It Still Counts As Dancing

I love to dance.

I love the way I feel moving around a kitchen like it’s a stage. I love the way music feels in my soul, whether it’s uplifting and fast or dramatic and heart-wrenching.

I have always loved dancing. Tap, ballet, cheer—all the things little girls do as they grow up. And, like it does for a lot of adults, dancing started to fall by the wayside as I got older.

But some of us never completely stop. We just turn our homes, bedrooms, closets, kitchens, and showers into our stages instead.

For me, the shower was one of those places.

Warm, steamy air swirling around me. Water splashing. Music blasting. Singing at a volume that probably made my neighbors question my well-being.

And then, so slowly that I almost didn’t recognize it was happening, that simple joy disappeared.

At first, I couldn’t sing and dance for as long. Then singing by itself started making me feel out of breath. Dancing left me exhausted too quickly.

Eventually, I had to choose: actually shower, or dance and enjoy myself. I didn’t have enough energy for both.

Even then, I don’t think I understood what my body was giving up.

Soon I was sitting down halfway through a shower. Then sitting became the only way I could shower at all.

And for about a year, that was how I did it: sitting on the shower floor, exhausted, not dancing, with no idea why something as ordinary as washing myself took so much out of me—not to mention how little energy I had left afterward.

Then one day, it hit me.

I wasn’t dancing in the shower anymore.

I didn’t even feel like me anymore.

And beyond that, sitting on the shower floor every day didn’t make me feel particularly dignified. If that’s how you shower and you love it, more power to you. But I didn’t. I was doing it because I didn’t think I had another choice.

So I sat there, leaning against the tile and crying instead of washing my hair, heartbroken over the loss of something I hadn’t even realized I had given up.

Around this time, I had barely begun learning about POTS—postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system. Among other things, POTS can make being upright difficult because the body doesn’t regulate circulation normally when you stand. Heat can also worsen symptoms, which makes a hot shower a particularly unfortunate combination of standing, heat, and exertion.

Suddenly, my shower struggles made a lot more sense.

And I realized something else: just because I could technically wash myself sitting on the floor didn’t mean that was the only version of accessibility I deserved.

I still deserved dignity.

I still deserved independence.

And I still deserved access to something that brought me joy.

That was the day I finally accepted that I needed a shower chair and bought one.

I chose a teak chair. Let me be clear: a standard shower chair can do the job just as well. But for me, I decided to splurge on something that helped the shower feel like mine again. I didn’t want something that felt clinical. I wanted warm wood. I wanted something that felt a little like a spa.

I wanted to look at it and see something that belonged in my home—not another reminder that my body was sick.

The first time I used it felt like coming back to myself.

Music playing. Water running. Sitting upright instead of on the floor.

At first, I thought maybe that was enough.

And then I started dancing.

No, I didn’t stand up. There were no spins. I wasn’t moving around the shower like I used to.

But I moved my body.

I moved my shoulders and my hips. I sang along when I had the breath for it. I let the music move through me again.

And I realized: this is why accommodations matter.

An accommodation doesn’t always give us back everything we lost. It doesn’t necessarily make our bodies work the way they used to. Sometimes it simply creates another way in.

We talk about accessibility so often in terms of basic function: Can you get into the building? Can you wash yourself? Can you get from point A to point B?

Those questions matter.

But I think there’s another one worth asking:

Can you participate in your own life in a way that preserves some of your dignity, identity, independence, and joy?

My shower chair didn’t cure my POTS. It didn’t give me back the body that could dance through an entire shower without thinking twice about it.

It gave me another way to dance.

And it still counts.