Ending thoughts from a distance as the journey continues…..

Bruce by the Baltic Sea

I am writing from our cozy little room in Dublin, Ireland. We have just returned from a local LGBTQ Walking History Tour as part of Dublin Gay Pride Week.  I want to add my own experiences and thoughts to what Bruce has already written about the ending our time in Estonia.  As he described, our last week was filled with the sad process of saying good-by to people we had gotten to know, care about and respect.  The final picnic with some of my students left me feeling appreciated and the things they valued or said about our interactions touched me.  I deeply respect these young people and I have great hopes for what they will contribute to the future of creative arts therapy and dance/ movement therapy in Estonia. 

Bog plants

In a different way, the final faculty picnic was great fun.  It was a perfect ‘bookend’ to our snow sledging experience in the winter. We ‘bog’ hiked, taking side trails that led to beautiful black-watered ponds, filled with small white lotus flowers, tasted a native moss which is made into a herbal remedy tea good for colds and fevers and slogged through thick peat. We slapped mosquitoes and sprayed each other with various forms of bug repellant…. wondering what people did in the old days, before DEET.  We ended the day by collecting hundreds of small pinecones, which we arranged into a group-inspired design on the sandy earth.

Faculty picnic

The next day, after one last coffee and porridge at Mamo (our favorite local café), we got a ride to the airport and then we were gone.  I felt a bit like Cinderella the day after the ball and I am still processing all the many ways this time in Estonian has effected my sense of who I am, my work and what I want to do in the future.

Sea Grass

Although I will be thinking about my experiences for a long time, I have some preliminary impressions and thoughts about my time in Estonia:

I feel privileged to have been able to get to know these people who remind me of some sort of high mountain lake…calm and still on the surface but deep and intense below the surface.

I will miss being surrounded by tall, thin-legged, delicate-boned people, women, with long straight white-blond hair, men with shaved heads and stylish glasses.  I will also miss the sounds of their language, which sounds, to me, a bit like bamboo wind-chimes- high short sounding melodies in the wind.

I will miss their subtle humor and kindness and courageous willingness to take personal risks.

 I will also miss the way they connect and are transported as they sing or dance together.

I loved their fiercely independent spirit-even though I was sometime frustrated by how this autonomy seemed to make it difficult for people to ally with each other for larger human rights issues.

Bog Lake with lotus plants

Estonians are a people are deeply grounded in their own heritage but also unsure of how they can leap into the 21^st century. Throughout my time in Tallinn, people continually wondered why I, or anyone would want to come to Estonia, asking what I liked about them and their country. 

On the other hand, Estonians understand the power of the arts and creativity in a way that we do not yet in America, since song and dance is a part of how they became free.  As a nation, they have many issues that remain to be addressed - for me as an outsider, I often felt that in the Estonian celebration of nationhood, the rights of members of more marginalized groups are at risk. But I also have faith that as a people, they will find their own Estonian way to address these issues. 


Our blog will continue, as well as my own thoughts about the meaning of this experience to me. And it has been a gift to be here.

Pinecone design