"Addressing an audience of students and staff during Morning Prayers in the Memorial Church, Jillian Lubetkin, class of 2013, recalled how, earlier in her life, dancing made up her entire identity. “Dancing was what I did,” she said. “It was who I was.”
But when she was a senior in high school, that intuitive ability began slipping away. Diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, an autonomic nerve system condition, Lubetkin was “robbed of her passion,” and became “a girl who danced no more.”
Deferring her first year at Harvard, Lubetkin initially despaired when she realized she was now a “former” dancer. But while she may no longer be able to perform, Lubetkin said choosing to let go of that former self, while still celebrating that former identity, allowed her to reconnect with the creative spirit that made her want to dance in the first place.
But when she was a senior in high school, that intuitive ability began slipping away. Diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, an autonomic nerve system condition, Lubetkin was “robbed of her passion,” and became “a girl who danced no more.”
Deferring her first year at Harvard, Lubetkin initially despaired when she realized she was now a “former” dancer. But while she may no longer be able to perform, Lubetkin said choosing to let go of that former self, while still celebrating that former identity, allowed her to reconnect with the creative spirit that made her want to dance in the first place.
“My passion for free and authentic expression — that very passion which attracted me to dance in the first place — still lives,” she said, during the first in a series of “Senior Talks” on April 30.
“Life will make ‘formers’ out of all of us at some point,” she said, adding that it would be reductive to suggest that loss is a gift. “But I can say that letting go … bestows upon us the freedom to sculpt new selves.”
- HARVARD GAZETTE, May 17, 2013
- HARVARD GAZETTE, May 17, 2013
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