Broche Banter #33 -- My 2020 Story: A Story of Gratitude, Loss, and Hope
This podcast episode is a little different. Many of us are re-entering lockdowns, again feeling separated from our communities, and maybe even wondering what’s the point of it all. Looking ahead at a difficult winter, wondering how we’ll make it through.
So, I wanted to take a moment, inspired by the season of giving thanks on Thanksgiving, to share my story. The last time I shared my own story on the podcast was episode 12 in June, right after I made the decision to close the studios. Since then, I’ve spent the summer healing, growing, and discovering. I have tried to write this story many times this summer. But now I am ready. The story is ready. And I think the time is right.
This episode is not a glossy highlight reel of good things. It’s messy and sad at times, but with what I think is an ending of optimism. I hope my story will give you a sense of hope in this dark time. So come along for this ride with me.
I am grateful for 2020 in all of its dumpster fire glory 🔥💩 For helping me discover what truly matters, for helping me find my confidence, and for seriously making me a stronger person. For helping me reach my goals: New ideas, new experiences, and confidence.
Before we get to the show, let’s take our Broche Bite!
But first, let’s take our Broche Bite
Well, today, it’s more of a nibble. Just a quick quote from Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney:
“Optimism emerges from faith in yourself. It's not about saying things are good when they're not, and it's not about conveying blind faith that "things will work out," it's about *believing* in your abilities.”
This year has been a challenging year for us all, but I am grateful for the entire experience and wouldn’t trade the events of 2020 for anything. That may sound unbelievable, but stay with me and I’ll explain it all.
At the end of 2019, my goals for 2020 were:
✅ New ideas
✅ New experiences
✅ Confidence
But like .... I envisioned trying some new restaurants, learning how to go upside down in pole dancing, reading self-help books, and introducing some new services at the studio 😂
So yeah. Spoiler alert: 2020 kind of gave me what I wanted in a weird and twisted way 🤨 I am not religious, but I can’t help but hear the phrase: “God works in mysterious ways” 🤔😂🧐
Anyways, why did I pick these 3 goals? It’s hard to explain what led me to these goals without giving you a picture of where I started this year, so let me backup a bit.
For those of you who are new to Broche Ballet, first of all, welcome! Second of all, I’ll give you an overview of the journey that led me here.
I started ballet at the age of 17 in San Diego. I don’t remember the exact reasons and I don’t recall a lifelong obsession with ballet, but I do remember that I was bored and tired of everything to do with high school.. Tired of marching and concert band where I had played flute, euphonium and was drum major, and was ready for a new challenge. I wanted to try something that would be the hardest possible thing I could think of. I thought of ballet, since I was (and still am) very clumsy, inflexible, and rather infamous for being generally uncoordinated.
So, one day, I bought a leotard and tights from the mall, and went to an adult beginner class at the California Ballet with Oscar, in a studio wedged between two car dealerships. I was thrilled that I had a job and a little extra money to try a new hobby. I immediately fell in love and felt at home. It was so challenging, the music was so lovely, and all of the problems of life seemed to melt away while my mind was busy puzzling at the barre. I was totally confused and had no idea what was going on, but I loved it. For me, ballet has always been introspective for me, a time when my mind can be calm and quiet which is a nice change of pace from its usual state of chaos and mayhem.
I think we all have a sort of “Je Ne Sais Quoi“ about ballet, where we know we love it, but can’t quite pinpoint concretely why. I call it the ultimate trap … it’s insanely hard, but we love it and can’t stop doing it even though we have no idea why!
So back when I was 17, many of my peers knew what they wanted to do with their lives, but I had no idea. All I knew was that I didn’t want to sit at a desk all day, that I had many different and seemingly random interests, and that I loved to be busy. I often struggled to name any single one thing I enjoyed, and had no idea what I’d choose for a college major.
All of the grownups in my life told me I’d be hard-pressed to find something that scratched all those itches and that I ought to just get used to the idea of a regular desk job.
Around the time I started ballet, I serendipitously received a letter in the mail inviting me to a scholarship program in New York City to study computer science at Pace University. I didn’t necessarily have a passion for computer science, but I did enjoy math, physics, and languages, so studying computer science wasn’t completely out of left field. I didn’t know what I’d major in, so I was also open to ideas.
