Birthday Ballet

sometimes healing looks like finally saying yes to joy

As a little girl, I dreamed of being a ballerina.

I pored over books from the library, consuming novels and memoirs about dancers, memorizing ballet vocabulary, laying How To books on the basement floor and teaching myself the positions. But turn-out and pliés and gracefully arcing arms do not equate dancing. The solitude of the basement could not replace the belonging of a studio and the guidance of a coach. The dream was alive, yet caged.

I longed for classes in town at the Royal Canadian Academy of Dance. I imagined myself attending Julliard in the USA one day. I tied gauzy scarves around my small waist and imagined tutus and tights. I leapt and twirled around the basement when no one was looking, but I didn’t know how to make the still images from books into the graceful dance my heart longed to embrace.

I never took a class. I read, in one of my library books, that a ballet dancer must begin by age 12, after which the body becomes too inflexible. I grew desperate as my twelfth birthday arrived, then passed. When my thirteenth came, I shelved my dance stories and stopped borrowing instruction books. The chapter had closed.

I thought.

Last Spring, as we rolled up our yoga mats in the park, I overheard two mothers discussing a new adult ballet class added at their daughters’ dance studio. I couldn’t believe my ears. Surely this wasn’t open to adults with no history of dance?

I looked up the studio online the next day. I called to be sure I was eligible. I hung up, feeling excited and uncertain.

At the same time, I was going through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron with my dear friend and writing mentor, Michelle Dowd (do check out her Substack!). Many journal prompts probed into the stifled artistic dreams of the inner child, and again and again, alongside memories of a lost art portfolio and a false accusation of cheating in a writing contest, my caged longing to dance ballet emerged on the pages of my journal.

In the workbook, Cameron encourages readers to make “artist dates” with ourselves. I knew immediately what I wanted – needed - to do. “I’m going to take a dance class,” I told my online cohort for accountability, palms sweaty, heart fluttering with uncertainty.

On a rainy Wednesday night, I twisted my hair into a bun, feeling like an imposter playing dress-up. I pulled on yoga clothes and running socks in place of tights and ballet slippers—the only athletic clothes I’d ever been allowed or permitted myself to own.

And I showed up.

Everyone had danced as a child. I was behind, off tempo, awkward, confused.

And a little bit giddy.

I felt silly. It felt surreal. I was holding onto a real barre (Was I standing too close? Gripping too tightly?) and watching the other dancers in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. I heard prompts spoken aloud I had only read before in my library books: grand jeté, plié, arabesque. I felt out of place – and also somehow like I had come home to a place I had always belonged, but never been.

I bought ballet slippers. Soft, pink, feminine – a color I had long ago eschewed. I told no one, ordering them online. I scrolled through images of leotards and chiffon wrap skirts. Add to cart.

And then - nothing. It was all too silly, this long-ago dream. Could I really indulge in this way?

image: the author’s first ballet slippers

But one day, the ballet teacher showed up in the art studio where I practiced yoga, to play ukalele as we moved. Music, art, movement, connection. She invited me to return.

And so I did.

Seven months of weekly classes have passed, and today is my birthday.

And this year, I’m honoring my birthday in a brand-new way: with a gift to my inner child. Today, as the calendar turns, as the sun hovers high for its longest inhale of the year, I am dancing in my first ballet.

My inner child is dancing.

And so am I.

I still feel a bit silly. Until this public post, I’d only told a few people of my Wednesday night activity. It feels so personal, too precious. I am doing this for me, not to perform, not to impress (an unlikely outcome anyway!). The competitive, perfectionist child who might have excelled in ballet if given a chance has softened into a gentler self with grace for imperfection, with compassion for a broken childhood, and with joy in the complex simplicity of movement and music and connection, with courage to show up and make mistakes.

And maybe in that my heart is freer to dance, though my body stiffer with age.

When they announced the ballet would be performed on my birthday, I first thought this an excuse to bow out. I’m not ready to be on a stage! What if I fall into the audience, or turn the wrong way and collide with a peer? But as my fellow dancers encouraged me, I realized the profound perfection of dancing today – what greater gift could I give to myself?

I stood in the velvet-curtained wings, looking out onto the stage for the first time, bright lights illuminating the ballerinas en pointe, their arms reaching gracefully above. My instructor’s whispered instructions faded as music and movement filled my senses and every bit of me breathed in the moment. I was really here.

The little girl who danced alone in the basement never became the ballerina she imagined.

But this birthday, she finally became a dancer.

It turns out the chapter hadn’t closed after all. It was simply bookmarked for later.

I’m Deborah Vinall, PsyD, LMFT, a trauma therapist and author exploring trauma, relationships, belonging, and the complicated work of being human.

My books—including Gaslighting: A Step-by-Step Recovery Guide and Trauma Recovery Workbook for Teens—have helped readers around the world understand and heal from relational and other forms of trauma and find their way back to themselves.

Here on Mental Health Musings, I explore those themes more personally, blending clinical insight with reflection, and occasionally sharing guided meditations and resources for healing.

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