Yes, to both.
It started in elementary school. When they were casting for dancers for a school play I tried out and got a part. After that it was ballet, and then I fell madly in love with belly dance and at one point was performing every weekend.
As for public speaking…
I wrote a poem in elementary school that I guess the adults liked because my teacher entered it into a contest and I was a finalist. I don’t remember much about it other than I had to go somewhere and read it out loud in front of a bunch of adults that got all crazy about it, and I was like 🤷♀️. After that I had a school assignment I had to read before the class. It was a creative writing project. I was supposed to write a twenty page story. It was eighty pages… So I picked part of it and read that.
I hadn’t been sure of what to think at the time. I went up, I read. There was dead silence and a few whispers, and then nothing. I was like, um… okay then.
But my teacher gave me a good grade so cool.
I used to belong to a writer’s group in a city. It was pretty big and once I read out loud to get critiqued. Again, I got up, I read, and then silence. I stood there awkwardly and then sat back down. They moved on to the next person and no one said one word to me about it. EVER. I tried to ask someone about that but they changed the subject.
Very bizarre but I was like, okay, I guess I don’t get feedback… 🤪 My life went on just fine without it anyway.
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Darcy Branwyn 
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