I’ve always been a dancer. It’s the first thing I remember wanting to do. As a tiny child, I hounded my parents for classes. When they finally relented, I was too scared to leave the waiting room and enter the studio. I cried all the way home and begged to go back. The next time, I went in.

This has been a pattern over a lifetime now: knowing I am a dancer, but fearing to try. Leaving and coming back.

Leaving and coming back.

Leaving and coming back.

I keep trying to say that I’m something else, following an easier path of whatever draws attention, praise, income, esteem. I bend to the pressures of responsibility and a desire for approval. I know something is off. I know (as I’ve always known) that my heart is only home in an open room with an unobstructed floor. My heart is only home when dancing.

So, after many years of confusion, I’m coming home. This past year has rocked and shocked us all in many ways, and I’ve had my particular grief and trauma, as so many of us have. Life is too short to pretend to be someone else because we are afraid we can’t prove ourselves to others.

I may never perform. I may never get paid for this. I may never have a career or notoriety. None of that matters. I am a dancer because I dance. I danced yesterday. I’m dancing today. I plan to dance tomorrow.

As Deborah Hay quotes Susan Rothenberg as saying, “My brain can’t sweep the floor. Doing work creates the domain I want to live in.”

I’m doing the work of dancing. I am a dancer.