follow your wishing heart.

photo credit: awesome girl who sent me this handdrawn pic of my writing!

I wrote a book. You can buy it here.

...counting the days until contracts allow me to purge my hopeful heart on this screen late at night while I am snuggling up to my computer in the midst of middle twenties gorgeous confusion.

I miss you.

In the meantime, let's all skip around our lives to this gem.

AHHHHHHHH....

"I think your message was ultimately honest, sometimes painfully so, and so needed. So many people move from relationship to relationship without realizing how unhealthy this can be sometimes. They lack insight, and really think that other people are the ones with the problems. So many people settle for mediocrity, for being taken advantage of, for being made an afterthought, for thinking they don't deserve enough or aren't worth enough to ask for certain things from others. So many people run around trying to fix others so they don't have to try to fix themselves; these are all messages I really liked, and thought I should share. Thank you for sharing your truth, even when you were being honest about your own shortcomings. That took a lot guts, and is something I respect you for." -AB

“You dont have to be a former rockette or have had your heart broken by one of your rockstar exes to benefit from this read; you just have to be human.” -KL

"This book should carry a warning about being read on public transport... one minute you will be laughing as Keltie battles through life in her typical dorky and adorable style and the next sobbing - heartbroken about her heart pain." -Z

"it was honest- sometimes brutally so- and never tried to pull the punches, which could be awkward when writing a bio focusing on both her dance career as well as past relationships. i feel it takes a lot to open up about things like depression and rejection and codependency (there are things i don't know about some of my best friends that i can now tell you about this woman!), and it's incredibly brave to do it in such a public forum."-E




































































Hi army//because of a little adventure I took my fearless heart (which by now I am sure you have all found out about) on I am going to have to step away from my blog (yuck. contracts.) for the next 8 weeks. I was wondering what to leave up here as my last blog for the next little while and I decided to give it to you...I love every picture, letter and email you all send me. I am so honored and touched. I cannot believe you say such nice things. You are better than a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

I was pretty sure that when I started writing Rockettes, Rockstars and Rockbottom that about 5 people would buy it, and I would just continue dancing and dreaming right here on highkicks, you have blown me away with support for this story. It makes me believe in humanity when I get letters and get to hear your stories. It proves to me that we are so much more alike then we think, and that we are all in this together. Love. Love. Love.

I was talking to a women I met on the beach this week and she was grilling me about the affects that a dance career + Rockettes had on my body. I felt lame to respond that for the most part I was ok, other than sore hips in the morning. I felt like there was so much more to that story, that I couldn't really put into words, that could not be explained through a sore muscle. I think the greatest battle isn't with our bodies, it is with our minds. That little voice telling us to give up when we push ourselves to the limit that you cannot ever silence and have to push through anyways. The same voice that tells us to never love/trust/fall again with our hearts after an epic heartbreak. We must always silence those little voices with our own fearless hearts and refuse to give in. Courage. (get up.) Passion. (we all suffer.) Hard work. (keep going.)

So thank you! for being the voice telling me to keep going, long after I thought I could.

XOkc

Hello last day of the ten.

I couldn't sleep last night and sat up wracking my brain for something overly epic to write to sum up this overly epic year. I didn't want to disappoint you all with something sub-par. These word kept ringing in my head.

I wish the best for you, because I love you.
I wish the worst for you, because I loved you.

It is a struggle isn't it. To love so much that you want to protect that love. To be brave enough to acknowledge that the people who treat you badly, are in fact bad for you, regardless of that love. To know that your love loves someone else more than they ever loved you, and still believe that you are worthy of a great amount of love, though days and days of searching has left you empty handed.

I want to remind you, and myself, in case you will be the one in the room staring unloveable in the face tonight at midnight when loves are smooching each other and popping champagne- that you are worth it. The universe gives you exactly what you handle and it has a beautiful, mind bending heart mending love for you, right around the corner in good old 2011.

Hang on little fearless heart.
Live with integrity.
Love fearlessly.
And
Dance.dance.dance.

" Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? " -life of Pi

Sometimes when I finish reading a book I am so madly in love with the character that I actually am sad that I do not get to hang with them anymore. True book nerd for realz. What I loved the most about Pi is that there is a fantastic story for every normal occurrence, he and I, we see magic and myth where there is a harsh reality.

Maybe I was the dreamer after all?

I believe in love. Fairytales. I believe that hard work works. I believe that we all get a fairy godmother. I believe that the little animals in the sea all sing to each other and that dogs can understand English. If none of those things really exist, but I live my life believing it to be so... Who cares?

