My Story: The Conclusion

It’s Wednesday, November 29th, and today we come to the end of my story.

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If you’re new to How to People, this is not our usual format. We talk a lot about community strategy, tactics, and psychology.

Today is part three of three. If you missed it, start with parts one and two.

In 2008, university life ended. Quietly and without celebration. I met a wonderful, awkward, kind man and fell in love. We got married, moved our little family into a townhouse, and I officially began adulthood, both way ahead and way behind my peers.

If this were a movie, this is where people would say “they really rushed that part.” But I am cliff noting this because I want to zoom in on three moments; a few flaps of the butterfly wings that, I believe, are the reason I sit here, typing out my life story for you.

One: Mary

While I was getting my BFA in dance, advanced contemporary was a requirement every quarter. In class, I was often mesmerized by one particular dancer. She was in her 60s and auditing the class. She danced with this ever-present, peaceful smile on her face as if a ray of sunlight shone just for her. We didn’t speak, but I found it amusing and inspiring that she could dance better than most of us 20-something-year-olds.

She approached me after class one day. We’d never exchanged a word until then, but that day, she asked if I’d like to join her for lunch the following week.

Lest you think this was a charming Tuesdays with Morrie moment, I must admit: I was a little weirded out. I went anyway.

Over the next four years, Mary and I met for lunch almost every month at Coco’s Restaurant. It started as a casual conversation but quickly evolved into a mentorship. Each month she would ask me to set three goals: personal, professional, and spiritual. The following month, we’d talk about the progress I made (and more often than not, didn’t make).

I didn’t always want to do it. Sometimes I even resented these meetings, but over time, I realized how much I loved her. She ran her own dance company, her husband was a successful lawyer, and she had escaped an abusive home and had grown into the kind of person you meet just a few times in your life. She didn’t need to give me a minute of her time, yet she showed up, over and over, gently pushing me toward a better version of myself.

Eventually, I found out that Mary did this pretty regularly. She was a praying woman and would ask God to reveal to her someone in her world who could use some extra love and support. She sometimes mentored several people at a time.

We’re still in touch to this day, and unequivocally, she is one of the most important people in my story. She introduced me to the idea that life needn’t happen by default. Her favorite word was intentional. She taught me to be intentional.

Two: The Letter

For a long time, I didn’t want to think about my time in the system, but as I began to find some voice and agency, it occurred to me that if no foster kid ever spoke up about their experience, the likelihood of change was zero. I wrote a long, detailed letter about my time in the system:

• What it felt like to move so often that I lost my sense of attachment to others…something I struggle with today.

• How it felt to shove all of my belongings into a trash bag over and over.

• That missing school because I had another court date made me feel like a piranha.

• How often I’d been referred to as a plaintiff, subject, child, or patient.

• That moving a kid over and over and never telling her why means she will always wonder what she did wrong this time and why nobody could stomach her longer than a few weeks.

• And how incredibly cold it got sleeping inside of a car with my baby daughter. There were never enough blankets.

The system had failed me. It had taken a mostly broken child and broken her fully. I was not at all an anomaly. I met hundreds of others along the way, and most of those I’d kept tabs on were gone in some way: incarcerated, addicted, or homeless.

The letter was well-received. I got a call from Sylvia, the Deputy Director of the county asking me to come and talk to her face-to-face. She was empathetic and genuine. It was a great learning moment for me: inside broken systems are exhausted people trying to make it better.

I was offered a contract with the county to work with them as a public speaker, coming to various events and committee meetings to tell my story and put a face to policy work. Eventually, I ended up in Sacramento, behind a podium addressing Congress. We were pushing for the passing of AB 12, which would provide foster kids with extended support and transitional services. When I was emancipated, this didn’t exist. Virtually overnight, I was on my own in terms of medical insurance, housing, transportation— all basic needs. This could fix that.

After the event, I was approached by a man who asked me if I’d speak at an event he was putting together; a large fundraiser gala for a national nonprofit. I did. After his event, I was approached by a woman who was organizing a conference…

For the next few years, I received a steady stream of paid speaking engagements. And while I felt important and grown, something much more critical was unfolding. Each of these events varied in nature, and I was exposed to new ideas and education. Often, I would stay at an event, attending workshops and networking (although I had no idea that’s what I was doing).

I was recruited by a college to write and teach curriculum for college kids who needed independent living skills, either because they were foster kids or came from some sort of destabilizing background. It was such a wild experience to be in my 20s and trying to teach others how to be an adult. I felt like a bit of a fraud, and yet the process of building and teaching was undeniably fulfilling.

