Be Thankful for your Body

Thanks for being pretty awesome, body!

When it comes to body love, I often talk the talk without walking the walk. I'll post empowering articles and I'll encourage other ladies, but then I look at my own body and I'm like "Teeth, why you gotta be so sticky-outy? Belly, why you gotta be so fat?* Hips, why are you so TIGHT?"

So I have to be honest, I haven't been dancing this week. Part of it is natural laziness, and we don't have bellydance class this week, but it was easy to make excuses because my right hip was so. damn. sore. And it has been for about a week. I don't know what I did to it, but I am guessing at some point I stretched too far, or forced a stretch when I wasn't warm enough, and I messed things up. I mean, it's not unusual for me to have a little pain in my right hip after a really hard class, but this was a lot of pain and in different areas of my hip, and it sucked. And I honestly think I made it worse by using the pain as an excuse to not go do some ballet or what-have-you, because then I sat home and didn't get warm and spent too much time sitting on the couch with 20+ lbs of dog pinning my hip into position. I'd think to myself "I should warm up and stretch this bad girl out while I watch this DVD" but then I'd sit down and someone would get into my lap and that would be it.

This was a good reminder to be kinder to my body, in my actions and my words. To honor my limits from day to day, to have patience with the sloooow progress of stretching and not try to force my hips to be more like other dancers' hips. And besides, my body gets a lot of other things right. It's given me long, flowing hair, strong fingernails, elegant limbs, pretty eyes, and skin that takes ink well. I don't have any major health problems, I don't have to wear glasses, and I don't have allergies. Good job, body! You're pretty awesome.

Take a moment and thank your own body for the stuff it gets right. After all, it's the only body you're going to get, until we perfect either cloning technology or android bodies.

*Ok, that's my own damn fault. I eat cookies every day. Cookies are amazing. 

Hard to stay sad

My husband often jokes that our little corgis, Daisy and Maggie, are the best investment he ever made because I can never stay upset with them around. This is an old picture, but this is pretty much the exact faces they were making at me when I came home from class today.

It's also hard to stay sad with so many good friends in my life. I hesitated to post last night because I didn't want to seem like a drama ball, rolling around and soaking up the drama and needing attention from my friends -- but I kind of did need it. Maybe not the ego boosts (which ARE nice), but I really, really needed to hear other dancers and artistic types saying that they have gone through the same thing. I needed to know that this is something that I need to push through, instead of letting it keep me down. I needed to know that I am not just being a drama llama, but that this is part of the normal growth of a dancer.

Anyway, I am still feeling down, but getting better. I danced this morning. I mean. really. f*cking. danced. (forgive my asterisked language, but it was that intense) I danced so hard that I was honest-to-gosh crying, and that doesn't really happen to me. I danced so hard that I'm amazed I didn't hurt myself. Most importantly, I danced so hard that I remembered why the hell I do this -- I do it because I love it. I do it because the music moves me, physically and emotionally, and while I still need to work on technique, I can dance up a storm and I can let everything I'm feeling come out, and share that with the audience (in this case, an audience of corgis).

And then I did some spot turns and some chaine turns. And they still sucked. But I am going to do them until they don't.

A big thank you to everyone who put up with my drama, and took the time to reassure me, or give me a pep talk, or tell me to just get through it. I love you all.