An Interview with an Aerialist

My first memory of Selena is still clearly floating in my head. She probably doesn’t remember, but it’s a short, two-second clip of her smiling and sitting behind me in my high school French class. That smile is just electric and contagious. It is one of the things that hasn’t changed and I’m glad because it can light up any room.

How long have you been doing aerial? 

I started last May and I have been publicly showcasing my art for three months now. I didn’t think my body was capable, until last year I kind of just had enough, so many bad things just kept being thrown my way and I said you know what? I got nothing more to lose at this point. I lost some friends, lost some of my family’s support, and even had job supervisors spiral against me because no one understood my diagnosis and didn’t believe I was really sick for a while. I was just tired. I was even prepared to break my body, even if meant making my dreams come true. When all else fails, join the circus... right?!

How does your husband support your craft? 

Many people have asked me how it’s like being a wife, but my life is different than the average person. Majority of the time it’s 70-30 or sometimes it’ll even be Gary doing work one hundred percent of the time. I think that is just how it just goes being with a sick person.

Even the day we got married I kept asking him if he was sure he was ready to sign up for a life WITH ME and I never seen someone so sure of anything in their life. I feel so loved. He even gave me massages every day to help with my pain, now not as much cause the aerial is helping a lot.

How long did it take for you to get diagnosed with your AID? 

I was diagnosed when I was 23. It took four long years of my life.  During that time, I felt like a guinea pig. I was tested on and poked at multiple times a month and everything kept coming back normal. It got to the point they ran out of tests for me and started retesting me with the same ones.

After years with no answers, my husband Gary forced me to go to a chiropractor because I had trouble trusting doctors, but at least to get help with some of my pain. Little did I know that was going to be diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and the autoimmune Rheumatoid Arthritis as well.

Autoimmune Rheumatoid Arthritis is a musculoskeletal disease where the joints are eating itself and can end in handicap and joint deformation. It also can affect the organs. which is a rare case for doctors, someone being diagnosed with both Fibromyalgia and RA at the same time.

They tried putting me on steroids and hardcore antidepressants, and my body just gave out on me. I ended up worse and dealing with side effects on top of my symptoms. There was no way I was going to take that for the rest of my life. Where the medicine literally makes me worse and can end up with more organ problems in the future cause it’s not realistic to have to take steroids for that long without any damage.

So, I went vegan and started alternative medicine, and just found my own way of healing. I don’t go to the doctors anymore unless I absolutely have to

My life is difficult, and my story is complicated, but I wouldn’t change anything about it because it humbled me in many ways. 

How does it affect your aerial performance? 

Doing aerial was the first time I had felt pain free in years. It made me cry of happiness. I felt light and normal soreness from working out instead of feeling like I got hit by a bus for no reason at all. Around the same time, I was going through some things so I started investing more time into flow arts like hula hooping and playing with my dragon staff.

It affects it a lot, but in a good way. Ever since I started aerial that’s when I started to finally really move again.

What part of aerial arts empowers you the most? 

Aerial makes me feel strong and beautiful. Ever since I was a little girl, I watched dance movies, like Step up, with my mom. I was also a gymnast and cheerleader when I was younger which is why aerial always felt so natural to me.

From being suicidal, depressed with anxiety and bed ridden from the pain to now practicing aerial with these brand-new muscles and feeling like a ballerina in the air has definitely been the most empowering part of it all. Aerial has completely changed my life. Circus performance arts is now my career and I’ll be teaching my first Flow Arts workshop at Cirque de Vol in Raleigh along with my husband, Gary.

What are you plans for the future?

I hope to get certified to teach aerial arts. I also hope be able to perform at Cirque du Soleil alongside my inspiration, America’s Got Talent, finalists DuoTranscend who I actually got to meet and keep in touch with.

Who knows where we’ll be five to 10 years from now! I just hope to inspire people who are either going through something similar or anyone who can relate in any way and show them that it is possible to heal and follow your dreams. You are your only limit. 

*I’d like to give a big thank you to my aerial instructors Kelly Salnikov and Arika Brown for pushing me to be my best self and for believing in me. You guys are my role models and I look up to you both. I will keep pushing myself and you both have made one of the biggest impacts in my life. I will continue to make you both proud. *