Digging Up Dreams

Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved to dance. She couldn't hear music without spinning. She spent as much time with her dancer friends as she could, breaking into box steps and falling into dips in campus hallways or grocery store aisles. She dreamed of dancing, dreamed of competing, teaching, performing. Dancing made her feel more alive, more whole, than almost anything else.

Almost.

Because of that "almost," she gave up dancing for a while, burying those dreams as deep as she could, hoping one day thinking of them would be less painful.

After a couple years, she had the chance to dance again, just a little. She let only the corner of the dreams surface. It was okay to dance a little, be in one performance. Her heart could handle that much.

It wasn't as hard when she had to give it up again a few months later. After all, she just had to dump a load of dirt over the corner.

Two years later, she got the chance to dust off that corner again. It had been manageable the last time; it had brightened her life without taking over. It was safe.

Until she stepped onto the dance floor and color flooded back into a world she hadn't realized was desaturated.

It wasn't just the dancing side of her that had come alive again, it was everything--everything in her entire world seemed more real, and she felt like she was breathing after two years underwater. And this time, she got asked to enter a teacher training program, a program that could potentially dig up those dusty old dreams for real--a program at a studio with the type of people and dancing she'd thought far in her past.

She said no, of course. It wasn't really feasible.

And yet, somehow, everything fell into place. At the urging of her husband, she jumped, opening her heart to all those bedraggled dreams.

But her body, once strong, had changed over the course of having three children. Muscle was gone. Stability was gone. Balance was gone. Things that had once been so easy now required intense focus. She cried, sometimes, driving home, frustrated that she could have lost so much of what she'd once worked so hard for, even while feeling so lucky to get the chance to try again.

For four months she swung between elation and frustration, overjoyed to be dancing, wishing she could have learned all this technique years before, and always, always, part of her crying,

Do you think you can find it?*

Do you think you can find it?

Do you think you can find it...

Better than you had it?

She watched her old dance videos and wondered if she'd ever be able to move like that again. She wondered if she'd ever really find the connection and vitality of the teams she'd once danced on.

But every time she questioned, she would go back to her new dance studio and be amazed all over again that she'd managed to find somewhere so fun, so alive, so caring, and with such a high quality of dancing. For the first time in years, she began to put down roots. She had found somewhere she would truly be sorry if she had to leave. She didn't know what the future would bring, or what would come after she finished the program--would they hire her? Would it work with her family's schedule? Would she someday compete again? Would she get to perform? Would her body ever be able to handle lifts--her true passion--again? She wondered. And while she wondered, she practiced.

***

Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved to dance. She had lots of dreams and hopes and fears and questions, and she still doesn't have answers for most of them, but one of her dreams was to teach. 

Well, tonight was that girl's first teacher certification exam. It was a 3-hour test with a national examiner from DVIDA. 

She passed. 

And right now, that's enough.

*Song: "Say (All I Need)" by One Republic

Regret and Goals

My "teacher shoes." I was given these second-hand when I was fourteen, and I've been using them for twelve years. Still haven't found any more comfortable.

When I was fourteen my family started teaching a dance class. Free, Friday nights in the gym at the church, anyone who wanted to come. We didn't know much--just basics of Swing, Waltz, and ChaCha--but the closest ballroom studio at the time was at least two hours away, so our class was a unique thing. Some nights it was just my best friend dancing with my brother and me dancing with hers. Other nights we had 30-40 people.

One night a man in his early thirties showed up. He hung near the doorway, his eyes constantly darting toward the exit. My mom went and welcomed him; she and my dad had met him a few times, but didn't know him well. She knew, however, that his wife had recently died of complications with diabetes.

He said he might just watch a little; that he wasn't sure why he was there. As always, we made it our mission to make sure he didn't run.

He didn't say much as I walked him through the basics, but he worked hard and caught on quickly. Gradually, under a stream of praise and reassurance, he started smiling more and watching his feet less. He also stopped shooting glances at the exit.

He came back the next week, still nervous, but more determined. And then he told us.

"My wife always wanted to learn to dance. She asked me to learn for years, but I never did. Now I'm here." Our dance class was the first non-essential thing he'd gone to since his wife had died. He said, "Maybe I'll remarry. And maybe she'll want to dance. I want to be ready."

Regret. But it led to action.

He did remarry, and while I don't know where they are now, I'd be willing to bet that if his current wife says she wants to try something, he does anything in his power to make it happen.

I've been thinking about regret lately. Things I regret, like times I said something unkind or didn't follow through on a feeling to help someone, but also things I might regret if I let fear or laziness get in the way.

Recently I've been hammering out some writing goals. Word-count goals, submission goals, self-imposed deadlines for when I'd like projects finished by, that sort of thing. Along with almost instantaneous regret for things like wasting too much time on Facebook, I've also run into some unexpected doubts. Not doubt in my work, but doubt in my own desire to publish. This was prompted by a couple things, including reading posts on the Amazon/Hachette battle where authors are being used as cannon fodder, and also reading up on some plagiarism and general nastiness that's been happening on the indie author front.

