After Decades Of Self Doubt Dancer Turns To Burlesque To Embrace Her Body

This season of 2 Lives is sponsored by the Women’s Foundation for the State of Arizona. Learn more at womengiving.org.

You can find out more about Adiba Nelson and her books at thefullnelson.net.

A special thank you to Arizona Public Media for allowing us to use a snippet of audio from their short documentary film about Adiba Nelson.

As a kid growing up in New York City in the eighties Adiba Nelson loved to roller skate.

Whether it was in the park or at the roller skating rink, that was my happy place. 

One day when she was 8 years old she was skating alongside her mom at the park.

And it has these big rolling green hills on one side and then on the other, then there's like, uh, an asphalt pathway … And this one day we went and I decided that I wanted to roller skate down the hill. And I said, you wanna come? 

Her mom said no way, but didn’t discourage Adiba. She told her, it’s your life. Life is what you make it. 

I just knew in my head that I could do this. And if I did it, I was gonna be the best skater in Bayside. Like nobody could take my crown. So I went up to the top of the hill, put my skates on, came down…I was like, oh, I'm gonna keep doing this because what kid is not gonna do the same thing a million times, regardless of how dangerous it was. And mind you, this is the eighties where no one was wearing helmets to do anything. So no parts of this were safe. Why? My mom thought this was okay to let me do, I don't know. PAUSE So I kept going up and down this hill and this one trip down, my skate slipped into one of the tree holes, like the planter. And I just tumbled the rest of the way down the hill skinned my entire legs, like from hip to mid-calf. The insides of my thighs were raw, my knees were raw. And my mom was just watching it from the other side. And I was like, aren't you gonna help me? Like, I'm bleeding. And she's like, you're okay. You're okay. I was like, but I'm bleeding. And she's like, you're good. Like, life is what you make it, you're fine. 

Adiba didn’t realize it at the time but her mom had given her this gift of choice. Her mom refused to let fear rule Adiba and stop her from trying. And Adiba had owned her life and conquered that hill. ‘Life is what you make it.’ 

I grew up hating that phrase. I could not stand it. I was like, stop saying that. It was kind of a way of like illustrating that there are consequences and rewards. You decide which one you're gonna fall under. That particular day I decided to make life my pathway down this hill skinned everything in sight. Um, but I survived. I proved to myself that I could do it right. Um, and sometimes as in life, like a tree is gonna get in your way, you're gonna fall, you're gonna stumble. But what do you do after that? 9 Life is what you make it after that stumble, after that fall, after that tree gets in your way. 

This is a story about how Adiba took hold of her own life after she fell down. 

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

Adiba was raised by her mother. Her mom left her dad when she was a baby because he was abusive and her step father chose drugs instead of her, so Adiba got the message that she wasn’t enough. On top of that she felt different from the rest of the world.

I had ever since I was a kid comparing myself to the kids around me, um, to family members. Like for the longest time I was of the cousins the darkest in our, on my mother's side of the family. When they would see me with my family, ‘oh, she's related to you.’ I was like questioning like, do I look okay? Do I look how I'm supposed to look? It was always this questioning of was my body okay? Is my skin okay? I have a gap between my teeth… I was teased mercilessly for all of those things.

Adiba felt she didn’t look right in her family, at school, and in dance class.

And I wasn't a big girl, I was just, my body's different, right? I'm an Afro Latin girl, my body is shaped differently than the white girls in my ballet class… I would always say I felt like an elephant in a classroom full of swans. Your skirt sits a little bit higher than everybody else's skirt because your butt is big or your shirt's a little bit tighter than everybody else's cuz your boobs are bigger. I was never quite comfortable with my body, right? And then in college I joined a sorority and I was the only black girl in my sorority... For the longest time I did not have black or Latin friends. Most of my friends, if not all of my friends, were white and petite. 

All of it just reinforced this idea in her head of not being enough.

Not pretty enough. Not skinny enough, too dark, my gap is too big. My hair is too nappy. 

So when anyone showed a romantic interest Adiba believed she had to work harder to keep them around.

At the same time Adiba knew she did not want her mother’s life of three jobs, occasional food stamps, sometimes living with relatives, and what seemed like eternal heartbreak. Her mom had a tendency to date men who weren’t there for her – men who lied about being available when they were not.

So Adiba promised herself her life would be different. 

