Rise.
Renew.
Reconnect.
Welcome to from the Ashes, a podcast where every story ignites hope and healing.
Hey, everyone, it's Valerie here and we
Are doing a solo cast of from the Ashes today.
And today I want to tell you a story about the time I quit.
My passion and moved across the world.
So some of you know that I am a dancer.
This is my life's passion.
I've been dancing now for over 30 years, which is crazy to think about. But I want to tell you about.
A time when I decided to quit.
And it happened after about two and a half years of being in la.
I never thought I would quit dance. It filled my soul when I did it. I. People could see that I loved it. It fulfilled me in the moment.
But one day I realized that something had to change within me.
And I ended up selling everything that I owned, packing a suitcase and leaving.
Without any intention really of coming back to the States. I didn't know what was going to happen at the time.
So there are a few themes I want to cover in this episode. And one is the idea that loving something isn't enough to keep you going. Eventually you really have to look at yourself, especially if you're using what you.
Love to cope with something else in.
Your life that's not working.
So if it's draining you more than.
It'S fueling you, walking away from it.
At least for a while, can be an act of self preservation and a way to initiate the healing process.
So you're probably asking, well, why did I leave dance?
And also, what did I learn from.
Starting over my life?
And here's the thing, is that back in 2016, when I decided to go,
it wasn't that I had stopped loving dance, but I stopped loving being a dancer. It become a part of my identity in a way that I actually hadn't really planned.
I always knew I was a dancer. I'd always wanted to go for it. I remember when I was in sixth grade, I wrote in my yearbook that I wanted to be a dancer on Broadway as my life's dream.
But yeah, I stopped loving being a dancer. And there were a few things about.
Reality that made me realize, like maybe this isn't really the path for me.
At least the way that has been laid out.
The reality of LA for me was really tough. I wasn't from there first. I was from New York and I had come to LA back in 2014, to be completely honest, because I felt like I had run out of options.
I had already burnt out once on grad school and the only thing left in my life at that point was, was dance.
It was keeping me going.
I had hated my master's degree program at nyu. It was international.
Sorry for anyone who was in that program with me. And yeah, I was just. At that point I moved to LA because I wanted to see what it.
Would be like to finally give myself.
A chance to explore dance as my main thing. And for a while it really worked because I was meeting people in the.
Underground scene at that point I had.
Really gotten into doing street scene stuff. So going to community events and dabbling a little bit in battling and I just like was really developing my individual.
Style as a movement artist.
But the thing is, like I didn't have any other job lined up and I was really burnt out from my master's program. So I did make some attempts at finding a job, but I didn't really go full on in that job search.
And I ended up, because I was.
Dancing so much, falling into dance jobs.
Mostly to get by, you know, I ended up being a dance teacher and I ended up in a. I ended up hosting and producing events and also being in dance theater company.
But the thing is,
those activities didn't really make me much money and I.
Found myself hustling in a way that.
I didn't really want to be hustling. Hollywood and the dance industry, they don't to me, really value your individual, unique creativity.
It's not about community, it's about standing.
Out and being accepted by the gatekeepers who get to choose who makes the money.
At the end of the day, it's an industry.
And I found myself more and more lost in all of this because it. I wasn't finding the true connection that I wanted.
The community that I really long for.
That I actually had back in New York and even back in Japan when.
I was dancing because it was different now.
I was trying to survive as well.
And I found myself showing up in.
Spaces where I was absolutely not seen, absolutely not valued for anything.
And more and more I just felt invisible.
And even when I could dance, I didn't know how to sell myself as a dancer. Nor did I really, at the end of the day, want to sell myself.
My dance self expression, my movement has always been sacred to me. And so for me to sell it.
In a way where I had to.
Breach that integrity didn't really sit right with me. And I didn't know how to do it in a way that I wouldn't. I didn't have anyone that was really behind me having that same goal.
And I also didn't want to appropriate what I had learned in the underground scenes for myself. So I was kind of stuck in this place,
not really knowing what to.
Do and at the same time trying to survive.
And after two and a half years,
you know, I think I had set out to do everything that I, in my heart, I felt drawn to do. I had produced these amazing community dance improv shows.
Used to be called the Shuffle Dance.
Challenge, but it's not about shuffle the dance style. It was actually about shuffling the music and was the idea that my friend Brad had in New York and I brought to LA for a little bit.
I danced in amazing street dance theater.
Company called Antics where it was really about breakdancing and the roots of hip hop and then also some of the.
Other street styles connected so deeply with.
The underground dance scene and knew probably like hundreds of people in the scenes. And I had traveled and taught and performed internationally even within those two and a half years.
So I created some amazing things.
But it was starting to wear on me because I felt like I was putting in a hundred plus percent effort and I was still very much scraping by.
I think a part of me was.
Also mourning not being able to support myself in the way that I saw a lot of my classmates did from high school university.
They were making full time incomes and.
I was here living in a living room, trying to pursue my passion and run away from impending burnout. And it didn't work.
Slowly my love for movement was replaced by exhaustion.
