Two weeks before my final dance recital of my high school career, I tore my ACL. This is the ligament that essentially stitches together your thigh bone and your shin bone and prevents your knee from slipping all over the place. I didn't know it was torn at the time, so I continued dancing. In fact, I didn't learn it was torn until 8 months later when I finally got an MRI. This injury took me out of dance for a year and really made me reconsider my identity as a lover of movement.
Read more about my journey here, in a personal essay called Dancer, Defined. Then scroll down for my reflection, two years later.
A brief reflection on Dancer, Defined
The year of my ACL surgery was a year of major growth for me. More than moving to college, more than overcoming anxiety. In the span of a few months, I went from content to seriously depressed to motivated beyond belief. Writing this essay was something I knew I had to do as soon as I realized all these emotions. As someone who, as Hermione Granger would say, has the emotional range of a teaspoon, the feelings that I felt were pretty significant, and writing this essay was the best way I knew to get them out of my system. That’s why, after a long summer of physical therapy post-surgery, this was the first assignment I completed back at school.
To this day, reading it back to myself still elicits a couple tears without fail. The emotions I felt at the time were really strong, and I was really scared for my future. But they seem almost melodramatic, looking back. I am okay now, in fact I dance almost every day. But in that year of recovery, my emotions were the strongest they've ever been, and it was so hard to not know who I was or what my future would look like.
Once again, I truly believe that movement is what got me through this process. The need to keep working through my recovery was fueled not only by my desire to move my body again, but also the mindset of determination that dance instilled in me. And it continues to push me and heal me with each dance rehearsal. That’s what I find really cool about this piece: dance put me in the tough situation. Dance got me through the tough situation. And dance is what pushes me forward. How crazy is that? Finding this passion at such a young age is something that I am incredibly grateful for, especially now that I understand the power that it has over me and the ways it helps me grow into a better human. And this love of passion is what makes me want to share dance and movement with other people. After all, this is just one testament of just how powerful movement is. My ACL is only one thing that found healing (in a roundabout way, of course) through movement. And dance is just one form of movement that took complete control over my life and body. The possibilities for movement and passion and healing and incredible power are endless.