But in 2008 when Adiba discovered she was pregnant, her boyfriend freaked out.

I told him and he kind of got quiet and then he was like, okay, okay, well congratulations. We'll be fine. I'm gonna go. And he left the restaurant that we were at, and then he called me later that night drunk as a skunk just drunk off his behind. 

Not long after, Adiba found out he was already married – not divorced as he told her. 

So here she was facing the kind of life she had promised herself she would never have.

To top it off a month before her baby girl arrived, Adiba lost her job. 

It was getting unemployment. It was whatever little money her father was bringing in because he worked sales and it was commission and he only worked three days a week. Um, so it was tough. It was very, very tough.

In May of 2009, Emory was born.

As a social worker Adiba was familiar with what growth milestones babies should reach. And she soon realized Emory wasn’t reaching them.

At two months, like she wasn't cooing, she wasn't holding her head up, she wasn't, you know, giggling all the time. Between four and six months, she wasn't able to sit up on her own … Like she just was not meeting milestones. And I kept bringing these things up to her pediatrician and her pediatrician kind of blew me off, said, you know, oh, babies all developed at their own rate. 

As months went by Adiba noticed Emory had rigid hips and her left arm just hung at her side. The pediatrician would give Adiba exercises but she knew her daughter needed more.

I was getting more and more irate because I knew, I knew that something was not right.

So Adiba decided to find out for herself.

…I did the thing that a mom should never do, but we all do it. I ran to WebMD…

With her social work background she could make some educated guesses and discovered Emory probably had cerebral palsy and something called schizencephaly. 

At nine months she should have been crawling and pulling herself up. So finally at Emory’s nine month check up Adiba convinced the doctor something’s not right. After two more referrals a neurologist confirmed Adiba’s finding.

He showed us the scans and sure enough she had cerebral palsy and bilateral schizencephaly, um, they did an MRI of her brain and she had two holes in her brain.

LAUREL: How rare is it?

ADIBA: …Oh, we should have played lotto that day. We should have played the power ball because at the time I think it was like one in 100,000.

After the diagnosis Emory started seeing a physical therapist and an occupational therapist and getting the equipment she needed to help her sit, stand, eat, the stuff most families take for granted. All of these things cost money. But it’s difficult to hold down a 9 to 5 job and manage the care of a child with a disability, get her ready for the day and drive her to all her appointments. 

Adiba was working for a non-profit helping families find child care and child care providers become state certified. 

At $11 an hour, six hours a week, and you have a car note and gas and food and electricity and a water bill…And you have rent on top of all of those things. You're not gonna cut it and you're just not gonna cut it. And I couldn't work a regular nine to five because at that time my daughter was having I think like five therapy appointments a week. 

Adiba was on the verge of having her lights turned off and losing her apartment.

I'm constantly choosing between food and diapers, between light and diapers, um, there gas to get her to and from therapy and food, like it's always a this or that.

She moved to Tucson to be near her mom and a friend pitched in for diapers, but things were still grimm. She couldn’t afford the best services or equipment for Emory. Whenever she was at work she felt like she should be with her daughter. Whenever she was with Emory she felt like she should be working. 

I was failing as a parent. I was failing so hard. That was literally like the lowest and hardest part I think of all of my parenting journey to this day is looking at my daughter and saying, um, ‘I love you, but I don't, I don't think I'm doing you any favors right now. Um, and I know that you deserve everything. You deserve the world and I can't do it. I can't do it.’ 

One night Adiba was staring at the bills piled up on the kitchen counter, and she crumbled. She had convinced herself that someone else could provide a better life for Emory. That’s when she looked up the number for Tucson’s emergency children’s shelter. 

…I dialed the number, I had my phone in my hand, I was sobbing, um, and I had the number and all I had to do was press the green button to make the call go through.

And I couldn't do it. I just, I couldn't. Um, there was this song that had been going through my head for a really long time, um, by Mary Mary,... Can't Give Up Now. Um, and I'm not a religious person, but I'm definitely a spiritual person. And the lyrics, um, were just screaming in my head and basically said, ‘I just can't give up now. Um, I've come too far from where I've started from. Nobody told me the road would be easy, but don't believe you brought me this far just to leave me.’ 

