YVONNE WINK (00:04.216) Welcome back to the Unfolding podcast. Today's conversation is about resilience, reinvention, identity, and what happens when life completely changes the plan you had for yourself. Our guest lost the thing she loved most, not once, but twice. Dance wasn't just something she did. It was part of who she was. And when that identity disappeared, she had to figure out who she was without it. But what makes her story so extraordinary is that she didn't come back through the front door. She came back through persistence, through heartbreak, through surgery, through a pandemic, through starting over at an age when most people in the dance world would tell you that it's already too late. She wasn't professionally trained. She was self-taught. Initially. Instead of waiting for permission, she created her own lane. This is why I'm so proud of her. Ha ha. This is a story about finding yourself, losing yourself, and realizing that maybe your life wasn't falling apart at all. Maybe it was unfolding. Welcome to the Unfolding Podcast. I'm your host, friend, and your girl, Yvonne Wink. Thank you for being here with me. I want you to meet a dear friend of mine. Her name is Brittany, and I've known her for how long have we known each other? Years. It's like five years. Five years. Yeah. Ha ha ha! I can't wait till you guys see her. She's so cute, so precious. And I am so excited to share her story. I've known her story, I've watched all of this happen from start to where she is today, five years later, and I can't be more proud. I'm so excited. To introduce you to Miss Brittany and let's hear about her story. Brittany, I want you to take me back to the beginning. So, before the surgery, before the pandemic, before all of this, I want you to tell us what dance meant to you. Who were you? when you pictured your future, what did you believe your life would look like? Did dance feel like something you loved, or did it feel like part of your identity? Hi. Hi. Dance was dance was my absolute everything as a kid, everything. I was the girl at sleepovers. most people wake up, eat breakfast, you know, maybe watch their favorite cartoons. I was like, you guys, let's make up a dance. I saw this video, let's recreate it. You know, I'm talking like eight years old. I love it. I was the girl that woke everyone up at six AM with choreography ready in my brain. You know, wanted to be the next Britney Spears. I wanted to be on stage. I was in every kind of jazz class, cheerleading class, I was a ice skater. all of the above. Dance and creation was just permanently on my mind. The more I was moving, the more I was dancing, the more I was, you know, in a team setting, but also shining solo. you know, as a kid. I just I that is where I thrived. I absolutely thrived off that as a kid. That was my life. I would say that was all from z age zero to maybe age like twelve. Yeah. That was me. Yeah. Do you remember a time that you knew that you were a dancer? Like, you know, maybe two or five, did you go, I'm dancer. This is my life. This will be my life. Yes. I was in front of the TV watching a live show. I was so young I don't even remember the artist. But my mom said I was literally like dancing in the living room, like while the person on TV was dancing. And I knew like, I just knew I was always, I wanted when I would see people on stage in a movie or anything, I'm like, that's gonna be me. Like that's absolutely gonna be me. So I think it just started since I can have a memory, you know, since I can remember my memories. Wow. Wow. I love that. then life interrupted that plan of yours, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You had sur surgery that forced you to step away from dance completely, not just a little fix-it thing, where we're going to just take a little break and maybe put a cast on something and but you stepped away from dance completely. And I want you to take me into that moment. I wanna know I think listeners wanna know what was happening, what were you experiencing, What did it feel like emotionally during that time? And did it feel temporary when you stepped away from it? Or did it feel like the door had closed forever? I think a lot of people underestimate how painful identity loss can be. So when dance disappeared, did it feel like you disappeared too? Yeah, so obviously I went to college, you know, life life happened and all that, but I've but I've always been dancing in some capacity, you know? Maybe not professionally, but I've just I've always been dancing, whether it be in a Zumba class, at a club, go go dancing. I have a a really big go go background, which is all freestyle, right? So I haven't really been in a professional dance space since I was like twelve, you know. again I'd been on several stages throughout my life and but you know, no choreography classes, nothing like that yet, right? but you know, maybe I was gonna get there one day. Well, I didn't have the chance because during not only the worst time for like the