There’s a version of postpartum recovery that looks like slow walks, gentle stretching, and easing back into the world one quiet afternoon at a time. And then there’s my version: two months after pushing a human being out of my body, I signed up for pole dancing classes.
I know. Even I wasn’t sure about it at the time.
But here I am, over a year later, with a pole installed in my home, a growing collection of pole shoes I’m mildly obsessed with, and a toddler who has claimed said pole as his own personal playground. Life is unexpected and honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.
🌱 How It Started (And Why Two Months Postpartum, Of All Times)
I’ve always had a movement practice — yoga, mostly. I’m not a dancer. I have never been a dancer. I don’t have that natural ease in my body when music plays, that instinct to just move. What I have is a deep appreciation for how it feels to be physically present in my own skin, which is something yoga gave me and something I wasn’t ready to give up after having Kendall.
Pole dancing came into my radar almost by accident — the way most good things do. I was curious. I had a body that had just done something enormous. And maybe, somewhere underneath the exhaustion and the newborn haze, I needed something that was mine.
So I went. Two months postpartum, I walked into a pole class, and I haven’t really stopped since.
💪 The Moment I Realized My Body Was Stronger Than I Thought
Here’s the thing no one tells you when you start pole dancing without a dance background: the first few months are humbling in ways you don’t expect.
I’d watch my teachers and classmates move through combinations — fluid, expressive, their bodies somehow translating music into motion — and I’d feel this gap between what I saw and what my body was doing. Like my brain understood the choreography but the message got lost somewhere on the way down to my feet. It was frustrating. It still is, sometimes. I’d leave class feeling equal parts inspired and defeated, which is a strange cocktail to sit with.
But then — and I remember this clearly — there was a moment where I held something on the pole that I didn’t expect to hold. Something clicked, not in my mind, but in my body. I felt strong. Not strong in the way I’d felt in yoga, not the quiet strength of holding a warrior pose. This was different. This was my body telling me: you can carry more than you think you can.
That was the moment I stopped wondering if I belonged in pole and started just showing up.
🏠 My Pole at Home — and My Tiny Co-Pilot
One of the best decisions I made was installing a pole at home late last year. It meant I could practice without the pressure of a class setting, move on my own time, and just play without feeling watched.
What I didn’t fully anticipate was that Kendall would have opinions about this.
In his early months, he’d just watch me — this tiny person lying on his mat, tracking my movement with his big eyes like I was the most fascinating thing in the room. (Honestly, that’s great motivation to keep going.) Now? He’s fully in on it. He grabs the pole, he wants to spin, and when I hold him and we turn together, he absolutely loses it with joy. There is nothing — nothing — that makes pole feel more worth it than your baby giggling through a spin and wanting to go again.
It’s become our thing. My movement practice and his first experience of what it feels like to be held and trusted and spun through the air by someone who loves you. I didn’t plan for that, but I’m so glad it happened.
🕺 All the Styles, No Commitment (Yet)
What I’ve learned is that “pole dancing” is not one thing. It’s a whole universe.
There’s pole that’s rooted in strength — climbs, holds, inversions, the kind that makes your arms shake and your core question every choice you’ve ever made. There’s pole choreography that’s all about expression, linking movements into something that tells a story. There’s low flow and floorwork, which is its own language entirely — grounded, deliberate, deeply beautiful. And then there’s heels pole, which I will simply say is another dimension of human capability that I have enormous respect for.
I’m still exploring all of them. I haven’t found my lane yet, and I think I’ve made peace with that. Right now I just want to be a student of all of it — show up, absorb, let my body decide what it gravitates toward over time.
🎭 The Introvert at the Showcase
Every month, there’s a choreo showcase. You learn a piece, and then — at the end of the month — you perform it.
I dread it every single time.
And I do it anyway.
Outside of pole class, I’ve noticed that people don’t believe me when I say I’m an introvert. I can hold a conversation, I’m friendly, I can work a room when I have to. But put me on a pole in front of an audience with a choreographed routine and suddenly every single cell in my body is screaming that we should leave immediately and never return.
