Dancing in the ballet . . . a dream for as long as I can remember—my earliest memory in childhood is of a strong conviction that I would be a ballerina.
I had a Tina the ballerina doll, a storybook and a record my grandma had given me and I longed to be just like Tina. My grandma even made a matching outfit for me and Tina.

I was determined and mom could tell I was committed to doing whatever it took so she signed me up for ballet lessons (it was tap and ballet, there was no class of just ballet in our area for my age). I wanted to do just ballet, but . . . did I mention I was/am a strong-will child to the max, so I would not give up!

Unfortunately, I had rheumatic fever as a child, spent time in a clinic receiving treatments and I was in and out of the hospital until somewhere around the age of eleven. Mom was able to find a doctor doing a research project involving special injections that were supposed to bring improvement to me and eliminate the need for me to have so many periods of hospitalization.

AT THAT TIME, a standard part of treatment for rheumatic fever was a total
elimination of exercise or exertion of any kind. I graduated from high school
with NO physical education credits which were normally required in many
places in the United States, but I had a medical exemption so NO physical
education classes for me.

SO, before long, I was forced to stop my dance classes due to the exertion
required in tap dancing. I was SO devastated—I cried many times and felt
that my heart was crushed. I slept with my first hard-toe ballet shoes and
refused to give them up for a long time. Eventually, my mom packed away
my ballet shoes and Tina because she reminded me of the dream I felt
I had lost and I cried every time I saw her.

I still love ballet for the same reasons I wanted to be a ballerina –
I see the beauty, the grace, the storytelling –
and my heart would sometimes ache for the loss of that dream from
my childhood . . . to be a ballerina . . . dancing freely, joyously . . .
BUT WAIT—
I am a ballerina – I see beauty all around me, within my spirit I dance and
soar gracefully, and I feel compelled to find other ways to tell stories—
my childhood dream may look different than I thought it would,
(no rabbit fur in hard-toe shoes) but the dream still lives in me . . .
the heart of a ballerina lives on . . .
—-
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