And, it was a pipe dream of mine to live in Manhattan after I had been on a short 8th grade trip there. I remember getting off the bus at probably the age of 13 in Times Square and thinking “Wow, this is it! This is home, I‘ve made it!” The buzz, the lights, the people, the excitement, the theater, I was enamored! Of course, when I got home and told my parents I wanted to live in Manhattan, they thought I was nuts.
But when that letter from Pace University arrived, it was perfect. We have no idea how Pace found me, since I hadn’t taken the SAT’s or anything yet, but life is funny.
So I accepted the offer. I moved across the country to live in Manhattan and study Computer Science. It was not without tears, and I remember the moment of despair when I realized that I’d never live with my parents again.
Once I arrived in New York City, I kept piecing my ballet training together with a combination of open adult classes all over the city, private lessons with an incredible instructor named Beth who would eventually give me my start in teaching, and sort of stumbling (or maybe you’d say sneaking) into the Dance Minor program at Pace University. Nearing the end of college, I auditioned all over town for summer intensives that accepted people in their early twenties, and ended up attending 3 of them -- Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, Gelsey Kirkland Intensive, and Kat Wildish’s Performing Intensive. During that time, I still harbored dreams of becoming a professional dancer, all the while still studying computer science and pursuing that career path, too. My advisor, Dr. Hill always encouraged my passion for dance, even though neither of us knew where it would go.
After graduating college, though, ballet fell to the wayside. I got a full-time job as a web developer at StreetEasy, and wondered about the point of life, the point of dancing, and whether there was a reason to keep dancing if I’d never amount to anything with it. I wondered if this was it, if this was all there was to life, and I lost my taste for most everything while I tried to accept the plight of sitting at the desk looking at the computer day after day.
My professional career continued, moving eventually into product management at SchoolKeep (which, funny enough, I now use to host the Overture and Journey to Pointe courses at Broche). I was happy enough, I suppose, but I always wondered if there could be more to life.. if I could do something more exciting, and if so, what it would even be.
Needing something to do, I took up powerlifting. I kind of fell into weight lifting after one day I passed out on the subway in New York from not eating enough breakfast. I decided that was an unacceptable level of health and immediately changed my eating habits, discovering the Primal methodology of intuitive natural eating which also included weight lifting.
During that time powerlifting, I learned a ton of really important life lessons with my incredible coach Aidan, including the value of working hard a little each week. I had always believed I couldn’t actually improve at something without dedicating hours and hours to it, but after lifting only 2 hours a week and eventually being able to deadlift around 260 pounds, that belief changed. I also began to have faith that my body could actually change if I worked at it consistently.
Finally, after all of those life lessons gave me courage and an appetite for life again and helped me see there was a point in dancing, even if I couldn’t do it more than once a week, I made my way back to ballet with Beth, my private teacher, and she was thrilled to see me again. I enjoyed dancing for the love of it, and found that it was actually more enjoyable when I wasn’t putting so much pressure on myself to make something of it.
Several months after Beth and I re-started lessons together, she slipped down the stairs one day while we were leaving the studio after a lesson and broke her back.
She was bed-ridden and asked me to take over her business while she recovered. She spent hours training me how to teach, handing her private clients off to me to keep them dancing while she was out of the studio and so her business wouldn’t crumble during her recovery.
This is when I got the taste for teaching ballet, and felt the joy of sharing my passion for ballet with others. I’d been a math tutor in high school and college and worked at a Mathnasium for a while, so I did already know I loved teaching. The first payment I collected for a lesson was incredible -- I couldn’t believe someone paid ME to teach THEM ballet. Wow!
For about a year, I continued working full-time and would teach a few hours each night and several hours on Saturday’s and Sunday’s. She continued to train me on proper teaching methodologies, safe technique, and how to work with adult bodies. I studied anatomy, injury prevention, ballet technique and physics everywhere and any chance I could find.
Then, I ended up deciding to move to Denver for a whole host of reasons. Beth’s condition continued to worsen and we sadly said goodbye as she parted ways from this earth.
