Tango, Unmatched

We say it takes two to tango.

But no one tells you what happens when the other dancer doesn’t want to change their choreography—when they are determined to crush toes until the steps match again.
No one warns you that changing your steps doesn’t guarantee safety. The audience said:
“If you soften, if you try harder, if you change your rhythm… they’ll come with you.”

But that wasn’t true.
I changed my steps, and they still kicked.
I changed my steps, and they still blamed.
I changed my steps, and the music got louder, harsher, and more distorted.

Here’s the truth: the back row deserves to feel in their mitochondria:

• Change doesn’t guarantee safety.

• It calibrates you toward coping.

• It can carve out tiny pockets of de-escalation, like transitions between phrases.

• It can strengthen your defenses of self, like rehearsing an exit before the curtain falls.

And sometimes, that is all you can get. And that is enough.

We need to stop pretending that every dance floor is safe, that every partner is ready, that every cycle can be rewritten by vulnerability alone.

Therapists even borrow the tango as a metaphor for healing. In Emotionally Focused Therapy, there’s something called the EFT Tango: a five-step sequence meant to help couples find new rhythms together. It can be powerful, absolutely. But it was built for relationships that are only moderately distressed, where both partners are willing to risk a new step.

That’s the bias.
And if we don’t name it, we end up sending people back onto dance floors where the choreography breaks their bones.

So here’s my reblocking:
Not a new choreography for the whole company.
Not a miracle fix for dancers who refuse to learn.
Just a shifting of my own marks on the stage.

I will keep changing my steps, but not to save them.
Not to heal what refuses to heal.
Not to chase a dance that only bruises.

I will change my steps to keep myself steady.
To mark through the movements without giving away my full energy.
To open breath where there was none.
To find the door when the room fills with noise.
To trust that coping, de-escalation, and defense are also dances… sacred ones.

Because my body deserves a rhythm that doesn’t end in rupture.
And no partner, no parent, no system gets to tell me otherwise.

The Story of Ms FrogLily

It all began at Frog In Paris

…an ordinary being in an extraordinary place.

Most of my life, I’ve found myself either perched on a lily pad in Monet’s garden or sizzling in a Michelin-starred kitchen with my legs in the pan. I lived in the space between, always swinging between survival and hope.

Then, in 2019, I landed hard. Between that rock and a hard place. And something shifted.

I stopped waiting for life to soften. I decided to grow where I was.

Ms. FrogLily emerged.

No longer waiting for the “right” time or place, I planted my soft and feral dandelion heart and secured my frog feet for the future. Not polished. Not perfect. But present. Rooted.

Now, I create spaces for others who are beginning again, whether that’s in learning, in life, or just inside themselves.

I believe in soft landings for hard seasons.

And I believe you don’t have to be perfect to begin.

Come as you are. Let’s begin again.