Back on the Dance Floor: Beyond Self-Care

The past five months have felt like five years. I think most everyone who finds this post will have an idea of what I’m talking about. (In case you want more context, read this.)

Rolling into this year, I was feeling great: healthy, happy, comfortable with myself, confident about the future, satisfied with my social life, and ready to start focusing on truly enjoying life instead of just getting by. I started submitting my latest novel to literary agents. I outlined the next novel I planned to write. I put some money aside into a vacation fund, so I could take my daughter to see the ocean.

And then, on January 20th, it felt like someone yanked the rug out from under my feet.

Cracks spread up and down my smooth and beautiful life. There is something unique about serving as a therapist during times of societal chaos and crisis. Most of the time, as a clinician, my clients’ hardships are not my own, and I feel like I’m standing on a sturdy dock, tossing a line out to a struggling swimmer and shouting encouragement. Now—like during COVID—it feels more like the boat has capsized and we’re all in the water together.

And that water has been pretty turbulent. As executive orders have attempted to reshape life for so many people in this country, I have felt intense pressure to have answers for my clients, to know what to do, to be able to tell people what they do and don’t have to worry about. As the economy has heaved and shuddered under the weight of erratic tariffs, my own financial security has no longer felt so secure; I converted my vacation fund to an emergency fund and paid off my car to reduce monthly expenses. As I’ve worried about losing access to healthcare, having my rights whittled away and my safety eroded by political attacks on the LGBTQ+ community, and raising a daughter in a country that is becoming increasingly hostile to girls and women, my creative energy has drained. I even gave up on my novels. By April, life had shrunk to nothing but headlines, chores, and emotional exhaustion.

A frequent topic in therapy sessions these days is self-care:

How do we stay resilient, stay joyful, stay connected to our bodies, while safety and stability are wrenched out of our hands? What do we do when deep breathing and muscle relaxation aren’t enough? How can we take care of ourselves in sustainable, body-focused, joy-centered ways for the foreseeable future?

I can’t tell you how to do this. But I can share with you what has helped me: I’ve gone back to ballroom dancing.

One Sunday morning about a hundred days into this, I was driving to my super-queer progressive church while listening to Chappell Roan. As I cruised past Riverpoint Parkway, I savored a moment of gratitude for my daughter. She gives shape to my days, gives me something positive on which to focus my energy, keeps me grounded with her constant physical and emotional needs, reminds me of hope. I don’t know what I’d do without her, I thought as Chappell Roan gave way to Brandi Carlile. Then, in that slightly dissociative state that arises while driving a familiar route, I started wondering: If I’d never had a child, what would I do with my life besides work?

The answer came to me at once—so immediately, in fact, that it made me dizzy: I’d start ballroom dancing again.

Really? I challenged myself, slightly incredulous. As a lesbian? And what, dance with men?

No, I realized. I’d learn to lead this time. I’d dance with women. I’d learn to lead, but not like a man; I’d stop impersonating a gender role at all, and just dance totally as myself.

By the time I arrived at church, it occurred to me that perhaps ballroom dancing was something I could still do, even as a single mom. It would be good for my daughter to see her mom do something just for herself. I’ve lived with scarcity long enough. Abundance doesn’t just happen; you have to believe in it enough to act on it, and only then does it become real.

I didn’t hear a word of the sermon that day; I was buried in my phone, looking up ballroom dance studios in my area, comparing prices, and drafting an email in my head that went something like, Is there room in your studio for a woman who wants to learn to lead?

It was a bad case of FOMO that got me into ballroom dancing in the first place.

As a child, I never danced; I was proud of being a tomboy, and wouldn’t have been caught dead in a pink tutu and ballet slippers. Instead, I played soccer and earned a black belt in taekwondo. But the truth was, I was terrified of dancing.

When I left home for college, I was determined to learn how to dance. I didn’t know a soul in my small university town. It was a perfect opportunity to try something new, to become someone new. So along with French 101, my Honors core class on world religions, a way-over-my-head English class on literary criticism, and Literature of White Men (whoops, I mean, Literature of Western Civilization), I also signed up for a beginning jazz dance class.