When I moved to Denver, I thought maybe it was the end of that little stint of teaching ballet in my life. But, I had a sliver of hope that maybe I could at least keep teaching a few private lessons on nights and weekends while I kept working remotely for SchoolKeep in New York, so I started poking around at options.
In New York, I would teach at an incredible place called Ripley Grier where you can rent dance studios of all sizes by the hour. So, I randomly called up a building that I had found in an advertisement in an Airbnb when we had visited Denver to find an apartment, and asked if I could rent his commercial space by the hour. I had literally no idea what I was doing. I envisioned myself like wheeling in a dance floor to set up for lessons or something. Ha! He was super nice, but also was like “um, no, haha, but you can rent it for 1 year!” He didn’t have any vacancies, but he said he’d call me back if anything opened up.
Then, about 3 months later in February of 2017, he called me up with a vacancy. I hemmed and hawed and after about a gagillion financial projections, I finally said yes.
I’d only lived in Denver for about 2 months, which in hindsight, is not the best way to research a market before opening something, ha. I guess I got lucky, and besides, ballet is universal!
A few months of planning, setting up websites, etc passed by, my dad flew out to help me install the dance floor, and I opened the doors on May 15, 2017. But no one came initially. It wasn’t until July that people started to come. Eventually it became clear that groups would be more successful than private lessons, so I changed my model to arrange small 3-person classes. That’s all I thought I could fit in the tiny space, and I knew it worked well at Mathnasium, where we taught the kids in groups of 3 and found really good success with that number of students. It’s enough to pay attention to each of them, but that no one feels watched, and they can bond and share the experience.
I loved the 3-person classes and designed them to be structured and grouped so the same people would come to the same classes. I always felt frustrated that in order to get good ballet training, I had to turn to private lessons, so I wanted to create something structured like the opportunities that kids have that would give adults the ability to go from A-Z.
From there, the ballerinas started really loving it and coming in.
By December 2017, the studio was growing, but I was exhausted from working full-time from about 5am-3pm, and then teaching classes from about 4-9pm on the weekdays, and a few hours of classes each of the weekend days. So, I quit my full-time job and took the leap. It’s not that the money was there yet, but the momentum was, and I couldn’t really continue to do both things at that level for much longer.
Fast forward to two years later at the end of 2019 at the time I set those goals. We had grown to 3 locations, a team of over 10, and were starting to hum along. We had put on an absolutely incredible recital in September 2019, dancers were getting their first pairs of pointe shoes, double pirouettes, and more. Personally, I was also training with our Broche teachers in our program and achieved so many of my own ballet goals, including high extensions, triple pirouettes, and solid pointework.
Many things were going well.
So what led to those goals? What may not be obvious from the outside looking in, is that it was actually a pretty stressful time for me.
First, the business was not yet profitable by that point. It was bringing in enough to pay the bills, and even though I had been running the studio as my sole job for 2 years, I actually didn’t take my first paycheck until February of 2020 (and then of course stopped taking pay again in March).
How was that possible? Well, I had saved up for years in my professional career so that I could have the runway to quit my job and start something of my own, though I never DREAMED it could be a ballet-related business. If you recall, I always dreamt of something more, and had been saving runway ever since I can remember for the time when that something more came along. My fiancée calls me Scrooge McDuck, because I love to save money so much and strongly dislike spending money.
So I had time initially and it was a calculated risk as all startups are, but 2020 was the end of that personal runway. While it was going to plan that I could begin to get paid in February, it was not without its anxiety seeing the runway coming to an end.
Second, I was constantly anxious about the future of the business. With the high rate of turnover of dancers quitting the program for standard adult-hood reasons, I was yet to be fully confident whether a structured program that we offered could actually work with the nature of adult life. The ballet results were amazing, but the structured program is quite the challenge to layer into adulthood.
While I was obviously betting my business and my livelihood on the concept of small structured curriculum-based classes, the jury was most definitely still out. I really wanted it to work, but I was scared that it wouldn’t.
Not to mention, we were feeling the limits of our small studio spaces, unable to experiment with different size classes to make the numbers more sustainable. Needless to say, there was an uphill battle ahead to iron out the kinks.
