Reply #76: She's awesome! [View All]

[Withywindle]

For what it's worth, my mom's second career is as an international dancer (her main focus is Middle-Eastern/belly dancing). She *started* the training in her 40s. And she was obsessive - practice 5 or 6 hours a day for 10 years. She makes a living at it now, both teaching and performing (nightclubs, weddings, conventions, you name it) and finances her travel with it. She's in Bali at the moment taking workshops in traditional Indonesian shadow-puppetry in exchange for teaching dance workshops.

She's 59, and, objectively speaking, she's prettier and in better physical shape than me (I'm 38). Not that her looks really matter - as sexy as her dancing is, what matters is her artistry and the joy she takes in it, and that joy is contagious and spreads to her audience and her students.

When I was a child, she was a public school teacher, and she was decent at it and that's a more "respectable" profession for sure, but the truth is, she largely hated it and she was bitter, and I felt the effects of that too.

I'm all in favor of women doing what THEY want, not what other people tell them they *should* want.