And there were other issues too that caught up with me later.
I had a lifelong struggle with self esteem and listening to my own intuition.
And at the time I wasn't ready to heal that I wasn't even aware of it. So yeah, dance became survival and I.
Was running on empty and I didn't.
Know what was wrong. So I made a decision. I made a choice. And it came with this lesson that just because I loved something doesn't mean.
That I have to suffer for it.
It was my first realization that I was suffering for my beliefs and my convictions and my art.
And I was like, this is really not the way that life is supposed to go for me.
I need to do something different and.
I need to leave and find out what that is.
So I had always had this fascination with the land down under. When I was in college, I studied abroad in Australia and at the time.
I didn't have the funds to go.
Over to New Zealand, but they had told me that, you know, up until you're 30 years old, you can get a one year working holiday visa in New Zealand,
just like you can in Australia and you can work in a fruit farm or do something while you travel around the country.
And at that time, I was about to turn 30 and I was like, well, why not?
This is my last chance to reinvent.
Myself and do something, start from scratch. So I'm going to, to quit my dancing identity and I'm going to move.
All the way across the world and.
I am going to find out what it is that's going to make my life work. And so, yeah, I took that leap of faith.
At the same time as I was.
Doing this, I was getting really into.
Other types of movement other than dance.
So I was starting to do some.
Gymnastics and trying to learn back handsprings.
Which I had always wanted to do as a kid and just didn't follow through because I was busy with like playing the flute and started going to.
Adult gymnastics classes in la.
And man, I got so obsessed in trying to do these flips. And so as I was thinking about moving to New Zealand, I looked up a parkour gym in Auckland and I was like, let me see if I.
Can train with them while I'm doing this working holiday. And that would really root me in a community there too.
And yeah, so I went on a.
Limb and I emailed them and I.
Offered to exchange work hours for parkour training.
And surprisingly, they got back to me.
They were like, yes.
And not only did they say yes to the trade, but they also offered.
Me, offered to pay me a little bit as I offered my time. So that was super cool. Shout out to Flow Academy for that opportunity because I think it really did change my life.
And you know, something about this also was really amazing because starting to do.
Parkour and do these flips and all.
That was my way of also getting.
Back into beginner's mindset with a challenge.
That was so out there for me.
Learning to do flips to work with my environment.
Like, yes, I'd done dance, but all this stuff was fairly new and made me really back at beginner mode and to learn how to trust my body in new ways and in a sense.
To trust myself in new ways.
Right.
And not being good at something right away was also super freeing. So, you know, just a side tangent on that, I think the parkour and the other ways of moving helped to.
Restore my Love for movement in ways.
That I didn't really expect. But before I moved to New Zealand or when I moved to New Zealand, this was this big leap of faith.
A physical leap of faith, literally across the world.
But I also realized that by the.
Time I had done this big faith.
Move to New Zealand, I had already taken big leaps in my life to change perspective. I had always had this power, this ability to be like, hey, I don't know what's out there, but I'm going to go there and discover it.
And it started really after I left.
Home for college, and then I moved to Japan.
And it's always been like, wow, I've learned so much about myself and the world in a way that kind of just blew my mind.
And so changing my scene for me.
In life has been this pattern where I also give myself the chance to.
Change my mindset and gain new perspectives.
So another realization I had when I was moving towards this next step is that, like, I can do this.
Stepping into the known has always been.
How I find clarity. So it wasn't really that scary for me to just get up and go and not know what the future holds.
So then I moved to New Zealand, and it was this kind of, at.
First, painful stripping of identity and learning how to exist.
Because by the time I got there.
People already knew, mostly dancers knew that I was going there.
And I. I ended up going to a hip hop class, probably one of.
My first few days there.
And of course they noticed. And so I got looped into performing on stage. Within the first week, I got hooked into teaching workshops and stuff.
I even did some dance battles. But the thing is, like, that exhaustion that followed me from not being fulfilled and not really taking care of my own needs and putting dance first, that exhaustion followed me pretty quickly, too.
And I very quickly realized that if.
I were to keep on this path, I would not. I would not heal, I would not be able to revive myself.
And so I really had to say no and step away from all of that.
You know, thank goodness for the parkour gym. That really kept me going and at.
Least it gave me something else to focus on.
And then I also covered my rent by working at a printing factory.
So this is the first time in.
My life in a while where I.
Was making money that had nothing to do with my skills.
Because printing factory work is just labor. You don't need education for it. It had nothing to do with my status.
It had nothing to do with my education.
I wasn't using my master's.
I wasn't using my dance education for.
Any of this and I was working purely for survival and honestly it felt great. I didn't feel guilty about it and it gave me perspective because a lot of my self worth was attached to.
How I made my money before.
Even if I wasn't making a lot.
It was still very much attached to.
How much what I was doing. And so allowing myself not to tie my self worth to my career and.
Allowing myself to just live made a.
Huge difference for me as I was living in the land down under. You know, a lesson that I learned.
Down the line from this is like loving something means sometimes stepping away from it to healing.