I had let most of these engagements fall by the wayside as I was approaching graduation and feeling the pressure of big change, but after leaving UCR, I reached back out to my little network and was offered a job facilitating at a Youth Opportunity Center. While I worked with at-risk youth to coach them and help find them work, a fellow facilitator taught entrepreneurship, and I decided to sit in on one of his workshops to observe his teaching style. I was hooked immediately.

Hooked was the wrong word, perhaps. I was feverish.

I couldn’t get enough; I read everything I could get my hands on and listened to podcasts at a manic pace. I loved the world of business. It was an endlessly unfolding problem, but one that you had direct control over. There was usually more than one solution, lots of room for creativity, and a sense of being in charge of your own outcomes, which, for obvious reasons, became my primary fixation.

Three: Rita and Hallie

A year post-uni, I was struggling. I was working but missed dance to a dark, depressing degree. I hadn’t realized that in most places, adults who loved dance were SOL.

When referring to product-market fit, it’s often said “be a painkiller, not a vitamin.” This is another one of those pop-business soundbites I hate. To many, dance is a vitamin, but to me and many others, it is a painkiller. In so many ways, it had healed me, and it was a disappointing truth that most adults didn’t have access to it.

I had always toyed with the idea of opening a studio. I loved entrepreneurship and loved dance, but there was one thing I didn’t love: teaching kids. I adore playing with them, but not teaching them. It had never occurred to me to open a studio for adults. It just wasn’t common. But I started to wonder…

Rita was one of my first dance teachers. She was a dance professor at my community college, and hot damn, do I love her. It’s been almost 20 years since that first class with her, and she’s still a present and irreplaceable part of my life. I’ve always put a perhaps inappropriate amount of credence in her opinion. As far as I’m concerned, if she says it, it’s true. This is partly because she had a blunt, no-nonsense way about her. In 2009, I called her on the phone:

“Do you think a studio for adults would work?” I asked.

“I sure do,” she said, “do it. I’ll teach for free for a few months.”

About a month later I was walking through Target. The idea of opening a studio was never not on my mind, but I still couldn’t quite see the path. I ran into Hallie, a fellow dancer I’d met in school. We said hello and made some general chit-chat. I told her I’d been thinking of opening a studio for adults. “If you do,” she said, “I’ll be the first person to buy a membership.” Hallie didn’t lie.

And that was it. A few people I trusted expressed faith in me. It was time.

Community

The studio was opened in 2010. Our beginning was small and so humble. Sometimes I’d show up to class, and no one would come. If three people came, I was elated. Our space was 130 years old, the AC didn’t work, and there was a roach problem. Our logo was terrible.

But damn, was I in love.

Over the course of the next ten years, we built something magical. I met an incredible woman named Julie, and we formed a brief partnership, expanding the business and strategically growing a community that I couldn’t have dreamt up at my best.

I was still doing part-time work facilitating at a business accelerator in Los Angeles. I ran Google Venture Design Sprints and took the frameworks and practices from the facilitation world back to the studio, finding ways to experiment with our business model. Studios had always seemed a bit elementary to me, and I loved the challenge of reimagining what revenue and impact could look like in the arts.

Every moment seemed to have converged to bring this thing to life. My loneliness in foster care, the dance classes I craved but couldn’t have, and all the seeds planted along the way:

• Becky said I was smart, so I went to school, where I found dance

• Jeanna told me to move on, so I went to UCR

• Mary found me there and began mentoring me, so I wrote a letter

• Sylvia read my letter and invited me to be a speaker, where I found facilitation

• Facilitation is where I fell in love with business and the idea of owning one

• Rita and Hallie stepped forward to show faith in my idea, so I opened a studio

Which led to a world that little April could have never imagined. A world where adults entered every day, carrying all kinds of burdens with them, and leaving with a renewed spirit.

Although our partnership didn’t last, Julie ended up buying the studio when I moved across the country, and it continues to thrive.

Sometimes I have a hard time explaining to people what I do through Wondry, and while I may not have the perfect language for it, when I look back, it’s clear to me that community is the only world I want to be a part of.

Deep, deep appreciation for letting me tell my story. It was a challenge condensing it down to three emails and forced me to do much-needed processing. We shall return to our regularly scheduled programming next week.

Happy Holidays, friends.

April

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