Dear Sonia,

It’s an unusual gift and I’ve gone back and forth about giving it to you because it might seem weird. Like I might seem crazy or something. But being vulnerable always has that side of maybe looking ridiculous. So here it is.

This year has been one of the most important of my life. Because I have finally stayed consistent with my practice. I am finally, after so many years, out of that tug of war of get strong and lose the strength. I am strong, and I am strong because of all of the countless years and days you showed up to make this space available to me.

When I was a little girl, I just wanted to be a ballerina. I wanted to dance and wear costumes and have a neat bun in my hair. I wanted to be strong in a way that you would only see the graceful part of the strength. I didn’t have that kind of childhood. I never became a ballerina, and I never learned the graceful part of having strength, only the survival.

Even though it can be really hard and feel really awful, I know that I am healing myself in depths of layers I haven’t yet, despite a decade plus of work in therapy, addiction recovery, yoga. It is because that scared little kid inside of me has a safe place to come and deal with the process of trying to find an experience of peace and acceptance in my body and image in the mirror. Thank you for that safe place to come.

Every time you say in the dialogue on the second part of awkward “Like the ballerina you always wanted to be.” I wonder if you always wanted to be a ballerina too. And that maybe we both have that little girl within us that had to just be really strong. So strong we didn’t get to stop and dance and feel beautiful or like the center of anything. I just wanted you to know this holiday that in those tiny moments in those poses, where I can balance and breathe at the same time - I feel like I am everything little me imagined I would never be able to be. I feel like I won.

So I wanted to give you something that is as beautiful, and strong, and as delicate as that feeling of triumph. Something little kid you and little kid me might have had in a different way in a different life.

Thank you for my classes. Thank you for this year. Thank you for really treating me like I am strong and capable. Like a ballerina I always wanted to be. Merry Christmas