Q: What are yall up to? A: ….do you have 2 hours to listen to me ramble?

This is what runs though my head every time I have an interaction with the public. Specifically, people in my community who are my peers.

You cannot not run into me on the shampoo aisle at Target and ask this question because I know I sound like a crazy person trying to answer you when what you expected was a very generic, ‘Oh, you know, just super busy and trying to make it through!’

Is this the real answer? Yes but, No.

If you know me in real life, sorry for the redundancy of info but I’m trying really hard to start from scratch here as if it’s day one with me on planet Earth. I’ll try to keep it short and sweet, but I like words and this is my blog so there’s that.

I am a 40something wife and mother. I’ve been married to my husband for 17 years and we have one daughter who is 15 years old. I have a dog (a lovable Great Pyrenese), cat (a salty orange boy) and currently three chickens. I live in Lafayette, Louisiana which is not a bustling metropolis and often feels much smaller than it is (in good and bad ways). I like to cook, run, and travel. I left my clinical job as an RN in 2017 when realizing I was giving too much of the good parts of myself to a profession that didn’t care about me as a mother. I’m really not ‘one of those dance moms’ but I will say after doing buns for a decade you do start to sound crazy to some people who don’t speak the lingo.

I care about advocating for opportunities more than anything. I think every child should feel their parents are in their corner and not becuase it’s my job to be the fan-club president. Mother not a sMother.

So back to the topic at hand. What are we up to?

At the end of Summer 2024 upon returning from School of American Ballet, we started to have conversations as a family about what was to come for Stella and high school/ballet. The pull to advancing training had been on the horizion for at least a year but, mind you, I did not dance so I had no clue what that really meant for her. I talked with our local studio teachers about next steps and the path sounded like continue to audition for the best summer intensive programs and attend the top selection and then keep training locally and take extra classes if there was time. This would go on until she was plucked from a summer program into a year-round training division. Ok, sounds like a plan!

Maybe this is what WAS the plan 5 to 10 years ago. But the ballet landscape has changed (thanks to social media? IDK). The perception is this: well, all the best dancers are coming from Top 12 YAGP/ADCIBC/LMNOPQRS and can do 32 fouettés while standing on their head underwater and they can do contemporary and circus tricks and I need to do all those things to get anyone to pay attention to me. Oh yeah, and I’m gonna need a minimum of 327 brand ambassador gigs.

OMG….ballet is soooo easy, right?

Stepping back from my sarcasm and the weight of the feelings that she HAD to be doing some level of all these things, what we did do in 2024 was keep ballet training at our home studio and found a Vaganova teacher about an hour away willing to let her take drop in classes (she trained more Balanchine-esque at her home studio. This later proved to be a valuable add on). We also decided to register independently for YAGP (our home studio does not compete) and rehearsed with a coach via Zoom, although decided not to compete in the spring when Stella was accepted to Royal Ballet School’s intensive at White Lodge. She also started working weekly with a strength and condition coach trained in PBT and Pilates. Hindsight, God was (and always is!) looking out for Stella because a week at White Lodge was so much more of a holistic boost than 3 minutes on a YAGP stage without a coach waiting in the wings to be there for you…..who did I think we were that we could show up ALONE and have a positive experience?!

By the spring of 2025 it was decided that Stella would enroll in high school online with Veritas Scholars Academy (a wonderful Classical Ed program) and was set to attend Miami City Ballet School’s 5 week summer intensive as well as 2 weeks with Houston Ballet Academy’s YSTP. Worst case scenario, she would be back at her home studio in the fall if she was not offered a pre-professional spot at MCBS. While she was at HBA, she decided to audition for their year round program and was offered a spot, but we waited till she knew if she wanted to be considered for MCBS. Ultimately, she decided she wanted to spend the year at HBA even though her leveling did not meet criteria for dorm placement and that meant we would have to provide our own housing. We decided to lease an apartment in Downtown Houston near HBA so she could easily get to classes and that myself or my husband would work out a weekly rotational schedule for one of us to be with her. Not ideal, but at least we were only 3 hours from home. This scenario never would have worked much farther from home and uprooting our whole family and moving for ballet was also never an option.

But what does any of this mean?

Sometimes it means people look at me like I have a third eye growing on my face or that I must be a terrible mother for denying her of ‘the high school experience.’ Usually this is from adults still longing for high school themself. Like the great Cher Horowitz once said….AS IF!

Sometimes it means people telling me that I’m ‘so lucky’ that we can do this as if I’m on vacation. Yes, I’m so lucky I rarely get to be under the same roof as my spouse. It’s so fun being tired and wired because your house is so quiet when it’s your week home alone. I’m so lucky that waves of worry like to wake me at 3am. Stella, if you read this, I’m not complaining! I’m painting a picture of what sacrifice looks like right now for a promising dancer coming from a state/region with little to no access for advancement.

Sometimes (and this one is my favorite…no sarcasm) it means people will see the sacrifice and say to me, ‘she’s so blessed to have someone like you for a mother.’ And I struggle to take this compliment because for too long have felt like I have to wear hustle and hostility as a badge of honor. The people who see getting to this point has been a marathon not a sprint typically have some similar reference point whether it be playing college sports or performing arts in their family.

To take all the times someone says ‘must be nice’ and actually be able to say: You know what? Actually, it IS nice to be able to walk along side your child who is taking big steps in a world that is fickle and to have great learning/teaching moments.

I’m as guilty as the next person posting the highlight reels on social media. Seeing us in London, NYC, Miami…anywhere but the small piece of Marley flooring in front of a homemade ballet bar and mirror in a bedroom. There is an excitement and sense of pride that comes when the acceptance letters come in and really the posting comes more from a place of you can be a little girl from Southwest Louisiana and do not play small in this world….be generous with your gifts.

I know someone will read this and say , ‘Sister, you have no clue,’ because the one uppers are out there (in my mind, they all look like Kristen Wiig’s SNL character). Ballet is just like all the other youth sports out there. Adults thinking you are coming for their kid’s birthright spot as quarterback. Oh wait, I didn’t even mean for this post to go down the path of nepotism. I’ll save that for another day ;)

So that’s what we are up to: doing our best to dodge the never ending I-10 construction and learning that I really love having a trash chute in our apartment building.

HBA has been the right fit for this year of change and advancement for Stella. Being accepted in the top pre-pro level has provided access to weekly pas de deux class, contemporary/modern, body conditioning all under one roof. My commute may be long, but at least we finally have everything she needs under one roof. The teachers keep current with what dancers need in today’s artistic climate and there have been some amazing guest teacher classes (Michael Bearden of OU’s dance program and Silas Farley, NYCB/SAB alum have been her favorite).

I thought 2026 would be pretty ironed out for the beginning of the year, but it’s already panning out to be a wild ride. More to come on that! Thanks for following along :)