The Dangerously High Level of Freedom

I went dancing tonight for the first time in a long time.

Not for the first time ever. I used to dance. Salsa, bachata, the kind of dancing that requires you to let someone lead and trust that the floor will not move. I stopped at some point. Life got heavy, I got heavier with it, and dancing felt like something that belonged to a version of me I could no longer locate.

Tonight I went back.

Here is what I remembered the moment I walked in.

The last time I was in a room like this I was carrying everything. Depression I had not named yet. Grief I was not ready to feel. A body that had been through enough that being touched felt like a risk. Someone would take my hand to lead and my skin would flinch before my brain could stop it. Touch burnt me then. Not because anything was wrong with the person. Because something was very wrong inside me and I had nowhere to put it.

I smiled through all of it. I always did.

Tonight was different.

Not because everything is fixed. Not because I have arrived somewhere complete and sorted and healed with a bow on it. I have not. But something shifted in that room and I felt it the moment I stopped worrying about what I looked like and just started moving.

When you stop giving a f*ck what people think of you, you reach a dangerously high level of freedom.

That is not something I read. That is something I felt tonight at exactly 16:50 on a Tuesday in April, slightly sweaty, in a room full of strangers who were all just trying to feel something good.

I have been working very hard for the past couple of years to become someone I actually want to be. Not the version of me that performed and delivered and showed up for everyone else. The real one. The one who dances because she loves it, not because someone is watching.

There is a specific feeling that comes when you stop performing for an audience that was never really paying attention anyway. It is not confidence exactly. It is more like relief. Like putting down something heavy you forgot you were carrying.

That is what dancing gave me back tonight.

If you have something you stopped doing because life got hard and you told yourself you would go back when things were better, I want to ask you one question.

What if you went back now? Not when you are ready. Not when you are lighter or stronger or less afraid. Now. As the mess you currently are.

The floor will hold you. It always does.

rise · believe · fly 🪶

From the Ashes She is for the woman in the middle of it. Not after. If this found you today, you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

fromtheashesshe.com