PAUSE

And when I thought about all the things that I had been through in life from birth to that moment, it seemed impossible that this was where God's like, ‘this is the drop off point, this was it. This is how your life is supposed.’ Like, I, I refused to believe that. And so I, I put the phone down and I just said, ‘all right, well then you gotta make it happen.’ PAUSE

Adiba refused to have her story end with her child in foster care and 38 cents in her bank account. She recalled what her mom had said all those years ago at the bottom of the skating hill – ‘life is what you make it’ – and she made a plan. 

She rented a more affordable place to live. She found a restaurant that let her work the hours her daughter was in childcare. She applied for utility assistance from a community service organization.

And it just, everything fell into place. And I think it was that moment of like saying, I refuse to believe that this is where my story's gonna end … And it was that act of faith, like, no, you're gonna come through. 

Adiba and Emory have learned a lot from each other.

She is fiercely independent, fiercely independent. She wants to try everything herself before she will accept help from anybody. Um, she's way braver than I am. 

In 2013 when Emory was four, Adiba’s friend who was working for a plus size designer asked Adiba to travel to Portland, Oregon, to assist her at Portland Fashion Week. Up to this point Adiba didn’t see herself as plus size.

I hadn't considered myself a plus size girl because of the social connotations that went with it in my head at that time. Um, now I'll be like, yeah, I'm plus and plus plus plus plus plus all the pluses. That's me. I'm extra like, deal with it. But in 2013, because I was still stuck in this cycle of where do I fit… I didn’t see myself in that world.

As she watched the models prepare to take the catwalk, she was struck by their self-possession.

They just oozed confidence. Like I had never seen, I had never seen girls that looked like me. There were girls who were the same shade of me as me or darker. There were girls with gaps in their teeth. There were bald headed girls. There were girls who were two and three times my size in um, just leotards and heels and oiled down face beat to the guns and burning this place to the ground with how just gorgeous and sexy and confident they were.

Suddenly and without warning, tears streamed down her face.

I cried at that first runway show because I could not believe that these women who looked like me were doing this. And they were so strong. And then it hit me, like, if I can look at these women who look like me and think that they're just gorgeous and amazing and confident and strong, why can't I think that about myself?

I look like them. They look like me. Why, why don't I see myself as that? And that was kind of the start of something's gotta give, something's gotta change here.

The following summer Adiba heard about a local blogger organizing a photo shoot of women.

It was 100 women of all shapes and sizes and ages, uh, posing topless and nothing but a pair of black panties. And I was like, I wanna do that. Uh, yeah, I wanna do that <laugh>. And so I showed up for the shoot in my favorite pair of glitter heels and black lacey underwear… 

The photographer needed someone to go first and Adiba surprised herself and raised her hand.

Let's just do it. Let's just get it over with. Like, here I am, this is it. And I've had a breast reduction because they were, they were everywhere, <laugh>. So I had the reduction and I had the scars. Um, but it was me. 1:17:00 Everyone cheered and clapped and we were all just so happy for each other. And we all was, everyone looked different. Everybody's body was different, but everybody's body was beautiful and we were just happy to be in that safe space with each other. 

The campaign went viral.

 …And I realized like, I did this and I didn't die.

Adiba began to look in the mirror and see herself differently. She felt more confident in her appearance. She became more discriminating with the men she dated.

At the photo shoot Adiba met a woman who was doing a burlesque show in town. They had a showcase coming up and encouraged Adiba to do it.

And at this point, I hadn't danced for like, I think it had been 17 years since I had danced. Um, but I was like, okay, I'll go, I'll just check out your showcase. That would be fun. I'd never been to a burlesque show. I didn't quite know what it was. And I get to the showcase and there are women who look like me. They're not necessarily black. I think there was, there was one black performer, gypsy danger, um, but she was big like me too. And there were other big girls and they were taking their clothes off and dancing and telling these stories through dance and with their body. And the crowd was going nuts for them. And I was like, oh yeah, I gotta do this. Like, it combined everything that I love. Like I love dance, I love storytelling. And apparently I also love taking my clothes off .

Adiba signed up to perform. She worked with another dancer to come up with a routine and a name – Big Bang McGillicuddy.

My initial thought was like, I'm gonna do this for me. But then as I started doing it, I realized that it was actually bigger than me. It was really my daughter who lives in this body that the world is constantly telling her is not okay in the sense that they don't design anything for people with disabilities. Not buildings, not clothes … which tells people whose bodies are different, that this world is not for you. Your body is not meant for this world. And I felt like as her mom, it's my responsibility to combat that and show her that her body is fine just the way it is. And how, for me, how I did that was showing her that I was fine with my body and I accepted my body just the way it was.