Throw in heavy imposter syndrome to the mix. I seriously doubted my capabilities as a leader. How can I, me, a late starter, knowing so little in the grand scheme, lead this team of incredible teachers? And what do I know of running a business?
And finally, luck played a big role in how I got my start teaching and in how I came across the first studio space, so I feared failure because I was unsure if I lost this business if I would be able to actually start a new one. I had internalized the idea that opportunities like this are hard to come by and believed that I would likely still have to relegate myself to a regular job. I still didn’t quite believe that I deserved what I had, nor did I fully believe in my ability to overcome setbacks and challenges.
My greatest fear was losing the studios, and I constantly carried that fear with me. Daily. Every problem that arose, and every dancer who quit had the possibility of bringing up a negative thought spiral of worst case scenario. My mind would frequently spiral to imagine what it would feel like if everyone quit at the same time. I dwelled on this fear, and held it close to me.
All I could see was how the business was not yet enough. Not good enough. Not big enough. Not keeping enough dancers happy. Not growing fast enough. How I was not a good enough leader, dancer, or business owner.
So when it came time to set goals for 2020, I decided against setting numerical goals like double pirouettes en pointe or certain numbers of dancers in the studio like I usually did. Instead, I thought these 3 goals would help me feel confident, feel like a leader, and figure out how to get the studio to a sustainable phase in its life while finding my own happiness and peace:
Again, those goals were:
✅ New ideas
✅ New experiences
✅ Confidence
The end of 2019 was starting to look up, but I was under a great deal of self-inflicted stress at that point and was searching for the next phase in the studios and in my own sense of fulfillment.
It looked like things were just starting to turn the corner in February, and I was finally starting to feel hopeful after that long time of feeling apprehensive.
So in March, when we first had to shut down, I was absolutely determined to make it through. I wasn’t going to let this stop me from continuing the dream!
I really didn’t want to lay off the team, and I found work for anyone on the team who wanted it during that time. The team had entrusted me with part (or all in some cases) of their livelihood and I took that commitment really seriously. They were my number one priority. After all they’d done to support the studios and my dream, I wanted to do everything I could to support them.
The team came along for the ride with me, but even though they tried to stay positive, I am sure it was not easy for them to have to change gears on a dime, dealing with their own life crises and anxieties, all the while trying to learn new skills and adapt to keep the studio going. But, they believed in the studio and the mission and mustered their courage to come along into this new world.
They went to work teaching online, starting this podcast, writing helpful blog posts, anything that felt like it would help us for the future when we’d eventually re-open. I saw it as a time to invest in content for the ballet community.
There was nowhere near enough revenue to support all the work they did, but we had a little business savings, credit cards, and the shutdown was theoretically only for a few weeks. Lol.
And, my 3 landlords were supportive, encouraging, and allowed me to defer rent as I needed. We got the Paycheck Protection Loan for May & June.
So then you’re wondering, sounds like it was going ok, so what happened to culminate in the permanent closure of the studios on June 30, 2020?
Alright. I’m about to get real and go deep. It is not my goal to garner pity or sympathy, but to set the stage of the level of depth of this experience, and to hopefully resonate with the depths that you may also be experiencing during this time. And to further contrast the gratitude and optimism that I feel now to give you even more hope for yourself and your future. I hope to illustrate how far I fell and how far I’ve come out of it, to give you optimism that you can do it too in whatever you’re facing.
Ok, are you ready? Let’s go.
Well, between March and June, I lost my courage, my confidence, and my hope.
Because of this experience, I’ve grown stronger, and I believe that the Julie of today could have made it through, but the Julie of early 2020 had much yet to learn. And I’ll share what I learned at the end.
First, remember how I said my greatest fear was losing the studios and everyone quitting at the same time? Well, that happened. My literal worst fear that I actually feared on a daily basis came true. Nearly ¾ of people actually DID quit within the same week. We actually DID process a deluge of cancelations, unsubscribes, and a few nasty messages. I had always wondered if the studio would survive a recession. The first thing to go is a high-priced luxury hobby. And so when it was the first thing to go in the pandemic, I thought it was finally happening.
