Destiny

"You see, one's destiny is a very complicated thing. Every incident in a person's life affects everything else that follows it."

Let's talk about my destiny. My biggest, most important life event was marrying W. If I hadn't moved to CT from GA, all on my own, I never would have wound up in NC. That is a nutshell of a much more complicated story. But still. I never would have met W if I hadn't made that painful move to CT. I shudder to think.

But on another note, let's talk about my old friend Nancy. She and I met online years ago and instantly hit it off. She was a roller derby skater, I was a figure skater. She passed away suddenly from a blood clot in her leg. She was the inspiration behind going to my first roller derby bout, just to see what it was she did on skates. And I came away from that bout wanting to do it, too.

I won't get into the sob story that is my derby career. But suffice to say, derby got me in shape. Or more accurately, I got myself into shape hoping I would be good at derby. Derby got me into hooping. I did rhythmic gymnastics as a child, hoop is one apparatus. Also I have memories of trying to break records for amount of time waist hooping in high school. But hoop dance never occurred to me. What got me into hooping was researching ways to work your core, all for derby. I bought my first weighted hoop and simply did waist hooping as cardio for many months. I needed ways to make it more challenging after awhile, and that's when I discovered hoop dance.

Fast forward a bit, hoop dance helped me find Lyra. Just searching for ways to dance inside the hoop. And conveniently, there's an aerial place that teaches Lyra locally. It coincided a bit with my decision to finally leave derby behind me. If I were still skating derby, I wouldn't be able to devote as much time to Lyra.

There you have it. I can thank Nancy for it all along.