In the middle of this amazing adventure I have been thinking about... Adventure. Perhaps simultaneously reading "Life of Pi" (for the second time) + "Letters to a young poet" does that to a girl. I've been on an island, riding a bike everywhere making friends with starfish, the millions of bugs who think I am tasty and the stars and sea. I have never been good at taking a break, being alone with my thoughts or without a busy work schedule.

I found myself during most of early 2010 snuggling up to my laptop + spending all my free time in a haze of teaching, dancing, writing, designing, blogging, airplane rides, and the business of busy. That, was a lonely existence and at some point I was determined to stop complaining of my lonlies and go out into the big bad world of actual human interaction and put my free time and heart on the line. I have been trying my hardest to break a few of my work-a-holic tendencies. Laptops, after all, are not the comfortable to snuggle.

I like to think that life is one big adventure. I spend very little time calculating the things I do or say. This is a slight flaw. But makes for an excellent adventure. You see, who are we to say what is "right" and " wrong". We have all done may things in our lives that at some point seemed like the absolute right thing to do, only to have it blow up in our face with horrific wrong-ness. We simply do not get to decide what makes other people happy, or what is right, normal or acceptable. I trust in the universe and whatever it places in front of my face is there for a reason.

All adventures are an opportunity to:
grow
Be excited
Fill my heart
Challenge myself to learn something new
Learn something about myself

The answer always has to be YES! We have to stop caring about what the world might think of our choices. We are all on great adventures with our hearts, minds and bodies! It is exciting, heartbreaking, crazy, delicious and by saying "yes" to these adventures you never have to wonder " what if?"

It is that time of the year where we all get a fresh start. We get to redefine ourselfs and start on a new path- so jump in headfirst and fearlessly to your new bad-ass self! You are far more fabulous then you will ever know, and a lust for life and a giant smile can turn any bad hair day into you being a gorgini!

" You are so young. You stand before beginnings. I would beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not look now for answers because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to LIVE the question. Perhaps you will gradually without even knowing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." - Letters to a young Poet

Hi guys. (sigh)
I am leaving the am for a backpacking trip through Thailand tomorrow. I do not own a tv. I don't watch tv. Instead of shows about places, I just go places. Super fun.
I wasn't sure what to write here since I won't see you all again until 2011. I will be somewhere in the air between Toyko + LA when NYE strikes! What an amazingly weird, awesomely heartbreaking, magically loveable, courageous, jumping-in-head-first year I have had.

This is my thought for the end of 2010. Sometimes we get the things we want, and sometime we don't. I want to extend a giant thank you to the people who said no, didn't want to love, sign, publish, hire, or book me this year. I learned more from the no's then I ever did from getting a yes. (note: this is what people who get a lot of no's say to make it seem like it doesn't bug us!- It totally bums me out, always.)

Sometimes we think we want or need something.
When the universe has other plans for us we do what any chick does...

we cry.
chop all of our hair off.
spend $200 bucks at forever 21 because OBVIOUSLY a new tank top will make all of our dissapointments go away.
What I think we can all learn is that sometimes people who are rescuing you are doing it by letting you rescue yourself.

I broke-up with NYC a year ago and moved in with my new squeeze, Mr. Los Angeles. I knew this was a city that ate people alive, turned people sour and made you want to get fake boobs, a BMW and a tan. I am happy to say that I am ending the year with only one of those things (obviously not the boobs~braless+flawless ladies!), in addition to a ton of hope for 2011. I took a giant leap of faith this year by taking this blog and made it into a book, and I am overwhelmed with the love and support for you, your moms, people out there in cyberspace who write me letters that my little project changed their lives...that is, honestly, what matters to me. I feel like I was put on this earth to be a positive tunnel of light for all the rad chicks out there! SO thank you. Seriously. I am humbled at your love.

I thought that I would leave you with the last few passages of "Rockettes, Rockstars + Rockbottom". I have spent the year posting really gnarly pieces about heartbreak, sick people, rejection and making you, your mom, and MY mom cry. I thought I would leave you with the end of the story and an uplifting feeling of trust that the universe gives us exactly what we can handle, nothing more, nothing less.



"When I left home at 18, I wanted to be a dancer. I’m happy to report I succeeded. I also had a clear picture of what my match would look like, and on that end, I haven’t been as successful.

