Learning to Love the Body That Carries Me

For years, mirrors were both my stage and my enemy. As a ballet dancer, I spent hours every day staring at my reflection, not just to perfect my lines and posture, but to silently measure myself against the bodies standing beside me. Ballet is a world of precision, beauty and grace, but it is also a world of constant comparison. 

I remember being a teenager in the studio, watching other dancers bend their legs effortlessly into extensions that seem to defy gravity, while my muscles trembled to keep up. Their legs looked longer, slimmer and with sharper lines. I told myself I wasn’t enough, that if I could shrink a little more, discipline myself a little harder, maybe I could look like them. 

But comparison is a hunger that never ends. No matter how I pushed my body, I always found a new reason to believe that I wasn’t worthy of the art I loved. Ballet has a way of making you believe your worth lies in how closely you match an impossible ideal. And slowly, I think I forgot why I ever danced in the first place. 

It took years for me to begin unraveling that mindset. What shifted wasn’t sudden, but quiet. It came in small moments: the way my smile started to come back when I danced across the floor, even if my arabesque was far from perfect. The realization that the dance I admired the most wasn’t the one with the longest legs, but the one who could make an audience feel something real. 

The day I finally stopped comparing myself wasn’t dramatic. I didn’t wake up one morning free of insecurity. Instead, it was more like an exhale after years of holding my breath. I looked in the mirror, saw the body I had tried to fight against for so long, and felt something unfamiliar: gratitude. Gratitude for the muscles that carried me, the feet that blistered but never quiet, the arms that had learned to express what words never could. 

For me, self care became the act of choosing to honor my body instead of punishing it. It meant eating good food, not just something that fueled me. Resting when exhausted, stretching not just to improve but to release. Ballet, at its heart, is not just about looking perfect, it’s also about telling a story through movement. And stories are not told by flawless bodies. They are told by human ones. 

Sometimes, I still catch myself comparing. Old habits don’t vanish overnight. But now, when I feel that familiar tug, I remind myself that no one can dance like me. My body carries my history, my struggles, and my joy—and that makes my art mine alone.

Letting go of comparison is still a work in progress. But every time I step into the studio and choose to dance for my own love instead of perfection, I know that I’m one step closer.

• dance
• health
• love