I started learning dance in heels not because it makes sense on paper, but because it challenges something deeper in me.

Over the last few years, I have built a healthier relationship with my body through Pilates, acrobatics, and tumbling. What began as physical discipline became something more: trust, consistency, and a quiet kind of strength I hadn’t known before. For the first time my body felt like something I could rely on, not something I needed to hide or control.

Dance, especially in heels, takes that a step further. It places me directly in a space I’ve spent most of my life avoiding: being seen. It asks me to move with intention, to take up space, and to exist without shrinking.

That hasn’t come easily. I’ve spent years navigating experiences that made expression, both physical and emotional, feel unsafe. Growing up in an environment shaped by instability and later facing domestic violence, I learned to become smaller, quieter, more contained. Even as an adult those patterns followed me shaping how I showed up in the world.

Moving to Norway added another layer. Instead of expanding into who I was, I found myself adapting in ways that made me less visible, less “different,” more acceptable. Over time, that came at the cost of losing parts of myself I hadn’t even realized I’d set aside.

This project is my way of reclaiming that.

It’s not about performance or perfection. It’s about ownership. It’s about stepping into discomfort and choosing not to retreat. It’s about rebuilding a sense of self that isn’t defined by fear, expectation, or past experience.