Tracy's Dance & Tumbling

“At Tracy's Dance & Tumbling LLC, we're a little bit unique because we're a dance studio based on inclusion: we have two students with Down syndrome, lots of hearing-impaired kids, kids with ADHD, kids on the autism spectrum. Along with that, most of our kids aren’t here to be competitive, they just want some activity and to have fun with their friends. That’s what we're here for, so our goal is to use the 45 minutes they have to make them feel a little bit better when they leave.

A couple of seasons ago, we had a kid that almost quit because she did not want to wear a leotard. Her and her mom were at war, so I was like, ‘You don't have to! Look at me! I'm in leggings and a T-shirt, so you can wear leggings and a T-shirt. Actually, wear your favorite T-shirt!’ That changed her whole perspective and experience of dance, because then she was comfortable in what she was wearing. After that, she was able to do her best and bring some of her personality to the class.

Especially during show week, you'll hear me say a million times, ‘Kids first, dance second.’ We’re not on Broadway and we're not at a competition. With a competition team, everything has to be to a certain standard because you're competing against other studios. We have a competition team for the dancer who does want to take it a more seriously, but even then, we balance it out by doing things like community service and saying, ‘Yes, competition is about you, but what can you do for others?’

Part of the reason I focus so much on inclusion at the studio is because I am dyslexic. Growing up with a learning disability, I was often told I wasn't enough. I was told I wasn't smart enough, and there were a lot of times that I believed it.

Even though I had my mom in my ear telling me, ‘You can do this, I will help you.’ I listened to the people who told me otherwise. It took a while for me to realize that I could overcome my circumstances.

I just had to figure out a different way to do it: you have to dare to be different.

That’s why I always say, ‘Kids first and dance second.’

I am very proud of the studio, because while dance is my passion, inclusivity is what is most important to me. When I opened, I wanted the studio to be a place kids could feel safe. I wanted it to be a place where kids could come and feel, ‘Oh, this is a place for me!’"

“We wanted children, but we learned that the old-fashioned way wasn't going to work for us. We were 25, married my high school sweetheart, and I had this perfect little life mapped out for us:

1. Get married

2. Wait a year

3. Have three kids, two years apart

Then life happened and I was devastated. All I wanted to be was a mom, and we had basically built a life around these kids that we couldn’t have. When we found out, I just couldn't believe it. Like, how could this happen to us? We started exploring other options, because we felt like for this to happen to us, there had to be a better reason. God had to have a better plan for us, and we decided that plan was adoption.

For us that was a better route, and I say this because I wouldn't ever want to offend anyone, but we left a fertility specialist and I knew in my heart that was not for me. I didn't think I could go through it, because it's quite a process and it's very expensive. At the end of the day, you may or may not have a child. We felt like even though adoption might take some time and it could be messy, eventually it was going to result in a family. I didn't think I could handle that disappointment of doing fertility.

We found an adoption agency, and we made a match in three months from being approved: our daughter Avery. As our kids grew up, ‘adoption’ was always part of our vocabulary. There was a time where Avery asked, ‘Mom, when did you tell me I was adopted?’ And I said, ‘When you were an hour old, when I met you.’ It was always a thing. We’ve always just given the kids permission to cry for someone you miss that you never met. We also have always been open to the messiness of adoption. Loss is involved. It's the biggest part, next to love. You can't just celebrate the love part without embracing the loss part of adoption. A lot of times on their birthdays where it’s really emotional. Even when they were little, they didn't really know how to process those feelings. We've always embraced that and tried to do as good of a job as we could.

Avery was surrounded by a lot of positivity about adoption, even the messy parts. But when she got to middle school, she was starting to get some negative comments about being adopted. It really bothered her and she felt like she needed to do something, and that's when she wanted to create Avery’s Adoption Awesomeness Foundation.

She was 14 at that time and she did a pageant at the teen level in Bay County and you have to have a platform for a cause of some kind. Hers was about adoption. She didn’t love pageants, but liked having that platform and asked, ‘Can we just start a foundation?’ I’m like, ‘Okay. Like I have no idea how to do that. But I'll figure it out.’ So, that’s what we did.

We just started fundraising mostly to spread awareness, which was her main objective at first, and then she thought we would raise money for families like us with adoption expenses. But quickly, our hearts were pulled in the direction of foster care, realizing that that's where the need was. She's like, ‘You know, families like us can do their own fundraising.’

