When did I stop believing in myself?

It's been a couple of years since I've written in this blog. To be honest, I forgot it existed for a while! This blog took a twist to encapsulate my spiritual journey through Mormonism, and when my life started to leave that behind me, the blog took the back burner in my mind. It's interesting to see the journey that I've taken in retrospect, reading the posts from my past. So much has changed, and there are so many new life lessons I have learned along the way. My posts wont particularly be revolving around my Mormon experience anymore, because that is no longer a part of my life, but it is nonetheless spiritual as I examine the parts of my soul that have expanded beyond the constraints of religion. That being said, let's pick up where we left off!

In May of 2017 I graduated from the University of Utah with my bachelor's degree in Modern Dance and shortly thereafter packed up and moved to Portland with a twinkle in my eye and a new dance job in the bag. After a year of dancing and choreographing with the Polaris Dance Theatre, I decided to focus more on my own work and also joined a project-based company named the Shaun Keylock Company. Shaun Keylock's work revolved heavily on the queer identity, and it was amazing to be able to unabashedly explore my queerness in that safe space. I was able to tour to Houston for a week with the company and experience an entirely foreign part of the country where I made connections with some fantastic reputable dance artists in the southern part of Texas. The art museums, huge portions of food, and humidity are all things that I will never forget.

In addition to my work performing, I was able to work with fantastic artists such as Lucy Dillon and Beth Whelan to help produce our own independent shows. I was hungry to create work, and I was so blessed to be in a city where I was also surrounded by hungry artists eager to make art happen. Both shows were a smash in me being able to dabble in my own creative voice and have launched further endeavors. I was able to tour my work "Instinct" to St. Louis and connect to the mid-west dance community, and additionally come back home to Salt Lake City touring work for a fantastic organization called Brine. I am currently working on a project for a residency in Portland with New Expressive Works and will later be working with an organization called White Bird for a new commission.

Needless to say, when I moved to Portland I dove head first into my career and didn't look back. I kind of blinded myself through my workaholic nature and failed to acknowledge that I was burning out really quickly. I was so determined to take the world by storm, and I did. But why did that matter so much to me?

Prior to moving to Portland, I was in a pretty serious, and pretty seriously emotionally abusive and manipulative, two year relationship. The reason that is important is because one of the things he told me during the 6 month breakup process is that I was a terrible dancer. Horrible thing to say, right? I see that now. But when words like that come from a man that you loved for two years, it's hard not to take that to heart. Being the headstrong passionate person I am, I was determined to prove him wrong. The first audition that I saw, an audition in Portland, I took. I packed up my bags and drove 14 hours in a blizzard to snag a job I was so desperate to prove something about.

Over the course of the 2 and a half years I've been living in Portland, that rage that fueled my drive to dance post-college began to run on fumes. When you feel like you have something to prove to someone, or you are driven to succeed based off of external influences, there is only so much that can sustain that fire. When that rage is gone, what do you have to motivate you to work? What do you TRULY care about in what you thought was your biggest passion? My desire to prove my ex-boyfriend wrong began to run on fumes, and I really had to address the fact that I had indeed internalized the fact that I was a terrible dancer. Does that mean it is objectively true? No- maybe. Hard to say. Even now. But it is how I felt, and it is how I have been feeling now. Every time I subject my body to the scrutiny of performance, I subjected myself to the harsh critic of my own mind. I began to make myself smaller than I was because I felt inadequate. I feel inadequate as a dancer, and that has been very disheartening for me. I took myself out of all my choreographic projects because of this; I felt too distracted about how I was feeling in the choreography to be able to fully dive into the creative process with my dancers.

This, combined with the isolation of being in a new city with no support system, was very crippling for my mental health. The trauma of my past relationship and other factors made me a fiercely independent person, which served me well for a very long time. But now, this independence has turned on me and left me alone and distrustful of others, being unable to show any type of weakness or vulnerability to others. Unable to lean on new friends. Unable to rely on my Utah support system because of the distance. Unable to lean on new lovers for support. For two years I have felt utterly alone. My confidence to stand up for what I believe in and speak my truths had been shot, and I withdrew to my bedroom day after day, lying in my bed cocooned in blankets and a deep depressive coma. I felt stuck. Living a cyclical life of work, eat, sleep, repeat. Don't get me wrong, I needed to have this time of isolation. When you are utterly alone with yourself for that long period of time, you get well acquainted with yourself, your thought patterns, and behaviors.

I think it's very important also to recognize what we define as success. For a while, success to me was proving that ex wrong. Was that a bad thing? I don't think so. It launched me into a fiery drive to create work and dance as much as possible. Was it a sustainable way to define success? Absolutely not.

I started to go to therapy to really dive deep into why I was feeling the way I was. This became reflective in the work that I began to make- centering around my trauma. A way to cope when I felt like I couldn't trust anyone but myself. But in the process of creating "Anotherwom(e)n" and "Through the Veil," I began to realize that I was not only trusting myself and speaking my truth, but my dancers were hearing me, empathizing, and supporting me through this struggle even though they didn't really understand. No one ever told me they felt uncomfortable with the subject matter, they only wanted to know WHY I was doing what I was doing, and they trusted me fully. What began to change was my definition of success was no longer defined by proving someone wrong. It began to be me choosing to have my success be creating deep and everlasting connections with beautiful people through dance.

Why is it then, when I wasn't even believing in myself, other people were believing in me and supporting me?

I came to realize really quickly that I was not the only broken person. I am not the only one experiencing difficult traumas and out-of-control life circumstances. People do not trust and support perfect people. People trust the broken, the open, the ones who know they only have room to grow. And we are all that. It takes vulnerability of disclosing our brokenness to others to connect, and move forward supporting each other. I stopped believing in myself, and that acknowledgement of brokenness has changed my life. And the people that have reached out to make sure I am okay have changed my life as well.

I am so grateful for the artists- friends- that I have been able to be vulnerable with. And maybe someday I will begin to believe in myself again.