I’m a pseudo–Colorado Native with a passion for learning and teaching. When I’m not grooving, I teach federal employees from over 50 different agencies like the Social Security Administration, Environment Protection Agency (EPA), and NASA how to utilize HR Information Systems. I also do training for Diversity and Inclusion, Crucial Conversations, and Trust Building Skills. I also love to sing and play open mic nights around Denver – one of these days, I want to do a Groove Goes Acoustic set! I live with my amazing husband, Daniel, who I’m still trying to convince to come dance with us! He plays hockey, and I tell him that doing Groove can only improve his speed on the ice (and maybe loosen up his hips a little bit)!
I was never someone who did sports as a kid. I had a slight kick of doing tennis when I was in elementary school if that counts! I really didn’t start getting into fitness until I was in high school when my mom and I started regularly going to the gym and hitting up yoga classes. I began to appreciate more about how fitness made me feel mentally, not just physically, and used it as a way to show off my strength and determination. I taught yoga in high school to my fellow classmates, and even explored doing some hip hop dance after the Step Up movies started blowing up. Who knew where that would lead? I ultimately became a REB3L Groove Instructor in 2021 after much convincing from my community – the fact that COVID put the kibosh on work travel definitely made that decision a bit easier!
I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 25 in 2017. It was such a slap in the face to me, especially since I thought I was pretty healthy and took good care of my body. While I am so blessed that my treatment was extremely successful, it took me a very long time to get back to “normal”. Chemo essentially makes you go through puberty again, and the year following my treatments I was so tired and didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t really know what else to do except roll with the punches. In January 2019, I saw that my gym was offering this class that sounded kind of intense, but fun. The first time I went to REB3L Groove I was SO CONFUSED. I had done zumba and whatnot before, but I had never experienced anything like this. The choreography was so different and I was having trouble keeping up with this room of women who clearly all knew what they were doing. I wasn’t sure if I should keep doing it, but I was furloughed at the time (federal employee, right?) and figured eh, I don’t really have much else to do. Let’s see if it gets any better. It got better. And I got better. And I kept craving going back. Even after the furlough ended, I was determined to keep going to this class. I started noticing that my energy was increasing. I started noticing definition in muscles that I had never seen before. I started feeling…sexy again…after almost two years of feeling like I would never be as attractive and cute as I was before my cancer treatments.