So on the night of her first show Adiba's heart was pounding in her throat as she took to the stage. She stripped down to her fishnets, panties and pasties.

My mother and my then fiance were seated in the very front row. Um, which that's one thing to have like your mother sitting right next to your fiance as you're taking your clothes off on stage. This poor man is just trying to look straight ahead. Like, he's not clapping, he's not hooing, he's not hollering. He's just like, I'm here. I don't see anything that's happening. Um, oh my God,

AUDIO OF ADIBA TAKING THE STAGE 

Emory’s not old enough to go to a burlesque show but cheers her mom on from home when Adiba rehearses.

She has been like, don't do that. That move is bad. I don't like this part of your costume. , she's very opinionated. But I think her seeing me being so okay with this in some way tells her that she's okay too. I have a friend who she has also seen, we rehearse with her name, her stage name is Jacqueline Box, and she is a disabled burlesque performer and she performs in her wheelchair. And we have done a duet together. And my daughter just loses her mind. She thinks it's amazing. Um, and she's like, Jacqueline's like me, like, we're the same. And I'm like, yes, absolutely. Because a disabled body is still a body, right? Um, it's still capable, it's still worthy, it's still sexy, it's still beautiful, all of that.

When Emory was born the doctors told Adiba her daughter would never speak.

And I just, I never really bought into this whole, like when doctors say this will never happen, that'll never happen. Like, I don't buy into that. You just don't know. 

So Adiba encouraged her daughter to speak.

I never did baby talk with her or didn't expose her to language. English, Spanish sign language – we were doing all of it…

Adiba talked to Emory and read to Emory and when she couldn’t find books that Emory could see herself in, Adiba wrote and self published a children's book about a little girl just like Emory. She learned how to use a communication device where she’d press a button and it would say the words for her.

And I would always tell her, I love you. I love you, I love you. And one day I was putting her to bed and I was squeezing her super tight and I was like, I love you. And all I heard was of you. And I was like, what? And I said, I love you. And she goes, love you. And I was like, oh, wow. Okay. All right.

BRING IN AUDIO OF ADIBA TALKING TO EMORY 

Emory was seven years old when Adiba recorded this. Today Emory is 13. On a recent school night, Adiba and Emory were hanging out on the couch watching a show on TV when Emory nudged her mom.

She wanted to have a sleepover with her friends. And I was like, ‘no, we have too much going on.’ … Like, no, we're not gonna do it. 1:27:20 And then I feel her like kind of nudge me and she presses a button and it says ‘bench ‘Now. I've never, I have never been one of those people that like make up fake words for curse words around my kid. I just don't, I don't say budge or, oh, hockey sticks or it's gonna come out. Like I'd rather you hear it from me than like the TV or something, right? Yeah. I was like, bench. And she's like, yeah. I was like, okay. I go back to watching tv, she nudges me again, presses the button bench. I'm like, bench, what? Like, what are you talking about? And she pointed me, she's like, you, I was like, bench like me, like I'm a bench. And she was like, yeah. I was like, I'm a, oh, you are trying to call me a bench. Oh. Oh, wow. Okay, … So then my mind is like, what do I do? Cause as a parent I'm like, girl, you have lost your mind. I'm about to snatch you bald. Are you crazy? But then like the disabled parent is like, oh my God, the cognitive planning that you had to do and the motor planning that you had to do to be able to find this word in your talker, get to the right button, say it or figure it out. …This is amazing. So my response was something like, oh, okay, I see what you're doing here. <laugh> one, congratulations. You are so smart, boo. Like I am so proud of you for putting all this together. Like, that was brilliant. I didn't even know your talker had the word mention it. Two, if you ever in your life think you can push that button for me again, I will snatch you so fast. You will blink and be gone. 

So Adiba says she will always encourage Emory to be the bold, daring and fearless person she is now. If Emory ever wanted to do burlesque or get on stage and talk about her body, Adiba would be in the front row cheering her on. 

…in the age that I was raised of do as I say, not as I do, I would really want my daughter to do burlesque when she's grown, if she wants to. 

And she will continue to pass along the same wisdom her mother gifted her – ‘life is what you make it.’

You get the child you deserve. And I think that's true. 

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.