Within a few weeks, however, I realized that several of my dormmates were taking a ballroom dance class together. I knew nothing about ballroom dance, but it sounded elegant, sophisticated, feminine—all qualities I felt I lacked. But it was too late into the semester to sign up; I would have to wait until January.

On the day registration opened, beginning ballroom was the first class I added. For the next four years, I took two or three dance classes every semester: jazz, ballet, hip-hop, modern…and ballroom, always ballroom. I had to try out twice before I made the fledgling ballroom dance team, but once I was in, I stayed in, even dancing with the team for a year after I graduated.

One of the proudest accomplishments of my young adulthood is that I conquered my fear of dance. I learned how to move gracefully in heels, how to wear false eyelashes and do stage makeup, how to swish around in a long gown and arc my arm perfectly, how to sashay my hips to Latin music, how to mold myself to a man’s body, how to follow a man’s lead—in essence, how to perform femininity. It was a skill that had previously eluded me, and I used it well for many years, cloaking myself in a straight, gender-conforming identity that insulated me from my own queerness even while it never stopped feeling like a performance.

I stopped dancing in 2012 when I moved away to prepare for grad school, but I never stopped missing it, or daydreaming of breaking out my dance shoes again. When I came out, ballroom dancing was the one piece of heteronormativity that I was a little sad to leave behind. There would be no point in my dancing with men anymore, I thought, and there was no space in the chic, binary world of ballroom dance for someone like me. I would just have to let it go.

I will be honest and say that it has taken a substantial amount of bravery to strap on my ballroom shoes, set foot on a dance floor after thirteen years, and learn how to lead.

My presence is subversive. When the class separates so that leads and follows can work on their specific footwork, my teachers keep stumbling, saying “gentlemen,” and then stammering, “I mean, leads.” I worry about what the other students think of me. I feel pressure to be the best in class, as if I have to earn the right to break the rules. And leading is hard, much harder than following; you have to think so much. I’m starting over at something I used to do well, and I make so many mistakes. It’s been humbling.

But oh, has it been good for my body and my heart. Dance has pushed the doomsday headlines and ceaseless catastrophizing out of my brain, allowed me to sleep again, reminded me how to have fun, helped me relax my neck and shoulders, worked some of the inflammatory cortisol out of my body. For the first time in months, there is no longer a pit in my stomach. Dance has turned out to be the self-care I’ve needed.

It’s different, coming back to dance now as a queer woman in my 30s, than it was half a lifetime ago, when I was an 18-year-old girl trying so hard to be straight.

Then, I was a sheltered conservative evangelical drawn to ballroom dancing by the traditional gender roles; now, I’m a queer liberal feminist intent on subverting the gender roles I once accepted without question. My body has changed, too. When I was 18, my body was strong, lithe, and brimming with energy. Years of chronic illness, sedentary work, and childbearing have made me slower and heavier, and my energy is more precious because of its scarcity.

It isn’t all bad, though. If I’d been given the choice, I think I would still have traded in my youthful looks and liveliness for the comfort I now have in my own skin. Though we’ve struggled through a lot together, I’m grateful for my body in ways I never was before, and I no longer take the ability to bend my knees and glide across a dance floor for granted, because I know it’s a gift. But maybe that’s the price of growing into myself. I finally feel like I deserve to take up the space my larger body requires, and I’ve stopped trying to diminish myself or fit a mold to be accepted. Once, I was self-conscious of my height and resentful of my flat chest and broad shoulders; now, I’m quite happy with my androgynous build. While I’d love to regain some muscle, I have no desire to look any different. My body is good; she’s carried me faithfully through the decades, and I’m learning to embrace her.

In college, I loved being a follow, and I worked hard to become good at it.

I enjoyed not having to think while I danced; the submissive role of following gave me freedom from decision-making or having to keep a list of steps in my head. And at that time in my life, sacrificing my agency in order to be absolved of responsibility seemed like a pretty good trade. (As a conscientious firstborn daughter in an extremely religious family, I was good at doing what I was told.)

