Jackie Zamora: Dance, Disability, and a Place to Feel Safe

Ask Jackie Zamora why safety comes first and she does not answer with a framework. She answers with the feeling of being empty, having no one to guide you, and needing to find safety somewhere, anywhere. Her students found it in a dance class. She found it in meditation, years before that.

Jackie Zamora is the founder of ZamDance, a dance program in Maryland for children and adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities, which she started in 2013. She was born in Santo Domingo and raised in Brooklyn, arriving at ten years old with almost no English, into a school with no bilingual program. She still remembers the name of the one teacher who watched out for her. She has danced her whole life, and she has spent more than a decade working professionally with people with disabilities.

She and Lisa talk about what abuse does to a child who has no way to name it, and why aggression, numbness, and depression can all be the same signal in different forms. Jackie describes reading a non-speaking student's state without words, and why she thinks arriving somewhere as an immigrant child who did not feel safe prepared her for this work.

Much of the conversation is aimed at parents, which is most of this audience: parents in high-conflict divorces who also have a child with a disability, and who have been carrying the fear that letting the child try something will go badly. Jackie's answer is trust, and the story she tells to make the case is about a girl who wore headphones to class for three weeks and then walked to the front. She also describes the parent community that formed around the program, which now goes out on its own, and what she wants for the program next.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why safety has to be established before anything else can happen for a child
• What abuse looks like in a child who cannot put words to it, and the forms it takes
• How music and movement reach kids who are shut down in every other room
• Why overprotecting a child costs them confidence, and how to loosen that grip
• What a parent's own identity has to do with their child's progress
• Reading a non-speaking child's state without asking them how they feel
• Why the community around a program can matter as much as the program

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why safety matters, for the students and for Jackie
3:00 Brooklyn at ten, and how ZamDance started
5:00 What happens to a child who cannot say what hurts
9:00 Arriving without the language, and the teacher who noticed
11:00 Overprotection, confidence, and letting a child try
13:00 Music as the way in, and the girl in the headphones
17:00 The parents' community, and having an identity of your own
19:00 Trust, growing the program, and where to find Jackie

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 ZamDance: https://zamdance.com/
🔗 ZamDance / ZamMovement on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zamdance108/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.