On making it look easy.

If it looks easy, I promise you: it’s not.

Villagers,

Today, I took a banded stretch class. If you’ve never heard of that before, don’t worry—three weeks ago, I hadn’t either.

Picture this: a room full of women sitting on the floor in butterfly position, each with an elastic band wrapped snugly around their waists. The ends of the band are looped around the balls of their feet, creating tight, springy tension. Because the band is only about the length of half a leg, it takes real effort just to get into position—squeezing both legs and hips into place so the band doesn’t pop off. Honestly, getting into this position is a workout in itself. And once you’re finally in it, the real challenge begins: exploring what your body can do while holding all that tension.

Still can’t picture it? Here’s a link to someone doing banded stretches.

With all the pole dance classes I’ve taken over the past three years, I’m constantly amazed by my teachers and their deep knowledge of how to move, stretch, and push their bodies toward discomfort for the sake of strength, beauty, and control. But today, during my third-ever banded stretch class, my teacher Kitty blew me away.

Not only did she hold each intense yoga pose alongside us, but she also removed herself from her own bands multiple times to walk around the room and offer individualized corrections. Over and over again, she folded herself into and out of those bands until we could all hold the pose together.

I’m someone who has worked out two to three times a week for the past three years. I’m used to being sore and sweaty. But this class? Banded stretch wiped me out. As Kitty instructed us to stretch our arms forward and fold our chests toward the ground, my legs felt like spaghetti noodles—stiff and ready to snap. The way my muscles were shaking, you’d think I was losing a fight. But nope—I was just trying to move my hands one centimeter at a time while locked into a deep stretch.

Despite all this, I stayed for the pole class that immediately followed banded stretch. To warm up, we did a series of jumping jacks and crunches. This made my noodle legs even more noticeable—as if they’d been boiled and drained and couldn’t stand up straight. While I struggled to regain my stability, guess what? Kitty taught that class too.

She led us up and down the pole, showing us how to transfer movements we’d done on the ground into the air. She demonstrated each move multiple times, helped lift and spot us, shouted encouragement from across the room while mid-air, and never once slowed down. Meanwhile, I was still sitting on the floor, legs cooked, trying to recover from the class before.

At one point, my body simply stopped cooperating. It had reached its limit. But Kitty? She kept going. She climbed to the ceiling, flipped upside down, hung from the pole by her knee pit, and later danced for us. She combined everything she’d taught us into a routine, adding her own flair and made it uniquely hers.

Watching her, I caught myself wanting to say, "She makes it look so easy."

But I stopped myself—because the truth is, nothing about what Kitty did looked easy. It looked hard as hell. And it is. The real compliment isn’t that she “makes it look easy,” but that she’s incredibly good at something incredibly difficult.

Even though I’m nowhere near Kitty’s skill level, I’ve had other dancers who are just starting out say the same thing to me. “You make it look easy.” It’s a beautiful sentiment—but it’s also fundamentally untrue.

As a writer, I’ve heard it too. And I get it—it’s meant as a compliment. But sometimes I wonder if people say these things because they want to believe that writing, or dancing, or any creative pursuit could somehow be easy. There’s a strange cultural habit of treating creative pursuits like they just happen. As if anyone can do it.

And in a way, that’s true: anyone can do it—at least once. But returning to it again and again, despite all of the reasons not to? Showing up even when you’re tired? Trying and failing, then trying again? That’s not ease. That’s commitment to the craft.

The reality is, creative pursuits of any kind take just as much time, effort, and energy to succeed as anything else does. Even this newsletter isn’t as easy as it might seem. Every week, I have to figure out what I want to say—and believe in my ability to say it. I have to turn a dance class or a memory into a moment worth sharing with friends, family, and strangers. I have to be willing to be seen trying. And maybe that’s the hardest part of all.

I follow Kitty on social media. When she’s not at the studio, she’s at the gym—early in the morning, often right before teaching. I’ve seen her in classes with me as both a student and a teacher. She performs in shows and facilitates skill-specific workshops on the weekends. She’s constantly studying, improving, and pushing herself to master her craft. All the while, she’s cheering the rest of us on.

Did I mention she’s a mother of three? She’s kind of amazing.

It just goes to show that behind anything that may look easy, there are hours of discipline behind it, and even some sacrifices and setbacks you’ll likely never see.

One universal lesson I’ve learned from all my dance teachers including Kitty is to never say “I can’t do that,” but instead say, “I can’t do that yet.” With the right amount of time and effort, I believe we all can do anything that we put our minds to. This is not to scare you out of trying—this is just to say that if anyone could do it, everyone would be doing it. Some people tap out when they don’t achieve success immediately. Some people aren’t brave enough to even try. If you’re gearing up to try something new, I hope you won’t give up on it, even when it gets hard.

And just like Kitty, I’m pushing myself along too—centimeter by centimeter, newsletter by newsletter. If it looks easy, I promise you: it’s not. But it’s absolutely worth it.

XOXO

Micaela