Dancing With Words

     I grew-up in the dance world; spending my evenings at a local dance studio sashaying my way through the world of ballet, tap, & jazz. My first love would come much earlier than I had ever expected; instead of the cute boy in Social Studies, it was dance & I was 2. I danced every extra second I had in my days. Whether it be in front of the mirrors of the studio or in my kitchen where I had carefully moved aside the table and chairs to create center stage. I just danced and I loved every second of it. Dance soon became the essence of my life; I lived and breathed only to survive long enough to make it to my dance studio and be able to gasp my next breath.  The world of dance always had this strange effect on me. I was intrigued by its grace and perplexed by its magical and unexplainable ability to make me feel the way it did. It made me feel beautiful. It made me feel graceful. It made me feel alive.
    I continued to dance through-out high school but  in my late-teens/early 20s, I began working, I met & fell in love with Chad, & was going to school full-time. A few years later, we lost my brother & dance became something only in my past. However, fate had a different idea.
     A little over a year before I was diagnosed, I was lucky enough to re-discover my love of dance by coaching a high school dance team. I, very happily, found myself back in the world which I had grown up: sore muscles, tired feet, & exhausted, yet unwavering enthusiasm…but that would all change in April 2010.
    Very soon after diagnosis I made a promise to myself that I would spend the rest of my life, however long that may be, doing anything & everything to educate others about the seriousness of Rectal Cancer. Realizing how naïve I was to the disease prior to a face-to-face introduction, I recognized the best way to do this was to share my story with you, no matter how private or extreme my battle & the details may become.
    Along with dance, writing has always been an emotional outlet for me - so when I was no longer (physically) able to find solace in pirouettes or grand jetés, I found myself choreographing something else: words.
    Shortly after, I began looking into starting an online blog so I could share my thoughts with others, never really expecting it to go further than the people around me. “Goodbye Dancer, Hello Cancer” soon became my very public journal & has been my center stage ever since.
     When I was younger, dance was a way to express myself - to say in motion what I couldn't say in voice. Now my words are my dance; they are tiny steps throughout different combinations of my life.
     Beating cancer was, by far, the very best dance of my life. It made me feel beautiful. It made me feel graceful. It made me feel ALIVE...and as far as I'm concerned, there will never be a final curtain call because that is something to celebrate everyday.

1st recital.