Have you ever taken a salsa class? That’s where I officially learned to pivot. Over repeated calls of “uno, dos, tres y vuelta,” my teacher got us to spin ourselves 360 degrees on one foot. Before that class, I don’t think I ever used the word, pivot.
 

Pivots, vueltas, are part of everyday conversation now.

But how does one actually pivot in a pandemic? Is it just about finding another job after losing one? Or does it have to involve spinning yourself into something new? When you make the turn, as my teacher explained, the goal is to bring yourself back to the place where you started.
 

But the pandemic has revealed and reminded us too graphically of the ills of our society for us to go back to where we were. Perhaps the pandemic pivot is more about taking a chance and getting to a place where you - where we all - can be firmly rooted.
 

The key to making the vuelta in salsa is to relax and trust. We might think we’re going to fall, but by remembering to breathe and get out of our heads and into our bodies, the vuelta comes almost naturally.
 

When my salsa teacher broke down the movement, it made sense. First you stand with your feet hips-width apart. Then you step to the front with one leg. Let’s say, with your right. Keeping your left foot firmly placed on the ground, just barely lunge into the right knee. Feeling the rhythm of the music, gently push your weight off the ball of your right foot, keeping the left planted. Turn your whole body all the way around to the left, until your right foot finds its way back to the floor. And there you have it. You’ve just made the vuelta.

As we go on two years of pandemic life — spinning on one foot most days, praying that the strength of that leg will hold us up until we come around and put both feet back on the ground — more than ever, we are looking for trust and a sense of assurance in ourselves and the world around us.
 

At the start of the pandemic, my search for stability took the form of an obsession with recreating my grandmother’s cornbread. Searching the internet until my eyes almost crossed. Calling family until they undoubtedly longed for the usual long stretches of not hearing from me. I almost drove myself crazy trying to find the recipe she used. Then, I remembered that even she pivoted from relying upon fine white cornmeal and a cast iron skillet, to happily using Jiffy mix and a nonstick pan. The objective was to have some kind of soft and crunchy, slightly sweet cornbread to soak up the vinegary juices of her collards or the luscious gravy of her pinto beans. Neither the mix nor the recipe were that important to her.
 

My Granny’s consistent, no-nonsense character, expressed in her cooking for sure, was a pivot from which I oscillated between challenges and victories for much of my life. Facing the biggest challenge yet – surviving a pandemic – I summon her steadiness as I navigate each day’s adjustments to maintain sanity, connection, and physical distance. May my footing, and yours too, be firmly planted as we create space for ourselves to breathe, relax, and firmly step into our next vuelta.
 

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We are honored to have collaborated with Raquel through our Share Your Voice initiative, an ongoing effort inspired by the #sharethemicnow movement. 

photo by Azra Sadr for GFJ Stories