I stay. I perform. I survive. And then I feel this tiny, quiet pride that I didn’t run.
The community in pole is something I’m still figuring out how to navigate. Making friends in class doesn’t come naturally to me — I’m one of those people who feels most comfortable once I’ve already gotten to know someone, and class environments move quickly. But the people I’ve connected with through social media — fellow pole dancers who slid into my DMs or whose lives I’ve been watching through their posts — those connections have meant a lot. It’s easier for me to find my footing there, in the slower, more intentional space of online conversation.
🛍️ The Great Pole Wear Struggle (A Love Story, Sort Of)
Let me talk about pole wear for a second, because it’s a whole journey within the journey.
I am small. Not petite in the way brands mean when they say “petite” — I mean skinny in a way that makes sizing genuinely difficult across every category of clothing. Work clothes, going-out clothes, activewear — all of it requires some degree of improvisation. I’d hoped that pole wear brands — especially those coming out of Southeast Asia, built with Asian body proportions in mind — would be different. Some of them are better. Most of them still aren’t quite right.
It’s frustrating, not just as a pole dancer but as someone who’s been navigating this sizing gap her whole life. Clothes are made with a certain shape in mind, and my shape isn’t it. I’ve gotten used to it, which doesn’t make it less annoying.
What I have fallen down a delightful rabbit hole with is pole shoes. I am not ashamed to admit that I have done extensive research into pole shoe brands, heel heights, platform styles, and the eternal question of whether I am a Pleasers person or something else entirely. Shopping for pole gear has become one of my quiet joys — learning which brands exist, what they stand for, which ones are worth the splurge. It’s fashion, it’s function, it’s a whole subcultural ecosystem, and I am absolutely here for it.
🧘♀️ What Pole Has Actually Done for Me
A year in, here’s what I know for certain: pole dancing has been genuinely healing.
Not in a dramatic, cinematic way. In the quieter way that matters more — the steady way. After having Kendall, there’s this version of yourself you’re trying to locate again. Not the pre-baby version (she’s gone, and honestly that’s okay), but the version of you that exists now, in this body, with this life. Pole has been one of the ways I’ve been finding her.
My body feels stronger than it ever has. My mind is clearer on the days I move than the days I don’t. There’s something about having a practice that belongs entirely to you — separate from being a mom, separate from work, separate from every role you play — that quietly keeps you whole.
I want to stick to this. Long term. And that intention itself feels like something to protect.
🩰 What’s Next: Ballet, the Gym, and the Long Game
I’ve started thinking seriously about adding to my movement practice in ways that support where I want to go with pole.
Ballet is at the top of my list. I want the grace, the posture, the musicality — that thing that trained dancers have where their body seems to understand rhythm at a cellular level. I don’t have that yet. I think ballet might help me get there.
I’m also thinking about strength training more intentionally. The pole holds and climbs I dream about doing require a kind of upper body strength that doesn’t build itself. Hitting the gym — not casually but with some actual structure — feels like the missing piece.
For anyone else starting out, or considering it, here’s what a year of showing up has taught me about sticking to pole:
You don’t need a dance background. You need curiosity and a willingness to look confused for a while.
The community finds you, even if you’re an introvert. It might happen online before it happens in the studio. That’s still real.
Buy one good pair of shoes. Just do it. The right pair changes everything.
Install a pole at home if you can. Not just for practice — for the joy of spinning your baby in it at 10am on a Tuesday.
Let your “why” evolve. I started for myself. Now I also do it for Kendall — so he grows up watching his mom choose her joy on purpose.
I’m nowhere near where I want to be on the pole. My choreography still needs work, my dance quality is a constant project, and I’m still figuring out which style feels most like me. But I show up. Every month, even for the showcase I dread. Every morning in my living room, with Kendall watching or joining in.
That’s the whole secret, I think. Just keep showing up, even when you’re the one in the back of class who can’t quite follow the combination. Especially then.
The Diaries of Kimberly 
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