Beauty from Pain

Remember your very first pointe class? How perfect the pointe shoes looked…how excited you were to finally get to stand on your toes?

how relieved you were to be done sewing ribbons on the shoes…

I chose to forget just how painful that first class was. It was decades ago, so it wasn’t too hard to do.

(and no, I hate to say I’m not exaggerating on that timeline).

But yesterday, I bought new pointe shoes again, spent two hours getting as much sewing done as I could, and headed into my first pointe class in 25 years.

And boy, did it hurt!! My toes were already sensitive from having tried on about 14 pairs of shoes that weren’t good fits, so that was a bad way to start. But I don’t think it can all be blamed on that.

The fun thing, though, was just how completely amazing it felt to do echappe and only have my hands lightly on the barre. To stand in sous sus and realize I still remembered how to get up into position properly. (after doing it the wrong way once, but we’ll choose to forget that part).

It made me wish I could tell my first ballet teacher about it. Unfortunately she passed away about ten years ago, so she doesn’t know that my love of dancing has permeated every part of my life the way it did when I was twelve.

Can you do me a favor? If you don’t still see your first dance teacher but have a way to get in touch with him/her, could you send a note to tell them how much those first lessons mean to you now?

And if you want to make it into a birthday present for me, let me know on Facebook or Instagram that you did it. Because then it’s almost like I can tell Mary Kay about how I’m getting back onto pointe.