Our first event was a Zumba-thon at her high school Bay City Western and a bake sale and we just built off that. We haven't gotten nonprofit status yet and we’ve wavered on that. We just raise money and give it away, like to local organizations. We’re just a foundation and that keeps us from getting larger corporate donations, but we also have some really good nonprofits in our area. With that, I worry that we would then take from those and duplicate the efforts, so we partner a lot with Foster Families Navigation & Resource Center.

All this is what led me to pageantry. One time, I asked Avery, ‘Do you think doing another pageant would help the foundation? She's like, ‘Well, I don't really want to do one, but do you?’ One of my friends was telling me about Ms. Pageantry, which is a huge world I didn't even know existed."

“As a way to help supportAvery’s Adoption Awesomeness Foundation, I decided to do the Mrs. Michigan Pageant. When you do a pageant, you need some kind of platform or cause, and adoption was mine.

But I had no idea that I had thrown myself into the biggest event and how elite it was. I had never done a pageant before. I did awful and felt like a fish out of water. But I decided that I wanted to do one more time because I knew I could do better. That was last year and I made the top five, which was awesome.

Then I had a couple of friends saying, ‘There's this other system that's based on community service and you'd be a better fit for that.’ Then one of my little dancers came in to show me her new sash and crown from a pageant she had just done and said, ‘Miss Tracy, will you do the pageant with me?’

And the rest is history. I'm not very good at saying no to four-year-olds, and this little Eloise will just melt your heart. I don't know how anyone says no to this kid! So we started training for American Royal Beauties together.

I trained every day, sometimes for three hours a day, so I could be as prepared as possible. That being said, when the day of the pageant came…whew! I laugh because my family's been teasing me about how nervous I was. The perfect quote for me would be, ‘She thought she could. But then she thought she couldn’t. Then she wasn't sure again. And then she thought she could. Then she thought, ‘There's no way I can’. Then she did.’

The outgoing Ms. was just so helpful and grounding for me. She must have seen how nervous I was because right before I walked on for the interview event and said, ‘Do you want to pray?’ She held my hands, we prayed, and I felt calm. One of the things she asked was for God to give me the power to share my heart, be relaxed, and just go in and do what I need to do.

I left the stage feeling like it was the best interview I have ever done. I felt like I shared my heart and showed them who I was, or at least as much as you can in four minutes.

But then I didn't get any awards in the optional events, and that Saturday of crowning, they started with Star Jewel, a sister pageant. I did terribly and didn't place in the top three. So I thought, ‘Oh, that is not good.’

I went to lunch with my husband and daughter and was like, ‘We might as well pack up and go home.’

When we went on for the crowning, I was talking with the girl in front of me because she also had a hard week, and we joked that we would be the first two off stage.

Then, all of a sudden, we're down to the final three.

I was convinced that I’d be the next name called. The three of us were talking and I said, ‘I’m so proud of you. You guys did awesome. Thanks for making my week,’ basically saying my farewell and congratulations.

Then they call Jackie's name.

It was down to me…and the girl who won all the optional events AND came in first for the Star Jewel.

Then they called her name for first runner up.

Then I go into this fog of like, ‘Huh?’ because at first it didn’t register with me what that meant. I just felt like my brain wasn't catching up with reality.

I just kept looking back like, ‘Am I going to wake up?’ Are they going to tell me ‘Oh, that was a mistake?’ I just kept looking at the announcer. When I realized that I had won and been crowned the 2023 American Beauties National Ms., it was like an out of body experience. Then I went off the stage and about had a panic attack.

My daughter was like, ‘Mom, you need your inhaler.’”

“I did a couple local pageants when I was a teenager, mainly to get another opportunity to dance. But also, to get kind of deep, I am dyslexic. Growing up with a learning disability, I was often told I wasn't enough and it took a while for me to realize that I could overcome my circumstances by figuring out a different way to do things.

You want to be a mom, but you can't have kids? Find a different way.

How do I stay in business during a pandemic? Find a different way.

Pageantry, I guess, is another one of those things. With having a learning disability and negative influences as a young child, I also have severe anxiety. I started treating that anxiety about seven years ago, and I started to do more things that scared me.

Pageants gave me confidence, and they got me to where I could say, ‘Okay, what's the next thing I can overcome?’ They showed me that I’m not that scared little girl who was told she's not enough anymore. It was really scary the first time, but overcoming that makes you think, ‘Whoa, if I can do that, what else can I do?”

For anyone who is also struggling in similar ways, I would say to take small steps. Start somewhere. I didn't start with pageantry. I started with small things like going to a family function. I started with spending less time during my day in my bedroom. It was small steps that got me there. You have to overcome small stuff first.”

- Tracy Arthur, Tracy's Dance & Tumbling LLC