I've always wondered if I had a thick enough skin to handle things like scathing reviews (I know everyone gets them), but I'd decided publishing would be worth it--but reading up on these and other author issues made me start to question whether I even wanted to bother with publishing.

And then I thought about regret, and what it would mean for me to give up this dream I've had since I was at least twelve. And I don't want that. That stomach-twisting, mind-spinning regret would be worse for me than any number of bad reviews, any comments by trolls, any headaches over queries and rejection letters, any hassles with publishers.

"What if I had" is a question that can't be answered.

So, at least today, I'm not going to ask it. I'm going to let the threat of regret scare me into action.

My current word-count goal is 500/day (these days it's enough to challenge me). This post puts me at 609... but I still need to work on my book. ;-) What goal are you working on today?

On Dreams

I began this post June 14, 2012. I even posted it for a few hours, then took it back down because I hadn't followed my thoughts through to a satisfying point; I had started to explore it, then dropped off with a cheap ending.

Let's give it another try.

I have a poster my mom made for me a couple years ago. It features the above picture, and below that the quotation,

Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

that cannot fly...

...Langston Hughes t.

This poster sat in the box it was shipped in for three years, because I couldn't face it. I was fighting the demons of my dance dreams, and all I could think when I saw the poster was, "How am I supposed to hold fast to dreams if they contradict what I know I'm supposed to be doing with my life?" I felt quite literally like the broken-winged bird--I had been used to flying through the air in gravity-defying dance lifts, and now I was grounded. 

I've shed a lot of tears over those dreams. I once even wrote melodramatic poetry about my dreams talking to me as I tried to kill them. (Not very good poetry, in case you wondered.)

I always knew that my ultimate dream of being a mother superseded all my dance dreams, or all my educational or literary dreams, or all my craft dreams--yet, when I finally achieved motherhood, I struggled to accept the world-altering commitment of all my time and resources to one thing and one thing only. And I didn't understand why I was struggling.

I still don't understand all of it, but I'm starting to put some of the pieces together. In the movie "Tangled," there's a part where Rapunzel asks what to do if something actually is "everything [she] dreamed it would be." Flynn replies that she'll get to "find a new dream."

That resonated with me, but it still seemed to only partially apply, because I hadn't fulfilled my old dreams--they were just sitting there, still hoping to be pulled back out, and it was hard to reach for new dreams when I was so tempted to reach for the old ones.

Then I read a wonderful little novel called "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making." (Yes, it actually manages to live up to the title.) There's a part where the main character has to be bathed before entering a city, and one thing that gets washed is her dreams. The person bathing her explains that sometimes people don't recognize when they should launder their dreams, and so they hang on to old dusty, grimy dreams. That felt like exactly what I'd been doing, and it made sense to me that dreams, like everything else, might need to be "washed," or re-examined and reworked sometimes.

But I didn't know how to do it.

Three weeks after writing the above post, I wrote this:

I don't know how to wrap words around what dancing means to me.

Two weeks ago I went to a beginner's Salsa class. My mom told me I needed to go dancing while she was here, and that was what was available that week.

The steps were simple, less complicated than the classes I taught when I was 14. But it was a studio. The floor, the mirrors, the music--it shook me straight to my center. I danced that evening, and then I cried the whole way home.

When I pulled into the garage, I turned off the car and sat, sobbing, not wanting to go in and face my mom, my husband, my children. I looked upward, and through my tears, announced, "I can't not dance anymore."

And over those next few weeks, I learned an important lesson: I could be a mom and still dance. Not all the time, and not to the level I had in college, but I could, thanks to a loving, supportive, trusting husband, go to a Friday-night class and party and dance for two or three hours.

This seems so obvious to me now, but it was an epiphany at the time. Here I had two little girls, one almost two years old and one five months old, and I had done almost nothing but mother since I had graduated from college a year and a half earlier.

And there was nothing wrong with that.

The problem was when I started to feel like a martyr instead of understanding the period of life I was currently in. When I first made the decision to get pregnant, I chose to cut ties with my dreams of dancing at Nationals, or getting on a team that year--but more than that, I somehow adopted the idea that choosing to be a mom meant letting go of everything that made me "Shannon" instead of "Mom." This idea grew as I muddled my way through the early stages of baby-raising--because honestly, chasing one baby while pregnant with the next really was all I could handle for awhile. And then, when I found myself with two babies within 18 months, I was even more overwhelmed. People told me it was just part of the "baby" phase, and that I'd have more time for projects later on, but my struggles were so in my face at that point that I honestly thought it would never end.

But when my girls got a little older and I hit that emotional wall mentioned above, I started dancing again. And as they've gotten even older, they can suddenly play on their own sometimes, or entertain each other now and then. And over the last few months I've gradually realized that my choice to sacrifice certain dreams at one point in order to choose motherhood does not mean I have to, martyr-like, forever give up my right to dream.