A good follow, however, is not a passive partner. Following at its best is a delicious experience of being fully in the moment, fully present, fully embodied. You can’t think too hard; you have to stay in your body, and let your mind sink into an almost meditative state. When you’re following well, you’re at your most responsive; it’s an intensely aware state of being, characterized by a heightened sense of connection to your partner and to your own body. The dance becomes not an act of submission, but an act of co-creation.

I still enjoy following, but it no longer feels like me. Perhaps it never did; perhaps it always felt like playing dress-up in clothes that are too tight, and I just didn’t know until I finally got to be myself. And while dress-up can be fun every now and then, I’m done putting on an act.

For me, leading aligns with the more active stance I’ve taken in my own life. The definition of a protagonist is not “the good guy” of the story; no, a true protagonist is the character whose choices set the story in motion and drive the plot forward. To become the protagonist of my own story has required not just taking responsibility for my choices, but actually recognizing that I have the power of choice in the first place. And choice requires trust, embodiment, and profound connection—to myself, to those around me, to my spiritual source.

The beauty of a dance isn’t found in how it looks to outsiders, but in how it feels to be inside it—and that exquisite attunement, when done right, is pure pleasure. I am done performing my life for an audience; now, I live my life to make the most of my own experience of it. And so, to dance authentically, to dance joyfully, I will learn to lead.

And after all, isn’t joy the whole point?

After work, I practice my dance steps on my cracked and sloping driveway. My daughter, who is used to my sitting on the steps with a book while she rides her scooter around, is fascinated. She follows me around like a little duckling, getting under my feet as I twirl counter-clockwise down line of dance. So I teach her a simple box step, and then take her hands and lead her.

“Back, side, together. Forward, side, together. Good job, kiddo!”

“Mommy, let’s dance like two girls dancing!” she says, referring to her favorite YouTube compilation of the only same-sex couple in two decades of Dancing with the Stars history.

She pulls me to the center of the driveway and twirls herself under my arm, first one way and then the other. I circle my hand around her ribs and she flings herself into a dip, dropping her full weight into my arm. When she begs, I lift her up to my shoulder and spin around. With the breeze as our only music, we spin and leap and laugh. We dance playfully, joyfully, tenderly. And in my heart, I feel reverence.

Over and over again, I’ve seen people online talking about joy as political resistance.

While I’ve intellectually assented to the theory, I’ve struggled to understand how to do it. How can I be joyful when brown men, women, and children are being snatched off the streets and disappeared into detention centers? How can I be joyful as oligarchs demolish our economy and push countless families into poverty? How can I be joyful when my country is ending aid to starving children, erasing decades of progress toward the still-distant goal of racial equity, and stripping down an already unjust and inaccessible healthcare system?

While I was doomscrolling shortly after the 5.2 million-strong protests on April 5th, a video seized my attention. I’d been looking at image after image of white people wielding angry signs; this video was different. It was a street brimming with Black people, holding a protest in their own style. There was no shouting. Instead, music played. They danced in unison, feet stepping, heads bobbing, hands lifting. Instead of signs, many wielded fans, which they snapped to the beat of the music. This mass of bodies in perfect synchrony exuded joy—a resolute, determined, defiant joy. It was dance as life, dance as resistance, dance as protest. It was dance as abundance.

White people have a lot to learn.

Dance has become a symbol of my resistance. I will not live in fear; I’m going to show up at a public gathering with my full, queer self, and I’m going to dance my heart out. I will not live in scarcity; I’m going to act every day as though life can be more than mere survival. I will not live in isolation; I’m going to celebrate my body as she joins with the bodies of others through movement and touch, sweat and breath, consecrating our shared humanity on the dance floor.

There is more to say, perhaps, but my daughter will be home soon and I promised her we’d dance together in the living room. It’s become our thing; most evenings now, we turn on some music, or pull up a YouTube videos, and we dance with wild and delightful abandon. It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her.