I really, at that point I was like, I don't know when I will return to dance. Because it's so sad to say this too. It had sucked so much life out of me.
But what I realized later also was.
Not necessarily dance that was sucking the life out of me.
It was the way that I used dance to fill a hole where I lacked self esteem and confidence.
So let's talk a little bit more about this healing and kind of my.
Journey while I was in New Zealand.
On a personal level, I by the time I got to New Zealand, I.
Had so many inner wounds that I didn't even realize I needed healing.
And it's really kind of funny too because I went there and I was.
Still dating someone in la. They came to New Zealand and ended.
Up breaking up with me. And I think that was a huge.
Aha moment for me too because man.
Like I probably deserved being broken up with, but I didn't realize my own.
Toxicity at the time.
But different story for a different day anyway, lack of a better word. I realized that I had a lot to heal and this was kind of the beginning of me exploring that and exploring some of the gaining some peace, doing some meditation.
I had roommates in New Zealand that also were on this journey and so.
I drew inspiration from them.
Actually one of them was the one.
That inspired me to do the 10.
Day silent meditation later on in 2017. So healing was an instant. It wasn't as simple as living, leaving.
LA and sudden feeling like, oh my.
God, it's I'm so free now.
I still had demons that followed me there.
And that's the thing also that I.
Learned about taking physical leaps. They're not going to fix all your problems.
Sometimes it helps to shift the environment, give yourself some quiet, but that's only part of the journey.
Once you give yourself that quiet in the environment, that's when you really need to dig in deep and do some.
Of the harder work to excavate those.
Limiting beliefs and the stuff that has.
Kept you wounded for years. So in all truth, it took years.
After that and many more leaps of faith to finally understand what had had.
Been holding me back. But New Zealand was very much one of the bigger start points for me on this journey.
And, you know, I had run as far as I could. It was literally different hemisphere across the world. And I had to realize that even if I were across the world to heal, I had to stop running from myself and I had to start taking responsibility for my own happiness.
And sometimes it's not what you think it looks like. So until you take that first leap of faith, you won't give yourself the chance to heal.
Until you acknowledge that you need to.
Heal, you also won't give yourself the chance to heal.
And I also talk about this a lot with my clients because a lot of us think that we can just live life in survival mode and that's it, or that we have to live life in survival mode and there's nothing beyond that.
But. But if you truly believe in your own potential and you give yourself the.
Chance to heal and empower yourself to.
Change your life, there is a way out. And so, yeah, staying in survival mode.
Wondering what life could have been if.
You had taken care of your body, mind, spirit. I was no longer willing to tolerate being stuck there.
So taking the first step is really important because once you do start your.
Personal growth journey, when you start to.
Heal and you start to build back that foundation of vitality, that's when your true potential blossoms. You'll be able to achieve so much more than you could before. And not only that, but you'll achieve it without feeling like the world is taking your energy away from you.
One of the things I've learned is.
That courage is really key, that you.
Just need to take that big leap.
Of faith forward in order to start. Right? And a lot of us have the failure to start because we don't have the.
We don't know what's beyond just living beyond survival.
And so it does take a little bit of that faith.
All right, so I've given you all some things to think about, I hope, some lessons that I've learned through my own journey today. I want to leave you with a reflection question of if is there something in your life right now that you're holding on to, even though it's draining you,
even. Because maybe, perhaps it's the way that.
You make your living or Perhaps it's the way that you are maintaining your.
Status,
but you know deep down that if you were to keep going on this path, it's going to drain all of your batteries.
And what would it look like to.
Take a leap of faith and trust yourself?
What would you be sacrificing to make your true potential sacred so you don't have to have all the answers?
These are big questions.
And take some reflecting, some meditation and talking to people that you trust. And it takes trusting that there is.
More for you on the other side of fear.
With that, I want to leave you with a quote that James Clear had in his newsletter today that I think.
Is poignant and relevant to today's topic.
You are as old as the risks you take. In many ways, aging is not the process of growing old, but rather the slow death of becoming overly protective, scared and worried about losing what you have.
Youth is found in the energy of going for it, taking the risk and trusting that you'll figure it out along the way.
And so today I encourage you to take that leap of faith, to take.
The risk and know that there is something much greater for you waiting on the other side.
I think that's all that I have for you today. If this story resonated with you, if.
You feel like you're on the cusp.
Of a leap of faith, if you're ready to move beyond your fear, I would actually love to talk to you because Club Phoenix, my mastermind group, is.
Launching again our next cohort on May 1st, and we're looking for people who.
Are ready, people who are stuck in cycles of burnout like I was, exhaustion, survival mode. But knowing that deep down my passion for whatever it was, my art still.
Existed, I just had to find myself again before I return.
So if you're ready to take a.
Leap of faith and step into the life you're meant to live, get in touch with me, email me. I am around and I would love.
To hear from you.
Thank you so much for listening today.
For tuning into from the Ashes. I'll be back next week with a.
New episode with some guests that I've.
Been really, really excited to feature on the show. So stay tuned.
Know that I'm always rooting for your.
Badass self and I will catch you next.
