What Crying on the Stoop Taught Me About Work, Dancing and Neighbors

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the things we work through in shoots or consultations, giving you tips, highlighting the successes of my clients, and all around, doing everything I can to help my ‘tribe’ move their worlds forward.

I don’t often talk about the downside to all of this. We all have them right? The sacrifices you make in your personal worlds to do what you do. The choices you make. The roads you are not going down.

This morning on my way out the door I was headed to the subway and turned around to sit down on the stoop of my building to cry for a moment. Yes, that was me, blubbering for about 10 mins until a neighbor walked up, a parent of one of my daughter’s friends, who put her arms around me and gave me the support I needed to pull it together and move into my day. I am so grateful.

I won’t bore you with the details of the cause of my moment (it has to do with the harshness of living and working in NYC, having small kids who are currently sick and my lack of sleep). But I knew I needed a moment to release the pressure and I decided to take it. And then out of nowhere I got the support I needed and now I can continue on through my day.

If success means doing what’s hard even when you don’t want to, against the odds, how can any of us achieve what we are striving to achieve without the support of a neighbor who will stop to give us a hand up? 

We all need healthy ways to release the pressure so we can get up and go and move forward. I am starting to realize that the bigger the goals the more internal and external pressure we face. Perhaps we need to talk more about creating and being aware of release valves in order to have more dancers, and humans in general, become happy, successful people.

My food for thought today – make it a great one – and if you can, help make someone else’s better.