"Loving you is like tangoing with tornadoes.
I take two steps back & you whirl around me until my heads spins, my insides are pudding & my love lies in fragments at my feet ..."
Renee wrote Tangoing with Tornadoes first as a book of poetry, which progressed into a CD of her poetry put to music and then a play about domestic violence that Renee has produced for the last several years to sold-out audiences. The script serves as a witness to everyone's story, no matter the gender, race, religion, language, socio-economic status or sexual identity.
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"I dedicate this project to all the silent shoulders who have watched the self-esteem of women get trampled like pebbles under someone’s feet. You wonder what to say, how to act, what to do as we endure physical, sexual and emotional violence from partners who claim to love us, which gives us hope, but seek to dominate us, which makes us confused, all the while trying to convince us that our pain does not exist, which makes us feel like we are tangoing with tornadoes." - S. Renee Mitchell
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This empowerment project includes:
- Educational workshops that teach women the signs of abuse and how to heal from it, through poetry, theater, art and other creative outlets.
- Informational packages listing locally based support groups, therapists, reading lists, web sites and community resources.
- Speeches/spoken word presentations at middle and high schools, colleges, community centers, churches, shelters and any type of gatherings for young girls and women. Here is a video of Renee speaking at a May 2009 mother-daughter tea at a church in Detroit, which was organized by DV non-profit Looking For My Sister.
Here is a sample of the downloadable poster you can adapt for your event when you book Renee or the touring one-woman performance of the play.