Of course, then we get into the mysteries of balancing motherhood with personal goals. I still miss being able to dance the way I used to, and sometimes I get nervous about pursuing new dreams--nervous that I'll let them take time away from what really matters, because I value my family above all else. But with the help of perspective granted by a little more time in the mothering zone, as well as a supportive husband--who has even told me we'll hire a part-time housekeeper if necessary so that I don't feel guilty for using my free time writing novels--I'm working on both finding new dreams and washing the old ones. And I must be making progress, because it's no longer painful for me to look at the poster my mom gave me.

In fact, I bought it a frame.

Sometimes It's Hard

(This is the first time I've written anything so introspective in a long time, and it could probably use about 5 more revisions. Still, I'm going to post it, because I'm proud of myself for thinking hard about something I'd rather ignore.)

I'm working on a couple of dance routines right now for the studio showcase in November. One is a Salsa team routine, and one is a Swing routine. Both are a lot of fun, but last night I really struggled with the Swing. Our instructor asked us to try a couple lifts, and they were lifts I had done before, things I thought would be easy. I was wrong. And almost every time I would attempt a lift, the instructor would give me that same pursed-lip face that my piano teacher used to give me when I hadn't practiced; the look that says, "are you just not trying, or are you really that incompetent?"

I got home at 10:30 p.m., exhausted but not sleepy (a common occurrence when I dance late). I lay in bed for awhile, but I couldn't shut my brain off, so I got up for some food. Which, of course, turned into clicking around on Facebook. Seeing as how it was midnight and I was feeling beat-up physically and emotionally, I decided to have a little pity-party on my status. I figured at that time of night no one would really see it, and I could get away with it.

I was wrong, of course. I received a lot of "cheer up" and "you can do it" responses, which I know were written with love and concern for me, but I found myself arguing with many of them in my head. 

I KNOW a good attitude is important, but all the "Little Engine That Could" attitude in the world won't make my body do something the muscles are not currently capable of.

Yeah, work harder, I wish I could. It's not like I can practice this on my own.

It'll come back--yeah, it would if I could actually practice it. But I'm not likely to ever have the chance to do many lifts again, so it's a moot point.

Time and dedication, two things I can't give right now. I can barely dance twice a week without feeling guilty.

The more I grumbled to myself, the more frustrated I got. But as I stepped back and looked at my internal dialogue, I started to see my real problem, which had nothing to do with the loving, encouraging comments of my friends.

This is more than just me not being able to do a lift and getting discouraged. It's more than being frustrated about the skills and muscles that I've lost (though that is frustrating). And I'm not lacking in confidence, because I know I can work and train my way into being good at lifts. After all, when I started doing lifts the first time, I was very, very bad at them (just ask my old coach--she once confessed to me that after our first lesson she wondered if my partner and I would ever be able to learn any lifts). It took a lot of hours and bruises to get to where I was when I stopped dancing to have children.

I know I COULD get back to where I used to be, given the right set of circumstances. Unfortunately, the circumstances required are not available at the moment, and are complex enough that I'm afraid they'll never occur again. The combination of a) time to practice, b) a partner to practice with, c) that partner having time to practice that coincides with your available time, and d) a place to practice that is available at the time you both have available, is a difficult one to find. Beyond that, I have to e) be physically capable of conditioning myself without breaking, which disqualifies any time spent in future pregnancies (lifts are a no-no while pregnant, lol) and whatever time I need to recover from them, and also means I probably can't just say, "I'll do it once my kids are grown" (since I already have trouble with my hips and knees, which have gotten worse with each pregnancy, I don't see myself being capable of doing such a strenuous form of dance in my forties/fifties). That means I only have a few, non-consecutive years left in which those circumstances could even possibly line up. 

I was very fortunate in college to be able to meet all of the above criteria at the same time, but now, without shifting my priority off of my family, I don't know that I'll be able to recreate it. I feel guilty if I take more than a couple hours a week to go dance, because, at least while we're living here, the only times available to dance happen to be the only hours my husband's home, and I feel like I hardly see him as it is. If I could dance during the day, that would be easier, but the thing about ballroom is that it caters to the hours when most couples are free, which means evenings. It's the same reason I wonder if I'll ever teach at a studio--the hours they need are the ones that are the hardest for a wife and mother to give.

I've known all of this for awhile, but it's still difficult for me to face, and it comes down to this:

I felt more passion about doing dance lifts, specifically ballroom cabaret, than for anything else I've ever experienced except for getting married and being a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. But because God and my family come first, and because I can't see a way to reconcile my personal family priorities with the time and serious training cabaret requires, I will probably never dance cabaret again.

I gave up something I loved so much for something I knew would be better. But sometimes it's still hard.

Getting to dance at all is a wonderful gift, and it takes care of most of the ache. And maybe I'm wrong, and someday I'll do lots of lifts again. Whether I do or not, I'm sure someday I'll look back at this time and smile that wise, introspective smile that people get when they think of their naive younger self; that smile that says, "I see things more clearly now, but I remember the pain was real."

In the mean time, it hurts when I try an "easy" lift and fail. It hurts a little because I think I should be able to do it, but it hurts more because I'm scared if I don't get it right, the instructor will scrap the lift, and I'll never get to do it again.

But somehow, when I recognize why it hurts, it hurts a little less.