What Makes You Dance by Alicia Street

Even if you’ve got two left feet, you can’t deny that we all have moments when we feel like doing a Happy dance, a Cranky dance, or an I Wanna Kill That Jerk dance.

Or maybe the all too familiar Get Me Outta This Chair So I Can Remember What It Feels Like To Move My Body dance. Yeah, that one.

Sometimes when I work at the computer for too long my brain starts interrupting my train of thought with images of myself flying over treetops, running down a street or leaping across a stage.

We humans are not meant to be sedentary. In fact, a recent study scared the bananas out of many people because its findings said that even if you exercise an hour a day, if you sit the rest of the time you’re aging yourself prematurely. Some even say sitting is the new smoking.

But being one of those artsy sorts, what really gets me is the emotional need for expressive movement. Not just the old fight or flight catecholamine producing drive, but a more magical, shamanistic inner urge that’s been in our bones for a few thousand years. The kind that made dance a form of ritual as old as cave paintings, maybe older.

Are you always conscious of your body when it wants to move? And how do you handle it?

Here are a couple videos to get you in the mood. 

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Alicia Street is a USA Today bestselling author and a Daphne du Maurier award-winner. A compulsive reader of every genre, she writes both sweet and steamy romance. She spent many years as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. You can connect with Alicia at her website or visit her on Facebook or Twitter.

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Grandmothers on Mother’s Day

While browsing through my old blog posts I came across the following one that brought tears to my eyes. It was published on my own blog in May 2008:

Today I celebrated Mother’s Day as a daughter, mother and grandmother. My son-in-lay invited four generations of women to lunch. My daughter and her two little daughters, 4 and 2, and my son’s daughter, 3, visiting from Chicago, my mother and myself.
Lunch was lovely. We ignored the spilled glass of orange juice, the I-don’t-like-it whining and the crumbles forming a hidden mess under the table.

It took fifteen minutes to sit the ladies for the picture of the century. Moving my mother and her walker to a strategic place, and then having her hold on the rail of the restaurant's entrance stairs wasn’t too difficult, but gathering three laughing, squealing and squirming little girls and having them stand still for two seconds was an enormous challenge. But the effort was worth the pain. The children are growing too fast and we don’t know how long we will be blessed with my mother’s presence.
Sometimes Mother’s Day is a difficult time. I know it is extremely difficult for my cousin who lost her mother’s a week ago. For her and her family, Mother’s Day consisted in a trip to the cemetery to deposit flowers on a new grave.
 Enjoy your mothers and enjoy your day as a mother.

My mother left us two years later.

To honor her I wrote a romance novel called MOTHER'S DAY BABIES, a novel full of emotion and humor, and dedicated the book to “the mothers we celebrate on Mother’s Day and those we remember with love.”

 I had two great models for my middle-aged heroine, my mother and mother-in-law. Both always spoke their own minds and distributed good advice whether you wanted them or not.

My mother-in-law was a funny person with a sharp wit.

My mother told us to always 'look your best'. She practiced what she preached. Mom professed that being nicely dressed, combed and jeweled helped her forget she was a very sick person. The assisted living residents complimented her and tried to follow her example. The staff admired her positive attitude.

Most of my books include a grandmother among the characters. Depending on the setting of my stories, the children call her grandma, abuelita, nonna, yaya, or baboushka, but the grandmothers in my various novels have a lot in common.

Like my mother and my mother-in-law, they adore their grandchildren, cook delicious meals, and often meddle in their children’s life —for the children’s good, of course. They are strong women who have encountered their shares of problems and learned life’s lessons from personal experience. They are also generous mothers who would go out of their ways for their families.



This book is my contribution to a box of mostly sweet romances, LOVE BLOOMS ON MAIN STREET.
Barnes & Noble Pre-Order: http://ow.ly/LCayI
Kobo Pre-Order: http://ow.ly/LCaC4
Amazon http://ow.ly/LF60i

Mona Risk is a USA TODAY bestselling author of sweet--and not-so-sweet--romantic comedies. You can view all her books at www.monarisk.com or sign for her newsletter. 

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