Location: Shrewsbury Boro School (asbestos laden) Auditorium.
Year: 1988.
Event: school talent show.
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Rewind 8 weeks prior, when the school announced there would be a talent show. I walked home from school with an announcement to share with my Mom.

“Mom, I signed up to join the talent show.”

“Great, Erin!”

Unspoken…umm, what talent? Who is this person in front of me? It’s for sure not my middle child daughter who is so quiet and shy that during a parent teacher conference the teachers shared concerns from the other kids…concerns that Erin couldn’t talk. (I could. I just chose not to. ) Could she be celebrating her talent of waiting until the last minute to get her work done? Or her uncanny ability to hide the family laundry in her closet until Dad ran out of work shirts and had to do recon? Chores ignored because dance parties to George Michael’s Faith album blasting via cassette tape from her boom box took priority?

With that, she was onto something.

“I’m going to do a dance.”

“Great!” She repeated, but less great-this-is-going-to-be-amazing in her tone and more how-is-this-going-to-not-be-a-disaster-tone.

I had decided. I went up to my room that afternoon, fired up the boom box, and started choreo. I hit rewind over and over and over and over until I got the moves down. I wrote down the steps and practiced and rewound and practiced and rewound and practiced and rewound and practiced some more.

We headed to the school that night. The audience was friends and family. The lights were dimmed. There was a different sort of energy.

I remember walking on stage and taking my spot. I remember standing there, jazz shoes pointed, silver unitard shining (it was really silver and formfitting in mildly inappropriate ways) with my asymmetrical haircut A-SYMMERTRICAL-LING (as unsubtle as the parts outlined in my unitard) and I closed my eyes.

I took a deep breath. I shut out everything.

When the opening beats of “Never Gonna Give You Up” came on (you heard me!) it came over me. The music, the choreo, the moment.

I don’t remember it, really. I don’t remember what happened.

I just remember when the final notes of the song hit, I was clapped back to reality by the audience.

Not the normal talent-show-golf-clap, you know the one–we gotta be polite and clap as to not ruin that poor untalented child’s self-esteem…it was a LEGIT clap. With feeling behind it! With some oomph behind it! With a, “Who the hell was that because that’s not the shy, mildly-dorky, in her own world Erin that we know?” clap energy.

That clap back to reality had me realizing I had no idea what I’d done those previous four minutes. Zero recollection.

I knew I didn’t need to know what had happened because the sound of the applause confirmed it–something sweet had just happened. Louder than the applause was the rumbling and bubbling in my stomach of I don’t know what that was, but MAN WAS THAT FUN! Man was that exhilarating! When can I do it again?!

As I walked off the stage and I remember the looks of OMG who the hell is this shiny dancer? Looks like they had their eyes on Rick Astley himself. Looks like, “How can I know her?” (I mean they did because there were only 100 kids in the whole K-8 school…it was hard to be unknown.)

I just smiled. Because I knew inside. I knew that shiny soul on that stage, lost in the music lost in the moment WAS me. It was the me I didn’t let a lot of people see. But she was in there. I guess she just needed Rick Astley to help her show up.

My Mom, to this day, says that is her proudest moment of mine.

To this day, my mom says that dance is her proudest moment of mine.

FYI I’ve done a lot of stuff since 8th grade.

(If Pat were up on the vernacular, this would be her “I said what I said” moment.)

She says it’s because something did come over me, and the whole place was drawn in. That she saw what she knew I had inside of me–a sparkle, the ability to get lost in what I loved, a creative, quiet yet bold girl who could own the stage in her own way.

I embraced my bold that day.

I shined inside and out.

When was your first moment of embracing your bold?

I think we’ve all had that moment. I believe we all have that something inside of us. Some sort of jitters in our bellies. Some sort of longing or dream. Or maybe not even anything as fancy as that–just something saying I gotta get out there and mix it up. Try something different. Do what I know I can do, with a room full of judgy grammar school friends in front of me or not.

We go. We do it. AND IT’S AWESOME.

Then we get busy. Or lost. Or quieted. Or told we’re too much. Or we’ve got different responsibilities and we forget those internal glimmers. Those moments when we know we are JUST RIGHT.

Yesterday was International Dance Day and OFC it made me think of Rick and that silver unitard. It made me think about what a time it is for us to embrace our bold. To use our voices. To notice those glimmers and breathe some life into them and to show up and shine.

People will look over us.

People will see what they want to see.

It’s up to us to choose us.

To pick us and to say, “Hey, yo, I’ve got talent. I’ve got something to say. I’ve got moves to show.”

Take those descriptors as literally or figuratively as you see fit for your circumstance.

I’m inviting you to step up on that stage and to embrace your bold, your voice, that shiny you that’s there, whether you remember or not.

Because whether that auditorium of friends, family, and parents knew it that Friday night, they needed to see Erin come alive under the (not so big) lights.

Whether YOU know it or not, I’m here to tell you your friends, your family, your colleagues, your boss, your clients need to see YOU come alive, embrace your bold, and own your voice.