My dad once said to me, “Baby girl, you can have it all, but you can’t have it all at the same time.” So true. I haven’t found my white picket fence. But I like to think that my time spent in the midst of my rock ‘n’ dance life meant something. Sometimes I look back and this story is more like a story I read and not something I actually lived. I can look at pictures and not even recognize myself. I don’t feel like that girl, and maybe that’s why we live through things. We hurt, we heal and we prove to ourselves that we can survive. Even more, we can rise from the adversity that life throws at us. I happened to do it while kicking in a pair of three-inch heels.
I could tell a million more stories. There are more words and more memories, but nothing will ever take the place of being there and alive in the magical moments that were mine. Being backstage at Mötley Crüe and meeting Slash, the more than 150,000 kicks I performed as part of the Rockettes, standing
in France on the side of the stage supporting Dreamer and looking out at the sea of people, knowing this was a once in a lifetime moment. I was there, I lived it. I made huge sacrifices for this life. Sometimes the world crashes down around me, and I wonder if it was all worth it. Other times I know it was.


One of the hardest things I ever had to learn in life is that the things that I love won’t always love me back. It is heartbreaking. It is disappointing. But I have learned that this is just the way it is. Sometimes we have to get sad and cry and then the next day we have to put on our combat boots of life and stomp through the best we can. We can’t get disappointed when the world doesn’t give us what we gave it.
Following your dreams has little to do with talent. It has more to do with being a fighter, relentless in your dedication and focused. Someone once said that I should, “stop talking about hard work because I got handed everything on a silver platter.” I wish that were true. I work hard and fight hard and really, only the last few years has really loved me back. I attended seven auditions in the last week, four in the last two days, along with dance classes, television classes and three rehearsal days. I book one out of every 20 jobs I audition for. I walk around feeling pretty terrible about myself most days. There are a hundred dancers better than me and a hundred worse.
But I love dancing. I love my place in the universe. I love this life even when it doesn’t love me back. I moved to New York in a slow winter with $500 in my pocket. I made this life for myself, and I take full responsibility for all my successes and failures. As far as forgiveness goes, I’ve also learned that there is nothing more divine you can do than forgive someone who has wronged you.
As humanity evolves, we must take every day and every breath as if it’s the first, last and only thing we have. If we constantly work on ourselves, our souls, and dealing with the influx of emotions, grudges, ego, hurt, happiness, forgiveness, resentment and mistakes, then we have only grown to deal with the past. If we see things and people in our lives as they were yesterday, then there has been no growth. We must give each
other the constant ability to change. Everything that happened in the past never happened. I do not know that person or those days. I only know this day, this person standing before me and the words and actions as they say or do them in front of me. We must let everything and everyone in our lives evolve.

I’ve had amazing conversations with each of my rockstars and it really is true when they say time heals all wounds. It does. Things that seemed so important to me then are meaningless now. I said I would love my rockstars forever, and I meant it. I just love them in a different way. I’m thankful for the challenge of healing my heart after they left, because without them I would’ve never hit rockbottom and had to find my way out. On the way out of heartbreak, I found the most beautiful love ever, and after years of searching, crawling and confusion, I found the one true love of my life – myself."



I love you little army. Enjoy the holidays.
Courage. Passion. Hard work.

you're only you. and your job is to become the best you.

"it's just about gathering power. and strength. and getting to be a more secure amazing human.
it's not about labels.
dancer.
musician.
winner.
loser.
it's about accumulating.
and growing.
and becoming amazing.
you are not a victim of how you are wired.
you can rewire.
become a more efficient machine in the way that...
it's ALL a win.
and it's ALL a dream come true."


Last night I told a friend of mine that I was a jaded, closet hopeless romantic. He responded by saying:

"ha ha ha ha. you are an out of the closet hopeless romantic.you are running the streets hopeless romantic. screaming thru your megaphone."

Sometimes we get so caught up in the way our lives and hearts are supposed to be, that we forget to enjoy how they actually are. I am a goal wired person. I make goals and then I obsess completely about them until they are reached. I am like a horse with blinders. Goal. Goal. Goal. The weird thing about work is that, this is a very good way to be. Sadly, with your heart you cannot will yourself into love, or even set aside some time to "fall in love". I think I need to learn that the John Lennon was right

"Love is free, free is love
Love is living, living love"

Love isn't a fancy dress or a dozen roses. Love isn't a horse drawn carriage or a perfect dinner. We do not (sadly) live inside the movies. So, today is your chance to "rewire", take your blinders off and open your heart and look around- the universe is giving you great gifts that you are not even noticing right now!






ps. Teddy, oh teddy, why are you the cat to my meow? the awesomesauce to my radburger? Boy dancing might be my favorite thing in the world next to green tea and books.