Transcriber: Liyi Wang Reviewer: Yanyan Hong
All right. So I'm going to start with how I start with my littles
and I'm just going to ask you to touch your head for me. Yes.
Touch your shoulders and touch your head again.
Now put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care
and say woo, woo! Say woo woo! Good job, you guys. Now freeze.
Everybody clap your hands.
How low can you go? Now, just kidding. Just kidding.
Okay, so now just real quick.
Just put your arms like this, like you’re going to hug yourself.
And I want you to repeat after me and say I love myself
and I am amazing, you guys. Good job. Well , guess why I want you to say that.
Right here is my little friend Amma, and she made a T-shirt that said,
I love myself, I'm amazing,
and came to dance one night with that because I start at age three teaching
the kids to say that because self-love
is the basis of everything that we do.
So the relationship with yourself sets the tone
for every single relationship that you have.
And so if you love yourself, then, you know, why wouldn't you?
There is a one in 400 trillion chance that you were born,
so why wouldn't you love that completely?
So the next thing I would like you to do,
if you can just look at somebody at your table
and just give them a quick compliment,
just anybody at the table
and just say something nice.
Okay. Awesome. You guys, we could do this all day, right?
Okay, so the reason I want you to do that is because
the way you make somebody else feel about themselves says so much about you.
If I asked you, how do you dance, what would you say? Would you say, I don't?
Or I sit it out, I watch or,
you know, I’m first on the dance floor
like five, six, seven, eight. You’re gonna go.
Okay,
so let’s reword the question now and say, how do you move your body?
Because that's what dances. So how do you move your body through life, right?
Are your answers the same? Do you sit it out?
Are you first out there or do you watch?
Because a dancer doesn't just think about steps of a routine.
You think about how you get there and how you get to that other part of
the stage. What's happening in between the steps. So with that comes pivots.
And I like to say pivots are sent from God.
And you either follow them or you don't.
Pivots are also changes in our life.
Challenges and pivot is also for my friends fans out there.
What Ross said when he got stuck in the stairwell
and he was trying to move that couch up and he says, “Pivot, pivot.”
Okay, so now that we understand what a pivot is,
I'd like to just share a few pivots that I've had just briefly, because honestly,
the pivots are so significant that they're like four other TEDTalks.
Okay, so we could be here all day with just those.
So my first challenge was at age 10,
I had significant facial trauma.
I fell face first on a cement floor in a garage off of a pogo stick.
It's not a usual accident, right? So it's kind of kind of different.
So I lost all the bone in my upper shell here
and all my adult teeth on the top at age 10.
So the work that happened at that day that our lives
change, my entire family's life change, I became the child in need.
So I was no stranger to the dental chair all of my life.
Unfortunately, at my age, at 10,
a girl's jaw does not finish growing until age 17.
So the work was beautiful, but it was not permanent. So I was finished growing.
So which brings me to present
that because of successful bone surgeries
and grafting throughout my life,
I became a candidate for the most permanent dental work,
which is bone and dental implants.
So I was so excited to be able to get those and now I call them
a mouth full of Marlies basically. So they're just screws.
Okay, so I have just all the roots of my teeth are screws,
so I have to bring humor into it. So once everything was all fixed, right?
Because that's what we say we need to fix everybody.
I asked if I was going to be back at the airport, like,
like, am I going to be with all that metal up there?
And then when I go for my checkups, I'm like, Do I have a screw loose?
Like, I always wanted to say that, you know?
So anyway, but what I remember most from that accident was I at 10 years old,
I was being put on a stretcher and the fireman just said,
We're going to make you pretty again. And that's all I wanted to hear, right?
Because we just want to fix things.
And I couldn't wait for that day,
but it just became part of my life that there was there were
so many things that had to happen first.
But we're always so worried and concentrating on fixing things.
But we don't think about how we actually feel. Right.
Which brings me to things that happened in the interim.
So leading to my permanent situation, which if anyone ever compliments my smile,
they have no idea what they're doing to my heart inside
because of what I've gone through to get here. So what were.
In the interim of these happenings.
I developed an eating disorder called anorexia,
and my lowest weight was 80 pounds,
which is 35 pounds less than I am now. So that gives you a visual.
The next thing I became addicted to opioids. I am eight years in recovery.
And I had a domestic violent marriage and I am seven years free of that.
I have sole custody of my two boys and they are completely my world.
And that was the sole reason of that marriage.
So to me, that that that’s just
that is everything to me is my boys.
So with being going through a trauma,
you got to understand that unresolved.
Childhood trauma is always
the gateway drug to these other issues that no one wants to address.
So it's just like everybody is just worried about fixing you, fixing you.
Let's get to what what we could do physically instead of what someone feels.
I like to say you have to feel it to heal it, and then you can move on.
But if you don't sit with it for a minute,
it's just it's not going to get better.
So with that, this is a picture of my mom here. And. This is 2015.
It was my first Mother's Day as a single mom, and my mom was my savior. She
was my best friend and my hero.
And she taught us that if we fall down, we don't stay down.
She passed away two months ago at age 71,
and she just woke up one day and touched her nose.
Very healthy and very crazy like me and just running around.
And she had a brain tumor stage four glioblastoma multiforme.
So she survived 15 months with that.
Both of my boys are graduating one junior high and one high school,
and that was senior night.
