Put On Your Dancing Shoes

I have known what was on my heart to write to kick off this new year, I just hadn't discovered how to convey it in the proper way. 

We all do New Year's resolutions, or goals. Maybe you just focus on one single word for that year. 

This year, I haven't found what I want to add to my life, but I have found things I want to take away. 

Last night I attended a beautiful wedding reception filled with fancy dresses, high heels and bow ties around young mens' necks. 
Me and my husband made our way onto the dance floor as a slow song began to make its way into the air.

I rested my head onto his shoulder and my gaze lined up with a young girl in the middle of the floor. 
She was wearing a white tulle dress with fake flowers embedded in her flowing blonde hair. 

Nobody was around her. 
She didn't appear to belong to anyone but herself. 
Her shoes were nowhere to be found as her feet made love with the wooden panels below her. 
She was spinning,waving her arms over her head and cared less about the fact that I was staring at her dancing there all alone.

I smiled and observed her practice her grooviest moves for an audience of one. 

My face dropped as amusement soon turned to sadness when I realized she would one day not be so free to move on the dance floor, barefooted and ignorant to the stares of others.

She would grow up and begin to care. 
She would grow up and begin to know her hair was frizzy, her feet exposed and she would soon grow older and begin to scrutinize how her body looked in that beautiful tulle dress. 

So I watched her dance while she could.
I was a little jealous honestly; I had already lost that part of me long ago.
The part that will hit the dance floor alone, having a party of one, hair down and unaware of anything physical about myself but the feeling of my feet moving to the beat.

When had I lost that? 

When had I traded my dancing shoes for shame and embarrassment?
I had somehow misplaced the dancing shoes I had slipped off to cut loose and when leaving the floor put on body shaming instead.

Last night I decided I wanted to leave that behind in 2015.
I want to leave shaming myself and others for what they bring to the dance floor behind. 

No more changing ten times, leaving my closet looking like the mall threw up. 
No more pulling and tugging at shirts.
No more missing out on the best dancing songs life has to offer because I'm afraid to take my frizzy hair down and cut my body loose.

Every body is made for dancing.
Size 00 to 20, a girl should dance when her song comes on.

I have heard body shaming on every side, from telling a thin girl she needs to go "eat some meat" to telling a plus size woman she should be on a treadmill.

I can't make the world stop the shaming, but I can start a movement by beginning with myself first. 
A beautiful thing happens when a woman shows others she's not afraid or ashamed of her body.

Honey, find your dancing shoes. I know they're buried in that closet somewhere.
Cut loose. 

You weren't designed to be a wallflower at your own party.

It's a new year and it's time to get the hell off that wall and not care who's looking.
Bust out your best moves, bust through the barriers you built for yourself because your main jam just came on.

Leave body shaming behind.

Put on your dancing shoes.