Hi. I'm Anna and I'm now 51 years old soon to be 52 years old. I am and have been overweight on the BMI scale since age 14. I have been my lowest weight as an adult after 6 months of gallbladder disease that left me to only drinking cranberry juice and unbuttered toast and corn for 5 of those 6 months. I was maintaining a healthy activity level and keeping down my gradually expanding size until March of 2020 when my weekly dance classes that I taught were cancelled due to Covid and the subsequent shut downs. I've not recovered mentally, physically and emotionally since that time.
I attempted to do online classes - but that wasn't my thing. I tried to join a number of gyms since that time but fears about my high heart rate upon any level of exertion combined with fears of getting sick (I am someone who has and is suffering with symptoms of long-covid after getting it in June of 2020). When my partner of 8 years died suddenly in May of 2023 I started to become more insular, and more homebound. I work from home, so getting outside sometimes doesn't happen for days and days and days. I've had med changes to help my depression, grief therapy, support groups, and so on and so on. I wake up to news every day about the decline of our country, and the reality that my ability to stretch my income as I once did even 1 year ago is impossible. I'm overwhelmed and overcome with anxiety and feelings of hopelessness at times.
And for some reason. I still dance.
Because if I didn't and didn't even try, I don't know that I would still be sitting here typing this post to any and all of you. What started as a last-ditch effort to stop dating every man who gave me the time of day in the irrational months after the death of my partner, I restarted teaching classes and eventually restarted The Follies Girls. I felt it may be and could be the only thing that would keep me going at this point. Going in terms of my life and living in any way that resembled something other than a lonely, isolated depression spent in my bed with my four dogs just sleeping with me in that bed worried simultaneously if their "mom" would get up and out of bed today or if and when she'd stumble out to the kitchen to feed them let alone feed herself.
Even with months of starving myself and sleeping, I lost almost no weight. Instead, what muscle mass I had from dancing since I was 21 professionally (teaching, etc.), was now atrophied so any and all new weight was just actual fat and with reduced muscle mass anny attempts to lose weight started to become extremely difficult and almost impossible. I had no stamina, no strength, no ability to do much without significant difficulty. But I still tried, rented the first little studio in November 2023 and started teaching classes in January 2024. The smallness of that studio meant it was hard to encourage a lot of attendees and I lost a lot of traction due to snow that year. However, it did grow a bit, modestly. But it grew. Even on 1 income now (after losing my partner); I was able to swing it and I did with grace and a few falters along the way.
Still, the depression and grief was always right around the corner. A memory, a rogue thought...and at times it was extremely difficult to pull myself out to teach or to be there for The Follies Rehearals; and I did have to cancel at times. I just couldn't on occassion pull it off, the stress of the day weighed too heavily or I got every random virus or illness that was going around due to my immune system plummeting from months and months of never setting foot outside my front door. I had allowed the pandemic and grief to squander this very important time in the transitions of my life - especially as I entered into perimenopause and now I was afraid it was too late or I'd never get it back. At times I still worry that; but it doesn't stop me from trying.
You see, the only thing that brightened my weeks back then and even today is being able to see my best gal friend weekly and the time I spent teaching, seeing women become more confident in dance and themselves, and listening to their lives, successes and struggles. The women that I spent time with and "danced with" became my lifeline and in a lot of ways still are. I've seen many of the reprioritize and go away from the classes or the troupe since 2024, I've seen new people enter and bring new ideas and vibrancy to the dancefloor and the organization. Even now as I struggle due to losing about $10k a year at my full time job due to transitions that have me working no overtime anymore, the reality that I'm still a single income and in no close way of having a partner to share the financial burdens of a life in an economy that is holding on only if the richest people keep spending money on the frivolities of life while all of us in the under $50K a year club go without in every single area of our lives just to get our monthly bills covered...I still dance. I still try. I still look forward to seeing these people I create with every week.
I'm still digging myself out of a horrific physical space where I have extremely little muscle mass, increased visceral fat, facing tough decisions with every grocery run because I cannot afford much and dealing with the ramifications of an aging body where doing anything productive takes twice the amount of effort, consistency and dedication that it did in my 30s; but I keep trying. I keep trying. I keep trying.
Because I have to. The alternative is to just give up. On myself, on my joys and allow the darkness to win.
But every week that I dance, I see an improved mental outlook. A little more stamina than I had the day before. I recognized that I laughed a little bit with these women I see on the dancefloor. I moved with them even if it's less dynamically than I did 5 years ago I am starting to surface a little more every year even as I face waves of economic hardships, pop-up health issues stemming from aging and mishandling of this body, and maybe that is the most important thing I am doing right now.
Dance is the one thing that I have that isn't going to destroy me and is allowing me to process the difficult things that we all face right now in this life. Is it easy to get there each week? No. But I'm infinitely better when I have been there each week.
I have a long way ahead of me, and a lot that I'm going to be talking about in the weeks to come in regards to my efforts to reclaim myself and a little life in the midst of a world gone mad. But I know one thing for sure, that each step I take will probably include a pointed toe and the count-off of 5, 6, 7, 8.
Q: What is your why that keeps you going even in tough times?