I Left Manhattan for Mud, Manure, and Motherhood — and I’d Do It Again (2 of 2)

But when my third pregnancy overlapped with a national tour, something inside me shifted. I remember sitting alone in a hotel room, staring at my swollen ankles, FaceTiming my toddlers while they waved plastic spoons at the screen. The applause from the night before still rang in my ears, but it suddenly sounded hollow. What I craved wasn’t applause. It was soil. Stillness. Slowness.

So my husband and I packed a few bags and told ourselves we’d take a “short break” in Idaho, just to catch our breath. We never went back.

Now I have eight children. A small farm. Four dairy goats, a donkey with a personality disorder, and more mud-stained laundry than I can process without weeping into the washing machine.

My legs still ache, but not from hours of pliés. Now the soreness comes from kneeling in garden beds, from lugging feed buckets twice my size, from chasing a runaway toddler who has somehow smeared goat milk across his forehead like war paint.

There are days when I miss the stage. When I ache for the hush right before the curtain rises, when the entire world holds its breath with you. But then my daughter runs to me, sticky fingers clutching a bouquet of wildflowers she picked “just because.” And I realize I’m living a performance of a different kind. One with no spotlight, no orchestra, no velvet curtains—only chaos, love, and a front row of muddy boots lined up at the back door.

People ask me if I regret it. If I ever wonder what my career could have been had I stayed. But when I look out at the valley where my children run barefoot, their laughter rising louder than the hens, I know the truth. Ballet gave me discipline. Farming gave me freedom.

I traded ovations for open skies, and somewhere in the mess of goats, gardens, and growing children, I found a stage big enough to hold it all.