The online studio was empty as sadness overcame the desire to dance and classes were empty. Even Instagram stopped dancing, all of us too sad to find our way to the barre. The theaters were empty and shows canceled.
For a moment that felt like an eternity, ballet died.
Second, my own personal escape mechanism of riding the Peloton stationary bike in my building’s gym was gone. My journey with the Peloton bike and instructors had begun in October 2019, and even though I just started so that I could learn more about their motivational tactics for the benefit of our own dancers, it actually changed me. As much as I’ve hated cardio, their instructors actually motivated me to ride a stationary bike once a week, face my inner demons, and understand mental strength.
I learned that if I ever needed courage, all I had to do was hop on the bike and overcome physical challenges with Robin or Leanne in my ear, and it would translate to courage in anything else I was facing.
The day my apartment building announced we were unable to use the Peloton bike in the gym, I thought “I just can’t bear this without Robin.” But, I was desperate for mental strength, so I subscribed to their digital app and discovered HIIT cardio with Rebecca. I would do burpees and air punches in my tiny apartment, crying and pushing and sweating it out with her. She was my savior. I remember one time, she was describing a workout as feeling like a tidal wave is coming at you and not being sure if you can make it through. But, one step at a time, you make it to the end, and you can feel proud that you conquered it. And I thought that would be symbolic of my journey with COVID. It felt like a tidal wave, but just needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I even worked towards my first ever pull-up just to keep trying to prove to myself that I could overcome hard things. I was treading water trying to build my mental strength and stamina fast enough to keep up with the growing demands.
But, I was still new in my journey to mental strength and feeling disconnected from Robin was actually really devastating.
Third, it was a plain and simple emotional roller coaster. The ups and downs were so intense.
The downs were downright awful. The pit in my stomach as I shut off all of the studio systems and sent an email to the team and the studio that we could no longer provide them with their place of refuge. The endless sleepless nights crawling into my sweet dog Tina’s crate, my hot tears dampening her fur, wondering if I had it in me to keep fighting for much longer. Drinking more vodka than I’m willing to put a number on. Hyperventilating after looking at financial projection spreadsheets showing how much money we’d likely lose, needing to vigorously exercise to force my body to take in oxygen. Unable to eat, the ball of anxiety and dread of events to come taking up too much room for food. The sheer workload and long hours of transitioning the whole studio, team, and systems to online ballet classes. Trying to escape in any way possible. Right after actually shutting the studios down, Tommy asked where I wanted to go. I said I didn’t care, I just wanted to keep going and didn’t want to come back until it was over. We even bought hard candies to suck on so that I could stop from clenching my jaw throughout the day.
But, some days the highs were as high as the lows were low, and I’d allow myself to ride them to the top because it felt so darn good in comparison. Optimism, hope, human connection, excitement. The adult ballet festival was a major pick-me-up for me. The highs were incredible. Absolutely incredible. Top-of-the-earth incredible. Meeting new people, learning new things. Definitely checked off those first two 2020 goals: “new ideas” and “new experiences.”
The highs were possibly almost as destructive as the lows, though, because the contrast was so great and made the lows feel even worse. And the highs were just as exhausting. I remember at that time I had just started branching out into meditation with the Peloton app, and one of the instructors was suggesting that mental strength meant just as much not getting swept up in the good as the bad, and that emotional steadiness was a goal. I was definitely not practicing emotional steadiness, and let my emotions run me ragged.
Fourth, every time I opened social media, I couldn’t help but see endless conversations talking about how much everyone hates dancing at home — chipping away the hope that any of us dance studios could make it through on our only chance of revenue, which was the topic of so much disdain. Imagine the only thing you can offer for the foreseeable future being the topic of disdain, disgust, and complaints for so many. “Zoom ballet” had the most negative of connotations. I should have stopped using social media, but it was our only way of marketing and finding potential new dancers, so I felt stuck there. Each conversation chipping away at any remaining threads of hope.
Fifth, around this time, the civic unrest began after the horrific death of George Floyd. Did you watch the video? It was intensely disturbing and will really make your stomach turn. Seriously hard to watch. The Black Lives Matter movement blossomed and brought up so much more angst.
