Adding Resistance...

The Shore Is in Sight

What a dance teacher taught me about becoming stronger through opposition — and why none of us should quit in the fog.

One of my great heroes is a dance teacher of mine named Kim. She is the most extraordinary dancer I have ever watched — trained in New York at the Juilliard School and at the Ailey School, among other remarkable teachers. Every time she moves across the floor, I am amazed by her strength and grace. But the most important lessons I’ve learned from Kim didn’t come from anything she said. They came from watching what she did.

Kim has raised eight children — and through it all she kept dancing, kept teaching, kept moving with that same power and beauty. I’ve known her since 1993, and I got to watch her rehearse and teach through several of her pregnancies. So when I married and became pregnant myself, I kept going to class too, the way so many dancers I admired had done.

If you’ve never danced through a pregnancy, let me tell you how it goes. The first trimester, you work through the nausea. The second, you work through the shifting balance in your core and the changing weight. But the third — the third is the hardest, all that extra weight, a little one turning somersaults inside you, your whole center of gravity rewritten.

• • •

“You become stronger by working through the opposition”

One day I was doing tour jetés — turning leaps — across the floor with the other dancers, and I could barely make it through the rehearsal. Kim caught my eye, and with a knowing smile that understood exactly where I was, she said, “You become stronger by working through the opposition.”

Later she pulled me aside and told me how much stronger a dancer I would be after the baby came — precisely because of the extra opposition I was pushing through now: the weight, the exhaustion, the emotion, all of it. Five children later, and having worked through plenty of other kinds of opposition since, I understand exactly what she meant.

“You become stronger by working through the opposition.”

But here is the part I’ve had to learn to hold alongside it — because it matters just as much. There is a difference between resistance and crushing weight. I had a friend on our dance company whose varicose veins became so painful during her pregnancy that she couldn’t even walk. That’s not strengthening opposition; that’s harm. A good workout partner helps you push past what you thought you could lift — your muscles break down and rebuild themselves stronger. But a wise one also knows when the weight has become too much. Both kinds of wisdom are love.

A gentle note: every body and every pregnancy is different. Moving through a challenge can make us stronger, but only you and your doctor know what’s right for yours — so listen to your body, and never mistake real warning signs for opposition to push through.

• • •

Adding a little opposition of my own

So, in that spirit, I want to add a bit of resistance to my ninety-day challenge — and saying it here, out loud, is how I’ll hold myself to it.

Here’s my humbling confession. I always believed I ate meat and dairy “sparingly.” In reality, once I paid attention, I was eating a TON of both, every single day, all while telling myself I was being moderate! And I profess to avoid processed food — but if my memory is as good at hiding my meat and dairy from me as I suspect, I may be in for a surprise there too. Please don’t picture me eating Doritos and drinking pop — NO WAY. I’m talking about the sneaky “healthy” processed things from the health food store: the drinks, the chips, the gluten-free cookies. How often do I really reach for those? I tell myself once every six months… but I’m about to find out the honest answer.

I’m not doing this to punish myself — not even a little. I’m doing it to give my body an honest, gentle push toward what it already knows it needs, because all those tiny daily choices add up, and lately the sum hasn’t matched the vibrant, well-rested energy I see in people who really do eat the way they profess. Along the way, I’ll keep learning what “processed” and “unprocessed” really mean, and I’ll share what I discover about soaking and sprouting seeds and grains to make them easier to digest.

• • •

When all you can see is fog

Which brings me to a story...

In 1952, the great long-distance swimmer Florence Chadwick set out to cross the Catalina Channel — twenty-one miles of cold Pacific water from Catalina Island to the California coast. A heavy fog rolled in. She swam for more than fifteen hours, her mother and her trainer following close in a boat, urging her on. But she could see nothing ahead of her — only fog in every direction — and at last, exhausted in body and spirit, she asked to be pulled from the water. She was half a mile from shore. “If I could have seen the shore,” she said afterward, “I know I could have made it.”

Two months later, she tried again. The same thick fog set in. But this time she carried a picture of the shoreline in her mind the entire way — she didn’t need to see it to believe it was there. And she made it, becoming the first woman ever to swim the Catalina Channel, beating the men’s record by two hours.

That’s the thing about the fog. It never meant the shore wasn’t there. It only meant she couldn’t see it yet.

• • •

And notice who was in the boat the whole time — her mother, her trainer — right beside her in the water and the cold and the fog. I think that’s what I’m really trying to say. We all need someone in the boat with us: a friend, a spouse, a good teacher, Heavenly Help — someone to point us toward the shore when the fog has swallowed it, and to say keep going, you’re closer than you think.

So whatever fog you’re swimming through today — a health struggle, a hard season, a goal that feels impossibly far — don’t beg to be pulled from the water a half mile from land. Hold the picture of the shore in your heart, even when your eyes can’t find it. Stick to the course.

The shore is in sight.

“…they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength… they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” - Isaiah 40:31

Lots of love and hope, sent your way,

Steffanie