It was late summer 2011, and I had just moved across the country for not the first, not the second, but the third time. After barely surviving my first couple of weeks of sixth grade, I was looking forward to reconnecting with my old dance teacher for some much-needed private ballet lessons. I hadn’t taken a dance class in months.

Over dinner with some family friends, I was introduced to the idea of attending an established dance studio, an idea which I promptly ignored. I had no desire to experience any more change than I had over the past two years. Life seemed to be full of ugly surprises, and I didn’t need to ruin dance for myself by turning it into a stressful social situation.

I just wanted to be free to move to the music.

Lucky for me, my mom wouldn’t take no for an answer and practically dragged my terrified self into a local dance studio. I was surrounded by dancers who seemed to be speaking fluent French and I was reminded, not for the first time, that my ballet vocabulary was sorely lacking. But, much to my surprise, the class instructor didn’t point that out. In fact, at the end of the lesson, she took my mom aside and said, “I think this is a good level for her.”

She handed me a pile of papers and explained that I had just auditioned, whether consciously or not, for the studio’s pre-professional ballet program. It was up to me to decide whether or not I wanted to commit to three ballet classes per week, at least one elective per week and, eventually, one pointe class per week.

But decisiveness is not a superpower of mine, so I went home and cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.

Then, I pulled myself together, grabbed a pen out of my desk drawer and started circling classes that I could take after school.

Little did I know when I pulled into the studio parking lot the following week…. I was about to find a home and an adoptive family that would shape the rest of my life.

My friends and teachers put up with it all. Every time I came to class sick because I didn’t want to take a make-up lesson, they smiled and treated me like I was capable of moving mountains. Every time I injured myself and had to watch class, they included me in the conversation. And even though I left the ballet program in the spring of 2017, I was recently welcomed back into an advanced ballet class with open arms.

To try to sum up everything I’ve learned in ballet class in a single post would be impossible, but here’s the highlight reel:

1. You are stronger than you believe.

Cliche right? But it’s true. Every time ballet brought me to the end of myself, I forced one foot off the cliff… and never fell. Because even failure stretches the limits you’ve created for yourself. The only way to grow is to keep moving.

2. You are not broken. Not forever.

Not in the literal definition or in any definition at all. If dancing through pain and exhaustion and the to-do list in my head could put me back together day after day, then no one–I’m smiling at you!–is unfixable.

3. Home is where the heart is… always.

Wow, could I please make this sound more like an insurance commercial.

But really. My home became a beat-up Marley floor in the back corner of a strip mall. Anything is possible.

4. How you do something is less important than why you do it.

Time after time, when the choreography felt stunted and my friends and I felt burnt out, our teacher would laugh and say, “You guys, it’s just ballet.” Like we were just kids. Like we hadn’t dedicated our lives to the pursuit of an art form that strives for absolute perfection. I guess some people would find that offensive, but it gave us hope. Hope that we were more than a single performance. Hope that we were, in fact, more than dance.

5. You actually can choose your family.

You don’t spend ten hours per week with the same group of people and continue to talk to them like some nice kids you met on a quick walk around the neighborhood. You laugh with each other. You win with each other, and you fail with each other. You love each other to the ends of the earth. You yell and get mad at each other. You would drop everything and do anything for each other.

And that’s why I went back this summer. Even though I’m stiff from sitting at my computer for 7+ hours per day. Ballet teaches life lessons in a way that few other activities can. If you’re a dancer, I hope that you get to experience all this joy. And if you’re not, I hope you experience these things in whatever it is that you do.

Happy Friday, friends. xx

Photo by Joy Real on Unsplash