Dancing: What a way to love your body!
When I am on stage and the lights are on me, I feel so full of love. I love putting on a show! The second the lights come up and the music starts, and I can feel the audience's eyes on me, I feel at home. I enjoy every moment of being on stage and when I catch myself in the mirror I even gasp at how truly beautiful I am. This is the real me. The me that is full and happy and passionate. Who I am on stage is who I crave to be every single day. I crave that uninterrupted gaze of the audience, the gushing applause, the smiles, the wonderment, and the enthusiastic response when my dancing is done. Dancing these past two weekends in the show Earth Girls Are Easy was a turning point in my life. For all the nerves and anxiety and build up, I left all that behind when I stepped onto the stage each night. I danced like it was the absolute last time I ever would, and it is for that reason I think people were so drawn to me. Every stranger that came up to me after a show said they absolutely could not take their eyes off me. I was brought to tears with their kind words and smiled widely and said thank you. I will never argue with such gratitude for my dance. With each compliment, I took a breath in and said thank you, because each time I heard their words, a permanent imprint was made on my heart.
I could have focused negative attention on my body and for my perceived flaws. I could have picked myself apart, and I almost did...
But each time those lights went up nothing else mattered.
My body is my joy and without it I would not be myself. These arms, these thighs, these taped up ankles and knees will never be anyone's but mine. I grow so much each time I am on stage that I feel 10 feet tall, strong like a warrior woman, so big that it is only me the audience sees. I take up space, I am large and grand, and they see Me.
How I am right now is how they saw me. Not a smaller version of me, not a work in progress, but the actual me. One woman said,
"No matter what you do in your life, please please follow your dreams."
And knowing now how much this experience has changed my life, I know I can do just that.
I haven't performed on stage in a dance performance like this in a long time. When I was in college I was so distracted by relationships and the loathing I felt for my changing body that I didn't feel connected to what I was doing. I wasn't empowered by rehearsals, and I definitely couldn't take in compliments. After a performance I would feel like running away and hiding because I wasn't proud of who I was and was unsure of what people thought of me. I sang for others, not myself. I danced to serve a group's purpose and not my own.
Now I dance just for me. I dance because I am alive. I dance to honor this life and this soul inside of me.
If I can recreate the feeling I had on stage every day of my life, I will know real joy. Dance class and rehearsal, not just performance, is a great tool for me to find joy in my body on a daily basis. The element of an audience and lights and costumes is gone but the feeling of support and love is still there. I find support from my teachers, I feel the love in my own gaze in the mirror, and I feel love for my body as I work to make it move exactly how I want, and by doing exactly what feels good. I used to compare myself to other people in dance class growing up, but in my current dance company I have so much gratitude for my own body! 
Because I don't feel competition with the other women, I am also able to feel appreciation for their bodies! The oldest women in my classes are in their 60's and 70's and they find great joy in movement, joy that perhaps they cultivated when they were my age. Backstage this weekend, I was talking to a woman who said that when teenagers started joining the studio she felt like she wanted to quit. She said she felt that they would judge her for being old and she wouldn't have a place in the company anymore. But what changed her mind was that she became friends with the young women and bridged the age gap. She knew then that they could all be in the company together and make it even stronger.
I had to hold in giggles when people commented on how beautiful I looked this weekend. Don't they know that I am always this beautiful? This kind of beautiful is always within me. But maybe I don't always get feedback because I don't always feel it in myself. When I do feel beautiful and worthy and full and happy, I giggle almost as if I should have known this all along!
In performing these past two weekends, I have learned that I absolutely can have these feelings about myself on a daily basis. Absolutely I can dance everyday. Absolutely I can take in what people say to me as gifts and give them back to myself when I am feeling down. Absolutely the world can be my stage, where the lights are the god and the music the goddess.
When I dance, I am Me. Absolutely.