At the same time, I experienced a whole host of messy and complicated feelings about it from a different perspective. Where I lived in downtown Denver and my building was the staging for swat teams and police to prepare for the unrest. Dozens of seriously armed police and SWAT team officers swarmed our lobby and street. Explosions and fires (not to mention an 8pm curfew) made it so we were not safe to take the dogs outside for the last walk before bed. So we left and stayed in a basement in Wyoming for a week, and then at my grandfather’s partner’s house for another week.
I felt even more despair and frustration settling in, as I saw our sacrifices of closing our business and staying home to save lives now for naught, as people took to the streets in droves. Not to mention, seeing graffiti and smashed windows on my street of restaurants and businesses who had barely hung on through the first lockdown. I’ve always loved thriving cities and to see Denver boarded up, graffitied, smashed, and empty was crushing.
And finally, when we did look at reopening in June, most dancers were understandably not comfortable returning to our small studio spaces for class. It was going to be a small reopening and class size limits would make it really challenging to make the numbers work. Prices would have to be so high to be able to make ends continue to meet. Plus, I had mistakenly followed the common advice at the time to sell pre-paid goods to continue to collect revenue while closed. So, dancers were rightfully expecting to be able to use their prepaid tuition, and we were looking at collecting no additional revenue those first couple of months of being open.
To be clear, there were a handful of incredibly supportive dancers who were so generous, thoughtful, and helpful. But, unfortunately, external support doesn’t equal internal support. When your own voice of self-doubt is so loud, then the voices of support can never be loud enough to drown it out.
I could have financially held on a little longer, but I was beaten down and out of steam. The fight ahead to make it through the remainder of the year was too much to bear. I’d been exhausted by the emotional roller coaster of it all after years of dwelling on the fears of losing the studios. Talks of the fall wave and more potential lockdowns combined with it all was too much. I could not maintain the fight and I had to throw in the towel. The financial situation was equally bleak and would have taken an army to come out of, but I had given up in my heart. Perhaps it was selfish, but I tapped out.
It was a near-impossible decision to make, but I knew it was right for me and had to be done. I was going to run myself into the ground, financially and emotionally.
The worst day since the days when each of my grandmothers passed away was that team zoom call where I told them the studios wouldn’t make it and they’d be out of work in the worst possible time.
I called my mom minutes before and she told me it would be ok, and that the team would understand. She said that they’d likely be sadder for me than for anything else. She sat with me while I cried for a few minutes, and then sent me off to call the team.
She was right. They are incredible people and they could see how dejected I was. They were sad for me. Can you believe it? In a time when they were losing everything too, they were sad for me. We all cried together on Zoom for a while.
But, I didn’t cry again until the day I said goodbye to my favorite studio, the Bannock studio. I was totally emotionally drained and had no tears left to cry.
So, all of these events led to June 30th, the day our team had our last gathering and I turned in the keys for the studios, leaving it all behind. I left behind everything I had been building. My team, my local community of dancers, and my life savings which I had put into building and sustaining the studios.
And yet after all that, I wouldn’t trade these events for anything. Why? How could I possibly be grateful for this experience?
Let’s get to the healing chapter that began on July 3rd when I moved out of Denver to Loveland, a little town about an hour north of Denver. (Yes, that’s just 4 days after closing the studios).
I experienced pure bliss for about 2 months, while my brain kept all of those memories in a little box in the corner of my subconscious. With a complete change of pace and scenery, there was really nothing to trigger old memories to resurface. July and August are some of the happiest months I can remember.
Relief from stress, feeling so grateful to have a stomach full of food and not vodka and butterflies, feeling so grateful to fill my lungs fully instead of feeling the constriction of anxiety. It felt like walking on air.
I started daily exercise with Peloton, determined to prioritize myself. When the future is uncertain, the one thing I know is that I’m attached at the hip to this mind and this body, and that it would behoove me to show it some love.
Feeling supported and held by the soothing yoga and meditation classes with Peloton, I eventually began to feel brave enough to open up the mental boxes of memories to do some serious healing, reflecting, and growing.
The instructors helped me see that feeling weak is actually just what it feels like in the moment when you are building strength and overcoming challenges.