And she pushed her ass across that field, that 50 yard line,
and she made it for my kids.
And I will carry her legacy on and I will continue what I do to help others
because she told me I had a lot of good things to say,
so I will continue doing it for her.
So a challenge that we all faced, ok,
was the 2020 whole world shutdown.
So if you guys remember that schools were closed, businesses were closed,
I was the first to go because I'm a dance teacher.
So nobody wanted to have contact sports, right?
You're not allowed to look at each other or talk to each other
and nobody could call you on the phone. Nothing, right?
So because I'm a single mom, I have to do everything.
So I’m going to Publics and I’m food shopping. And this song comes on
coast to coast. And, you know, you know, you're getting up there in age when,
you know, you really love the music “Publix” is playing.
So you're like, Hey, okay, I'm going to jam out.
So I'm on my wagon and I'm just like, Go in and I'm okay.
And I’m really I don’t care who’s watching, I don’t really care.
So I push away and there's a guy there and he's like getting ready to talk
and he's responding and he's like, Hey, girl, can I have the next dance?
And I’m like, Oh my God, wait, you’re not supposed to
look at me or talk to me or nothing. We’re not allowed,
right? But I was so excited that he felt this vibe.
So I was like, okay, let's do the running man.
And we're like, okay, let's go.
So anyway, it was like so fun that somebody just, you know,
got that fun vibe. So now we're going to move to Zooms. Who's done zooms?
Everybody in this room. Okay, these are my zooms. So picture it.
There's 3 to 5 year olds in my squares, right? So we're dancing, we do our thing.
And that's what I do. I mean, I work with kids ages 2 to 18,
so we're doing our dance. And all of a sudden my son was 12 at the time.
He’s 14 now, so 2020, right? He comes in the room and spots.
All the boxes are empty. Right.
All these kids are gone, and I'm still, like, doing my thing.
And he's like, You're doing all that, and nobody's there.
And I was like, you know, they just left. I promise. They just left.
They just left. So these kids are like, Peace out, homie. I'm done with you.
I'm done with the zoom. Everybody was done with this zoom.
But we kids pay attention. Kids completely pay attention to us.
So my boys are my they are my reason for doing things
because they watch what we do. So we have to set a good example.
So with that, we have to encourage our kids. Teach them to be confident.
And like Snoop Dogg says, just keep breathing.
You know, we breathe, we achieve type of thing. So we just keep going. Right.
So now I want you guys to think about your pivots and your life
and some of you may be able to have related to mine in some way or another.
But think about the pivots that you’ve had.
Did you dance through your pivots?
That's just movement of your body. Did you set them out?
Did you how did you handle them? Did you feel them? Did you heal them?
And what did you learn? What did you learn from them?
So I need you to know that
our pivots take us to our passion, to our purpose.
And I want you to be proud of who you are.
We are all born with three things a mind, a body, and a life.
And what we do with the first two determines the third.
And we all make mistakes. But you need to pick yourself back up,
just like my mom says and keep going. But don't forget to feel them.
You have to feel to heal. And on the other side of healing is helping.
And that's when you know you're on the other side of the rainbow.
Because you can help. Because you went through it
and you dealt with your feelings.
So be so completely you
that all those around you want to be completely them
self to it. There is only one you again.
So do not waste your miracle being anything other than what you are supposed
to be and love who you are.
Be mindful of your gifts, what you have, not what you don't. And love.
Who you are. Not what you're not. So this is me.
And this is just like, you know, a couple of months ago.
And so I do this stuff with the kids, but it's you know,
it's quite funny because sometimes, you know,
I'll do it in class and the kids will go, I had one little girl and she was six.
And she goes, Well, how does that happen at this age?
And I go, okay, wait, hold up, hold up.
Because kids say what grown ups are thinking,
just please keep that in mind because kids can get away with it.
I mean, grown ups are thinking it, but then they're not going to say like,
hey, hey, girl, how do you still do that?
Okay. Well, if I could do it, I’m going to do it.
And if I didn't have these shoes on, I'd do that right now.
So I said to her, I said, What do you mean how?
I mean, how old do you think Mr. Hill is? And so she goes like 20.
And I was like, okay, well,
that’s a little that’s a little bit too generous, but.
Okay. So I’m like, okay, just just a little older.
And then she goes, all right, well, 25.
And then I go, All right, we’ll leave it there.
And then this girl and the other girl in class, she goes, Now you’re 35.
And I was like,All right, let’s pull out a day now. That’s enough, kids.
Like, we're good. So it doesn't matter. Right.
But the handstand, I like to say, is much like life.
It is not only about balance,
but also stability and alignment and sometimes upside down world.
So and plus it's fun anyway.
So if you can do it, I encourage you just walk on your hands, you know, now.
But what I what I want to bring to you guys is to ask you and look at dance
as a look at your world like a stage. So we're on a stage.
So you have your world as a stage. How would you perform? How do you perform?
And you can choose how you move. You are in charge.
So with that being said,
I’d like to just put a little music on and do
a little freestyle if you guys want to stand up.
Everybody, Clark. Here we go. Okay. Try, but
here we go. Here we go.
Oh, man.
You guys. Good job. Look at this.
I gave myself a standing ovation, and I didn't even know it.
I totally did not even plan that. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much.
Thank you.