09/10/2026
🥰How lovely to see a student post things like this: 🥰
"I love my dance classes.
Obviously, there are the sensible reasons. It keeps me fit, it’s good for my health, it gets me moving and the we supposed to exercise as we get older. Rude, but fine.
But dance has become so much more important to me than that.
As a peer worker, I spend a lot of time listening, supporting, holding space and generally caring a lot about other humans. Dance is one of the things I do that is completely for me.
I can turn up tired, grumpy, stressed, sad, overwhelmed or just thoroughly over everyone’s s**t, and within a little while I’m dancing, laughing and feeling like myself again.
It helps that I get to do it with some of the funniest, most fabulous, slightly unhinged women I have ever met.
We dance. We laugh. We forget what the hell we’re doing. We look confidently in the wrong direction. We occasionally absolutely nail something and feel like Beyoncé for approximately 14 seconds.
Then Tia says, “Okay, from the top!”
And suddenly I’m standing there staring at her with a completely blank face like **I have never seen this choreography before in my life.** 😐
Four minutes later: Beyoncé again. 😝
And we cheer each other on through all of it.
But the biggest thing dance has given me has nothing to do with learning steps.
It has completely changed the way I see myself.
I spent YEARS thinking about my weight. Worrying about how I looked. Picking myself apart and thinking I needed to be smaller, thinner or somehow different before I was allowed to feel good about myself.
And somewhere along the way, that changed.
I don’t hate my body anymore.
I don’t spend my life thinking about my weight.
Now I look at my body and think about what it can DO.
It dances. It learns. It gets stronger. It occasionally remembers choreography. It can be sexy, powerful, ridiculous and completely uncoordinated — sometimes within the same eight counts.
And I actually like the woman I see in the mirror now.
That’s a pretty big deal.
And then there is Tia. ❤️
This woman works her arse off for her tribe. She doesn’t just teach us choreography and yell helpful things at us while we’re facing entirely the wrong direction. She notices when someone isn’t themselves. She checks in. She encourages us. She celebrates us. She genuinely cares about every woman who walks through her doors.
Tia, what you’ve created is so much more than somewhere we go to dance.
It’s exercise without feeling like punishment.
It’s friendship.
It’s laughter.
It’s confidence.
It’s somewhere to go when life is a bit s**t.
It’s self-care that I actually WANT to do.
It’s a place where I get to be completely, ridiculously me.
Dance has changed my life. I am forever grateful.
