Meet Connie Bergstein Dow

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Connie Bergstein Dow. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Connie below.

Hi Connie , we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

As a child, I was shy and quiet. I never sought the spotlight, or even wanted to stand in front of my class and present a book report. I was also a bit clumsy; I had a difficult time getting my body to move in an integrated way. My mother said I used to trip over the patterns in a carpet! She signed me up for a community dance class when I was four years old to help me to develop balance, strength, and coordination. This wonderful opportunity was my introduction to the art form of dance. I found that I loved to dance; it gave me self-confidence and a voice to express myself, and it led me to a lifelong career.

As I trained and grew as a dancer, I discovered that I absolutely loved to perform. I studied dance in both college and graduate school. My years as a professional dancer, in both contemporary and ballet companies, gave me many opportunities to be on stage. In addition, my long career as a dance educator — teaching three-year-olds, senior adults, and every age and level in between — honed my confidence to lead classes, create choreography, plan presentations, and coach others to perform.

I was inspired to become a writer after teaching dance to young children for many years. I loved tapping into their imaginations and watching them explore ideas and learn to move in new ways. I wanted to capture some of my ideas about teaching creative dance, and share these ideas with other teachers. This led to my first two books, which are guides for teaching creative movement to young children, and integrating it into the early childhood classroom. Then I decided I wanted to write directly for the preschool audience I was teaching, and that led me to writing picture books. The theme of movement and dance flows throughout my books, articles, and verses.

Writing and publishing presented many opportunities for speaking and presenting workshops at conferences. By the time I had reached this point in my career, after performing and teaching for many years, I had the self-confidence to speak in public about my books. It was a long journey from having my knees shake before an oral book report in elementary school to speaking in front of audiences, but the journey was fueled by my passion for dance. Confidence and self-esteem were valuable gifts that I gained along the way.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Dancing is an endeavor that requires 100% effort on so many fronts. General wisdom states that it takes ten years of training to create a dancer. A dancer must learn to train one’s body physically, which includes peak strength as well as peak flexibility, and also train the mind to learn movement quickly, refine it, and to be able to perform it fully, with grace and musicality. As with other sports or artistic endeavors that require constant training, there were sacrifices along the way in pursuit of this difficult goal.

The satisfaction I gained throughout my career as a dancer, and then as a teacher — through the joy, challenges, and everything in between — was extremely fulfilling. I found it very difficult to retire and leave dancing behind. As I transitioned into writing, an equally challenging endeavor, I realized that I could use the knowledge, skill, and discipline that I had gained from dancing, and channel it into writing.

In this new pursuit, I had a big learning curve that was both exciting and daunting. I attended classes, conferences, workshops, retreats, critique sessions, and have had many, many rejections along the way. I write blogs, articles for journals, verses for children’s magazines, books for teachers, and currently I’m mostly concentrating on writing picture books for children. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had articles and books published by traditional publishers. I’m proud that my books have won some awards. I have four more picture books in the pipeline, and I work on my writing and related endeavors virtually every day.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. Find your passion, either as your life’s work, or to somehow integrate it into your life. Doing something you love provides built-in motivation. It might be an interest that makes you happy, or a skill that you strive to develop and expand throughout your lifetime. I had to retire as a professional dancer at 36, which is the age most athletes and dancers begin to have injuries or other difficulties with the intense training schedules required to stay in peak performance shape. It was hard to move on from something that had taken so long to develop, and one that was such a huge part of my life and my identity. I have found myself envying musicians, painters, and other artists who can pursue and hone their art throughout their lifetime. Teaching dance has helped me to stay in the field and develop other skills, as well as guide others who want to experience dance. Teaching, in turn, led me to writing, and since I mostly write about movement, I haven’t strayed far from my love of dance.

2. It is important to work hard and make sacrifices for your goals, but it also important to be gentle on yourself and not focus on forces you can’t control. Just about anything that is worth doing is worth doing well, as the saying goes, and that invariably involves having to miss out on other things. But, if you love what you are doing and can reach your goal (or some form or variation of your goal), in the end, the sacrifices will have been worth it.

3. Try to maintain a positive attitude amid setbacks. We can learn from all of our fails, no matter how painful. Missing out on a part I wanted after a dance audition spurred me to double down on my dance training. The many, many, rejections I have received throughout my writing career have led me to continue learning, keep writing, listen to criticism, and take offers of help whenever and wherever I can. No matter how many rejections I have received, and there have been a lot (most writers can tell this same story), I keep sending my work out into the world!

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

My parents gave me the opportunity of an education, by sending me to an excellent public school in my neighborhood. Both of my parents loved the arts. They took my siblings and me to local museums, as well as music, dance and theater events. This exposure led me to grow to love all of the arts, which helped to prepare me for my career of dancing, teaching, and writing.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Brad Iverson, Buzz Dow, Lindsay Stewart, David Dow

Suggest a Story: BoldJourney is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems,
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
Resilience
Portraits of Resilience

Sometimes just seeing resilience can change out mindset and unlock our own resilience. That’s our

Productivity
Perspectives on Staying Creative

We’re beyond fortunate to have built a community of some of the most creative artists,

Confidence
Kicking Imposter Syndrome to the Curb

This is the year to kick the pesky imposter syndrome to the curb and move