When You Forget Your Body is Yours... and What Happens When You Remember (journal entry #2)

THE QUIET DISCONNECT

Disconnection doesn’t arrive loudly, It kind of sneaks in, through the day-to-day of life, of holding it all together: work, marriage, motherhood and caregiving. 

Slowly, somehow you begin to fade out of your body. You go from living in it to managing it, fixing it, hiding it.  You forget your body is yours.

I know that experience intimately and I see it in so many women who walk into the studio. . . strong, brilliant, beautiful women. But their bodies speak before they do their shoulders curled forward, eyes cast down, voices low and physically guarded. 

You can hear it in the way they speak about themselves:

 "I’m awkward,"

"I'm not coordinated,"

 "I'm not sure this is for me."

It doesn’t happen all at once, but little by little, you stop dressing for fashion and expression. You stop feeling beautiful, and eye-catching.  You stop walking with your head held high and begin to shrink. 

The crazy part is you don’t even notice until something cracks it open. A song.  A night out with friends. Stepping into your closet. And suddenly, you miss yourself.

MY WAY BACK TO MYSELF

It was a journey that I honestly didn’t even know I would ever be on. The idea that I would lose myself and almost completely forget who I am along with my capabilities was never even a thought, but it happened and I felt so lost, scared and naked. 

So getting back to myself wasn’t an overnight transformation by any means. It was truly a slow paced journey that began with the will to just start and go through the motions. With each step forward I created trust within myself. Some of these steps were about building confidence with just showing up to the studio, events,  and understanding the accomplishment within that.  

I started to reclaim myself not through performance, but through movement. That sweat, persistence, conviction in knowing I still existed somewhere in there, and the movement is what allowed her to appear again. 

One foot in front of the other, I jumped back into ballet training, jazz, theater. I was training in any style that would allow me to escape into self-discovery. It wasn’t always easy. But I just kept going.

And in that, I found a powerful truth: I own all of me, my past, my present, my process. No one gets to decide how I feel in my body. No one hands me strength or sensuality. They live in me already.

Teaching other women brought that truth full circle. Because I realized I wasn’t just witnessing their transformation, I was moving through mine.

A SAFE SPACE TO START (EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE)

There is courage in starting, especially when you feel disconnected.

I see it all the time. Women walking into the studio unsure and carrying shame, carrying silence, carrying the weight of a world that hasn’t always made room for softness or self-prioritization.

But this space isn’t about arriving polished. It’s about being present.

You don’t have to know the steps, you have to take one.

The women who show up remind me daily that we don’t begin healed. We begin honest. That honesty becomes openness, which creates the space to grow, cry, laugh, and rediscover.

The studio becomes a space to experiment, a place to step into different archetypes: the rebel, the queen, the flirt, the goddess. And in trying them on, something softens and something shifts:

We begin to believe that strength and beauty live in us.

We see that confidence is a muscle.

We remember that self-love isn’t a destination; it’s a decision.

WE HEAL IN COMMUNITY TOO

There is unmatched power in women moving together.

I see it in every class. Women cheering each other on and helping one another remember counts, steps, and rhythms. But more than that, they remind each other who they are.

In community, we witness one another. We see the tears, the breakthroughs, the joy, the effort. We mirror each other’s strength back. We remind one another of softness, of humor, of grace.

And that has healed me, too.

Some days I come into the studio with a heavy heart. But I leave lighter, lifted, seen.

...The teens remind me where I started.

...The elders remind me that it never ends.

...That movement is always medicine.

...That there is always something to come home to in yourself.

STRONG. SEXY. WHOLE. 

STRONG

doesn’t mean armored.

It means resilient. It means tender and honest and still showing up.

SEXY

doesn’t mean performative.

It’s the intimacy of being fully present in your body.

And present not for anyone else’s gaze, but for your own joy.

WHOLE

doesn’t mean perfect.

Whole means knowing you are enough, right now,

exactly as you are.

These aren’t buzzwords. Movement has taught me that and continues to teach me that every day.

Every woman I’ve danced with has shown me something about strength, about softness, about coming home to your own body.

They say things like:

"I feel like myself again."

"I haven’t felt this confident in years."

"I remembered that I’m beautiful."

And I get it, because I’ve felt it too.

AN INVITATION

If any part of this spoke to you, maybe it’s time to come back to yourself, to move, to be seen. Maybe it's time to let your body speak before the world tells you what it should be.

I’ll be right here, holding space for you. We heal in movement, and we rise in rhythm.