Dear reader, I get it. You have dance goals. But you also want a career, family, or a life change that seems incompatible with continuing to dance. But you’re only young once.
You worked hard to get to this point, and you want to give it one more shot, one more year. Then next year comes, and you’re still working hard – harder than ever – and can’t bear to let go of your dreams just yet.
So you hang in there and try one more time. College, grad school, that job, a relationship, marriage, kids – they can wait. Dance is more important right now, you tell yourself.
But you’re only young once. And this also applies to things other than dancing. Dance goals trumping the rest of life’s desires is an unhealthy balance. In fact, it’s not even a balance at all. The “just one more time” mindset could be endless.
I worked and put my husband through graduate school financially (and emotionally) while finding my best competitive success to date. At one point I was married, in college, and working, trying to balance it all with dance. Now I hold double recall medals from the World Championships after I had a baby less than a year prior.
I chose to wait several years post-marriage to start a family in order to pursue dance. I knew that dance would have to come to an end – or rather, a pause – because in the end, I wanted a full life. So I say all this as someone who gets it, and who cares more deeply about the whole person than just the dancer.
I love Irish dance. I have since I started – really since before I started – when I would prance around watching Riverdance on video. I don’t always love everything about it, but the dancing I will always love.
And I love a lot more than just Irish dance. I love my husband, my kids, my family, my friends, my pet birds, my sleep, my home, my life! My life is so rich because of the people in it and the experiences I have daily, regularly. I wouldn’t be the person I am if it weren’t for all of these things. I wouldn’t be as supported as I am with my Irish dance pursuits if it wasn’t for my husband. I might have given up on my dreams if it wasn’t for my kids. My life has meaning and balance because I pour my energy into more than just competing.
Staying competitive to pursue my dance goal has meant new and deeper relationships, travel to new places, and a way to stay fit and focused. If I had stopped in college, I would have missed out on some of the most memorable experiences I have of my 20s. But contrarily, if I had put off having kids even longer, I would have missed out on all of the sweet times and memories we are making together now as a family. I did not want to compete longer and look back, kicking myself for not having kids sooner, since kids were something both my husband and I wanted. I will never forget the moment of being on stage at the 2019 World Championships holding my 11-month-old after placing 23rd in the overall results.
I think of all the phenomenal mothers in the wider sporting world. Before she competed in her final Olympic 400m race, Allyson Felix spoke about her participation in the Games as a mother. In a live TV feature by NBC which was addressed to her two-year-old daughter, Cammy, she listed off her Olympic successes and still said of her daughter: “my greatest accomplishment is you”. Felix won the bronze medal and ran her fastest time since 2015. She is 35. ”I have a lot of titles, but by far, ‘Mama’ is my favourite,” she said. “And sweet girl, I want more medals…[and for you to] know that mommy worked hard for [them].”
Let me be clear: you can still break boundaries, improve, and achieve success even after you’re “young”. There were countless stories from the Tokyo Olympics alone about women returning to elite athletics after having babies, and of medals being won by the oldest athletes ever. The average age of women competing in artistic gymnastics was older than it has been since the 1960s. Oksana Chusovitina, an artistic gymnast, was 46 and competing at her eighth Olympics.
I have no intention of convincing you (or anyone) to get married or finish school or pursue your dream job or have kids if those aren’t actually things you want. There’s no “right” way to do life, and not everyone wants the same things, nor is there any sort of order in which to do them. But for the vast majority of Irish dancers, there is something they want and aren’t doing because they are giving dancing just a little bit longer. One more year, one more major, one more Oireachtas.
We keep putting those other things off because they scare us a little bit. We don’t know who we are or what to do without dance in our lives. We fear that if we leave dance to pursue something else, then dancing is over. We’ll never get back to peak condition. We’ll never be truly competitive again. Our dance dream is no longer achievable once X Y or Z happens.
Friend, dancing could be over for us tomorrow. And it certainly could be over for us after we get a new job, get into graduate school, get married, or have a baby. But really, dance could end at any time. How many dancers do you know who have had an illness or injury that took away their ability to dance? For an unfortunate few, perhaps even took their life? Life is fragile.
Take some time to reflect. Are you scared? Is dancing your only identity? Are you so wrapped up in Irish dancing and don’t know how to take a step back? It doesn’t matter how good or how worthy something is, if we place our identity so surely in something that could be taken away from us, it isn’t healthy.
Tom Daley said in a TV interview for an NBC feature that aired live at the Tokyo Olympic games, “Now I can just enjoy it and love it…When you start to realize that there is life outside of it, you’re able to then start actually enjoying it and remember why you did it in the first place.” He was speaking on what it’s been like to come back to diving now that he is both a husband and father.
Dear reader, I cannot agree enough.
Because I’m only young once, I want to enjoy the youth I’ve been given to chase after more dreams than just Irish dance ones. And I can tell you, my Irish dance life is so much fuller for it.
Stay tuned for the Ace & Deuce of Mothering column every month.
