed the camp and drumming. Then we went our separate ways, and I didn’t see her again the rest of the weekend.

I should mention that, in total, there were probably not more than 100 women at this camp. The workshops were set up such that we went to whatever we wanted, and workshops usually had about 15 – 20 people in them, so it’s not as though you wouldn’t run into each other at times.

I spent time after meals walking the grounds, which were beautiful. One-hundred and five acres of woodlands bordered by farms on either side, and Lake Huron on the west. It was marshy all along the lakeshore, so there was no “going to the lake.” Instead, I walked the entry road to the camp, which was thickly wooded on either side. Nearest the main road, I could hear goats bleating at the farm next door. It was very peaceful. I also picked the group cabin a ways from the main camp as my home because it had indoor bathrooms rather than having to chuck across some field to a shared bathroom, so I spent time walking that road back and forth.

I also spent time writing, which can be a pretty good alone activity. So I also set myself up to being alone. And I was okay with it, although I wondered why it was happening this way at the same time. Was I causing all of the aloneness? Was I creating the disconnect? Was I being shut out? I came to the conclusion that all were true.

One thought that kept running through my head was that if these were academics, we would have more to talk about with one another. I would be having much more conversation, much more connection. And I realized that’s really “my group” of people with whom I feel the most comfortable in making connections. My god, I never thought I’d say that, but there it is. Like I said, it’s not that I felt uncomfortable. I felt totally fine being there. I just didn’t make any deeper connections. And partly, yes, I think I was being shut out. I came alone, I didn’t know anyone, and there was a certain level of clique-iness going on. If I came alone, I stayed alone, that seemed to be the way it went there. I noticed that even small groups that came together pretty much just stayed together the whole weekend. There wasn’t a whole ‘lotta mingling going on, so I have to think it’s just sort of the way it goes there. When we sat in drum circles, we were close, connected and shared. When we were out of those circles, we were our own people in our own social groups or single worlds. And so it was okay.

In hindsight, I am thinking, too, that maybe somewhere along the line, I came to this point in my life where I don’t have to belong to the group with which I am involved. I have believed that I could always get along with just about anybody, and my past experiences tells me that’s true, from working with battered women in the shelter to working with men in a prison, from working hard labor with migrant workers on a farm to being a part of the 8-5 daily grind of the corporate cycle. I know I can get along, but I have learned that I don’t have to belong. I do not have to take on the full identity of the group or of the faction. I can still be who I am, be fully comfortable and aware of that, and maintain that while still interacting with and being a part of that which surrounds me.

I don’t plan on going back to that drum camp. It was good and fun and all, but I didn’t connect with it in such a way that I would feel I would benefit from going again. I’m glad that some women do, and that for them it is a much greater and deeper experience. It’s there for them. Instead, I'll look for something other than that for myself. A new experience where I can see if I belong, or perhaps go back to something tried and true where I know for sure I do.