The silk pink ribbons wrapped around my ankles. I stood with my shoulders down, one hand gently placed on the wooden barre at the studio. I tried to go fully onto the toe box of my pointe shoes, but my feet still hurt. The pain continued as I proceeded to follow the instructed steps. What should have been more simple felt impossible for my body. I was only seventeen, had already danced en pointe for over a year. Though turns and combinations in center I never could master. An

At nineteen, I was in another semester at a local community college. I felt lost, unsure as I didn't have any clear direction of where to...