world, the pandemic. yeah, so something pretty awful happened to me. I was having pain in my abdomen and I went to go get it checked out and I thought it was just like, you know, normal woman stuff. Maybe I have a cyst, you know, because that's kinda normal in a woman's life. I got some tests, I got an ultrasound, I got x-rays, CT scan, all that. And they were like, you need emergency surgery. You have two grapefruit size tumors. actually at the time they thought it was just one tumor on one of my ovaries, right? So they're like, we need to remove this immediately. It wasn't it wasn't like, let's check it out. Let's no no no they like this is this is like you could hemorrhage and die. This thing is huge. We need to have emergency surgery. And I was like, okay, not ideal, but it doesn't sound like the end of the world. They're like worst case scenario, we're just gonna take an ovary, you're totally fine, right? We're we're gonna do it laparoscopically, it'll be like, boom, you're back, you're back and ready to go, right? well, something pretty devastated happening. They went in to do the surgery and I woke up from surgery and they were like, so I was like, Did you get it? I like w did you take the ovary? Are we good? And they're like, No, we had to close you back up. They're like, Unfortunately, this is really, you know, hard to say, but We have to close you we had to close you up because we need your permission to have a second surgery. I'm like, why would you need my permission? And they said, Well, it's not one tumor, it's two. It's two massive tumors enveloping your fallopian tubes and they're unsavable. And so they said, We can't take your fallopian tubes when you're asleep because we need to your permission because you will be infertile for the rest of your life. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold how old were you? I was right right at the top of 30 pretty much. Yeah. And, you know, I had actually been trying. Me and my husband actually were trying. I stopped birth control. We were actively trying to have a baby actually. you know, I was we were ready. We'd been married for a bit. you know it was time. and so yeah, to hear that not only would I have to be healing, I could see the stitches from surgery number one and I'd had to look at them every day, but I would have to heal for a second surgery to then take the ability to have children. There's no way around it. And there were actually and by that time, like I couldn't really do anything because if I had any like crazy movement to me, you know, they could burst and I could hemorrhage and die, right? So I just the thing that I love most, moving around and dancing, I had to stop. Like I couldn't move because I had was awaiting my second surgery and a very ceiling and final fate. which was really hard to take. so yeah, that stopped everything. It stopped I couldn't even move, let alone dance. I I I I was healing I had to heal from one surgery and then the second surgery happened. The amount of papers that I had to sign that said, Are you sure you consent to us taking your fallopian tubes? Like you will never be able to naturally have children ever in your life. Do you consent? The amount of times I had to sign that stupid am I allowed to swear? Yes. That stupid f*****g piece of paper No, never on my podcast. And I and I was like and I'm just like, it was, it was, it was devastating. There's no other word for it. There's no other word for it. It was I was that I was it. I was done as a person. So you're mourning, you're mourning losing everything you love, dancing, moving your body, feeling healthy, being young, vivacious, and the fact that you are Never going to have children naturally. Yes. Did you think that the feeling you were experiencing was temporary or did you feel like this is my life? I thought I the word I can use was the finality of it. It was like it was just like this flashing word in my head like this is final, this is unreversible. Like this is it. You know, like it was just it was it was soul shattering, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. You've spoken openly about struggling during that season. And I wanna stay in this moment for a bit because I think so many people that are listening can relate to this. I wanna I want to ask you, what did that chapter actually look like day to day for you? I I mean I'm talking. We want I want to hear the good, the bad and the ugly. And I know and I and it this isn't to glamorize it. This is really to I want people to identify because our stories are very similar, zero to do with dance, right? But your journey, my journey, and thousands and thousands of other women's journey are very similar. So if you can talk to me about that, what did your what did day to day look like? Did you struggle to get out of bed? Did you lose motivation? Did you feel disconnected from yourself? Did it feel like life was moving forward for everyone else while you're just stuck standing still? and what was the hardest part of t
