CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MET ME where I was in life at a time when I most needed direction.
At eighteen, after years of emotional turmoil and feeling unloved, I left home and found myself alone in Philadelphia searching for answers. I was severely depressed, and at times, suicidal. Having nowhere to turn, I sought help from a therapist who encouraged me to do something that made me happy.
I had recently participated in a few dance workshops and discovered that dancing made me feel alive. So in exchange for bookkeeping at a dance studio, I began taking lessons there for free. Still, I needed to find a way to pay for a roof over my head. In order to help make ends meet, in addition to a part-time waitress job, I took a job dancing a couple of nights at a bar. Even though I was under the age of twenty one, it was legal as long as I wasn't being served alcohol. Though it wasn't ideal work, it paid the bills.
