The One Where the Dancer Needs Grace

The choreographer started class by repeating the words “progress, not perfection”, and additionally asked us to give ourselves grace, try not to hate on ourselves, and that she wished us a long and slow life of learning. What?! What is this? Again, she said--progress, not perfection. What an easy thing to say in a class of grounded contemporary dancers who wear their hearts on their cropped t-shirts, dripping from the angles of their hinged movement. The burning sensation was almost immediate behind my skin, tearful tension building behind my eyes. This impostrous feeling that somehow I wasn’t meant to be in that room. Grace, Sarah, give yourself grace. This movement isn’t as familiar to your body, and that’s okay. Being uncomfortable is the first step of learning, in fact, as infuriating as that can be. 

So, because this style of contemporary dance isn’t what I grew up with as my first dance language, I felt in over my head, but I was adamant about sticking it out with a positive attitude and going further than just “hanging on”. I don’t need to be, and will never be, perfect, but rather persistent in my pursuit of progress. That'll get a person a lot further in life.

I held on to the movement, remembering what a dear friend had relayed to me just the day before from another teacher, and that was to pick up something new in the movement each time the teacher goes through it. This time I got the elbow hit in the attitude turn, this time I figured out the counts to the floor work. It’s painstaking work when you feel in over your head, but you fight to hang on to what you do know and throw yourself into it, even if you go blank the next eight counts. At least your heart genuinely clings to something. And if you do that, it means you’re exposed to possibility. Always. That class ended up being a huge lesson in vulnerability and trust, and for that I am thankful.

Seven years ago I graduated college. After working a summer stock theatre contract, I took a Megabus to New York City to audition and visit an actor I was dating (CLASSIC summer stock romance, oh the days). This was in the height of what I like to refer to now as my “mental hell-th days” (I’m funny. Aren’t I funny?). At this time, anxiety made absolutely no sense to me, and my ups and downs could be described in the way Edgar Allan Poe would describe a maelstrom at sea: v. dark, v. intense. In short, I didn’t know what the f**k was going on in my body and I just rode the waves versus trying to understand them. I was a cute ball of hyperactivity, but my best life defense tactics were various ways to run away and avoid problems such as alcohol, caffeine, or literally going to another state to avoid being in my house (I now do all those things for fun). As stagnant and painful as those days could be, I look back now in gratitude of the woman I once was because she did something right: she persisted to progress. She didn’t know it at the time, but she was cycling through forms of doctors and lifestyle choices, trying on all the different hats of someone seeking healing. She was constantly hitting dead ends, but those dead ends and painful blocks were literally gathering and laying the stones for the big discoveries she would make a few years down the line. I'm leaving this here for me to read in five years. 

When I first figured out that the thought patterns I was experiencing were symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I felt in over my head. And that, my friends, is an understatement. Like, ok, so I’m crazy and my life is over, cool, cool. But, naming the symptoms or trouble spots is actually a lot further toward healing than you think. Naming the “problem”, or weakness, is the action that springboards you into the research and knowledge portion of your healing. You can't patch a hole if you don't know where the leak is coming from. Are you impressed with my analogies? I think my brain runs on analogies, puns, and Sara Bareilles lyrics. Solid combo. 

Baby steps, baby. Give yourself grace for the things you do not yet know. Especially the backslides, because those are important for reinforcement and repetition. And not the OCD kind of repetition. What? I’m allowed to joke about it.

You cannot become a master of something without hard work and persistence. And “master” is a bold word, because you cannot stay masterful at anything without continued work, forever and ever. You never arrive, but adapt and keep your strength up. Like dancing, where this week the focus is turns and the next it’s arms, mental health is learning how shifts in the everyday affect shifts in your mind everyday. You become increasingly masterful by observing your patterns, by researching, by getting super uncomfortable, exposing yourself to perceived “threats”, and failing over and over. But ultimately, you become masterful by giving yourself grace for the negative thoughts and the negative, difficult days WHILE acknowledging the progress that has occured. Let’s all take fifteen seconds to acknowledge the good shit today. I’ll wait…..

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All I’m saying? Acknowledge the progress. That is so key.

Everyday you are stronger than the day before if you commit to specific intentions. We are not made to be masters of everything. Many of us won’t be “masters” of anything, rather learners and life scientists of lots. Not my most poetic statement, but you get the gist.

So, the goal this week this month? This year? To enthusiastically acknowledge and celebrate the progress and good bits of life, while giving grace for what you do not yet know. There is so much we have yet to know. It’s overwhelming. And thrilling as all get out.

*cue Hallmark ending credits music*

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Here are photos of the best teacher of perfect imperfection: nature.

And a photo of my cat.