Your Pain Can Lead to Your Passion
Mary: Anybody who has gone through any kind of abuse, be it physical and mental abuse, if you can find something that you can have a passion for and latch onto… I got into the dance business when my husband was traveling for a period of time. And I absolutely fell in love with it…
And when you’re in that deep level abuse you feel very ugly, you have very low self-esteem. And what ballroom dancing brought to me started to empower me with was that I started to feel good about myself again. You never know what’s happening and why the path changes or turns. And I’m just still so grateful every single day because dance came into my life.
Marlise: On some level you were running away from pain in your life, but that running away moved you toward what you completely fell in love with and became your passion. So anybody listening who’s going through any pain right now, just take a look around where you are in your own life and see if it’s guiding you to something different.
Mary: I think if you can take what’s happening to you – and sometimes it just seems so astronomical, and I understand that. And you just have to break through. Like you said, look around. And no matter what has ever happened to me – you get hit, and a lot of times you get hit hard, and you go down for the count.
I remember Chelsea Handler, she’s always a tricky interview, and she goes, “You just laugh at everything, don’t you? You just laugh all the time. You’d laugh at somebody’s funeral, wouldn’t you?” And I said, “I don’t laugh all the time, Chelsea. I choose to laugh. I have a lot of tragedy in my life. I’ll cry maybe two or three days but I always pop back up again and carry on. And I choose to laugh.”
