She hath wings

I fronted up to my first ballet class almost a week ago and it has taken me that long to recover! Who knew that I would be thrown in the deep end and trying to keep up with someone who started months ago!!! I started at the barre and pictured it being an easy stretching class for adult beginners. Some time later I was asked to stretch as far as I could into the splits. Um… was I hearing correctly? The teacher has every confidence that I will achieve it one day! She told me the first day after a ballet class is the worst- she wasn’t wrong!!!

There were tears the next day- such fatigue that I thought that I would be wiped out for more than a few days. I planned to quit but I recalled that ballet was my preparation to be strong for Irish dance which will see me shred the stubborn pounds in very little time and make me smile because I love it so much! My husband encouraged me to return to ballet next week and so did a few friends. This surprised me enough to listen – often people talk me out of difficult things because I set myself very lofty goals! I will need to scale back the time I spend on the dance floor to start with, but now is not the time to quit!

Yesterday I went to a dance wear place and bought some canvas ballet slippers- the shop assistant who is a dance teacher informed me that they breathe better and don’t fit so tightly as the leather ones when the hot weather comes. Maybe I will be able to feel my toes more this week without tingling; a well-fitted shoe is important ! Learning all those French dance terms and challenging myself to move gracefully, I couldn’t walk away. This is going to take time and for as long as I can, I am going to keep at it.