And, I learned that you don’t need to find ways to escape your mind and your thoughts, but actually embrace them and be with them in order to feel happy. To be able to, as Anna says, “land in the safety of your own container.”
Every day, I felt the steady unwavering support of my fiancée for just quietly being there without judgment, never rushing me to complete a spell. Just being there, giving me space to just be quiet, to cry, or to do whatever I needed. But all the while, maintaining his steadfast optimism that the future would be great.
My family supported me through all of these decisions even though they, too, had put so much into the studios.
My friend and fellow entrepreneur Julee has been there for me with our daily morning 20-minute zoom calls through all of the darkest days, watching me cry remotely and helping me through my anxiety even though she was facing her own business struggles. On the morning of that terrible day I told the team the studios wouldn’t make it, she wisely told me not to wish away even the worst days, because those, too, are a part of your life just like any other day.
Now that it’s all drifting further and further into the rearview mirror, I can see that I’ve gained the most valuable thing ever: a sense of confidence and fearlessness.
What I built has crumbled, but yet, the world still spins. We just keep adapting and plodding along, day after day.
I feel a sense of peace and calm knowing that your worst fear can come true and yet you can still come out the other side ok.
That I can coexist with my thoughts, even the dark sad, and scary ones, and it’s ok. I don’t need to escape. Just as I’ve come to understand that physical discomfort is ok, so is mental discomfort.
For the first time, I can say without a doubt that I love who I am and that I have confidence that I can handle whatever comes my way.
As I rebuild Broche Ballet, it is with a clear head, a strong mind, and an outlook of optimism and positivity. I truly love what I’m doing now with the online program. I’m back to being a 1-person team, learning a lot, and feeling directly connected with the dancers. The low-cost unlimited model means seeing the dancers quite frequently and seeing fast improvement.
But, if the new online venture doesn’t work out, another idea will come. I no longer fear losing my business. I no longer fear being found out as an imposter. I obviously don’t want to have those things happen, but I am not afraid.
Now I see that when you dwell on the worst-case scenario, it is ironically simply begging to come true. And when it does manifest, instead of seeing it as just another challenge in a series of challenges, it becomes a self-affirmation of failure. What could have just been another nail to hammer in becomes the nail in the coffin if that’s how you look at it.
I suppose the whole Denver venture could be seen as a failure, but I guess it’s all in how you look at it. Thinking of it in comparison with education instead is a helpful re-frame. The whole experience is comparable in price to a fancy degree. And goodness did I learn a lot, meet so many wonderful people, and have gobs of wonderful memories to treasure. So, it could be a failure and a bunch of lost money, or it could be an unorthodox way to complete an MBA program.
Has it been easy? No. It’s been quite unpleasant actually. Would I like to live through 2020 again? No thanks ❌🙅🏼♀️ But, I’m forever grateful for where I am now, who I am now, and the freedom I feel knowing that I can make the hard choices, live with the challenge, and still be ok.
I hope this resonates with many of you for your own events of this year, or other big life-changing events that showed you what you were made of and propelled you into the next stage of your life.
I hope that this story gives you optimism and hope in your own life, in this dark time, that things will be ok. They may not be what you want. They may be tough... like unimaginably tough. But you’ll learn what you are made of. You’ll discover your strength, and you’ll find yourself in the process.
I am still extremely lucky to be able to blend my work and my passion, but now I trust my ingenuity and ability to adapt and overcome challenges too. As Bob Iger says, I have faith in my abilities, and that is the true source of optimism.
I am grateful for all of you who kept showing up and keeping the passion alive, day after day, helping me keep the hope alive in my heart that the fight was worth it. That dancers are still going to dance, even when the world is crumbling.
Just like the Who's in Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, even if Christmas doesn't have all the trappings and fixings, even if we can't dance in a big studio or on a big stage, that's not what it's about. It's about moving, connecting with our communities and families (even if in different ways), and expressing ourselves.
So yes, I am grateful for 2020 in all of its dumpster fire glory 🔥💩 For helping me discover what truly matters, for helping me find my confidence, and for seriously making me a stronger person. For helping me reach my goals: New ideas, new experiences, and confidence.