- If there is somebody on the street that's like, what do you do?

I'm like, well, I, you know, I'm, I'm a pole dancer.

They're like, you're what?

They're just like, trust me.

People are like, okay.

My particular style in pole dances, you know, I was a contemporary ballet dancer and then I started doing pole and I combine those two things.

That's what I love.

That's what fulfills my soul.

Those are, you know, the pieces that I create.

The fact is that pole dance did start in clubs and I have admiration for these people.

Like they created this from nothing.

It was just like a thing that they threw themselves into.

Dance has always been a part of my life.

So it became a dream to move to New York City and become a dancer.

I landed a really small gig, but it didn't necessarily lead to anything else.

But I stayed in New York and continued to do different auditions and nothing really came from any of the auditions that I was doing at that time.

I was 28, which was like over the hill for trying to start a dance career in New York City.

So I googled like alternative dance in New York City and pole dance came up and I was like, whoa, this is amazing.

And I realized that there is opportunity even at 30 in the pole dance community.

And I was like, maybe I can still have a, a dance career.

Started pole dancing in 2012 and two years later was when I won the US National Championship in 2014.

And it was some kind of dream that I was living that I never even really had.

It was very, very surreal and it was super cool because I thought that my life as a dancer was done.

The beauty of full dances, that you don't have to have any kind of specific background.

You don't have to be a certain size or a certain age or a certain race, a certain sex.

You can literally, anybody can do it.

Which is just one of the things that draws me to it today.

And one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about teaching it and spreading the joy of it.

I got married and pregnant 2018.

Had baby one, 2019, baby two, 2020.

I was terrified.

I luckily have a really amazing partner.

- It's so cool just seeing the impact that you have on these little humans lives and the way they answer questions and their mannerisms.

I see so much of myself and her in both of our kids.

- Both of them jump on the pole.

So exciting.

It was two weeks before my son's birthday and I was doing all this planning for his birthday and I found the lump and I was like, I need to stop planning his birthday.

I knew immediately that it was something super serious and they went in to remove it and they realized after they opened him up that something wasn't quite right.

He had a cancerous tumor called Rhabdo, myo sarcoma.

And - You know, it's literally every appearance's worst nightmare.

And you know, from there - We were very lucky.

It was still stage one, it seemed to be localized.

He had the tumor resection surgery.

It was super successful.

Clear margins.

He had the one year chemo, so I took him every week - Right around the 10 month, all his imaging was coming back negative and everything was looking good.

We're pretty much just on an imaging plan from from now on.

- He's, I think, more mature than most six year olds, you know, 'cause he's gone through some, some things.

He's certainly still a 6-year-old, rambunctious and crazy and oh my gosh, dance wasn't only something that was there.

It was there to help me get through things.

It was the one consistent thing that I had when my son was going through treatment and, and even just being a new mom, I was lucky to be able to still find the time to come into this room and you know, have an hour to create and dance a little bit.

One of the hardest things for me during the whole time was, you know, being a mom of a toddler and still dealing with a toddler, not knowing how to handle it, being grateful that he's alive.

And I feel like there were other people that were going through that exact same thing, but I just didn't have access to those people.

When I met Miracle, she had already been pole dancing.

Yvonne, I eventually got into pole dancing.

All of three of our sons were going through treatment around the same time.

So that's kind of how the three of us connected.

So the idea of Warrior Mom initially sparked with Yvonne and Miracle talking about wanting to create a community of some sort that moms had access to starting at the beginning of their journey and they decided to add me in.

- I feel like behind every cancer mom, there's a story and we wanted to create a space where we can have these events and these sessions where we as a community, what is happening to you who needs mental help.

That's extremely important for both the kiddos and the parents.

And if you are the mom that needs financial support, who can we connect you to that can give you that right now we have the pleasure to be under our amazing fighters with Leanna Ely.

So we are under her umbrella.

- Becoming a nonprofit is a process on its own, but as we are working on growing and expanding, it's a really perfect, beautiful relationship that we have with our amazing fighters.

I had organized a performance a year prior to us kind of creating Warrior Mom initiative and I thought, Ooh, what if we do a show that benefits our pediatric cancer organization?

And then we thought about not only just doing the show, but also offering raffles to bring in more money for it.

And that's kind of how it was born Gold.

- We have performers from up and down the East coast.

We have somebody from Arizona coming this year.

There's some world class talent here in Virginia and in New York and in DC and National Global Pole Dance Champions.

- You know, it really is a dream to be able to combine two things that I'm so passionate about, pole I've been doing forever, and pediatric cancer awareness.

People know about it and they hear about it, but you know, people that come to the show get a real feel for what some of these families go through.

This performance piece, I purposefully did not make it too, too challenging so that I could keep my story and my purpose in mind during the entire thing.

My story revolved around my love and admiration for my husband and his support through my life and our life, particularly through the times my son was going through treatment call.

I wanna tell you, I have literally the love of my life that I'm married to.

I have these two beautiful, amazing, healthy children and I still have all of my dance and all of my pole dance and my students and you know, I feel I'm very lucky.

- Okay, I'm gonna be.