Recently I've made it my business to try a bunch of mildly batshit midlife things

Recently I've made it my business to try a bunch of mildly batshit midlife things that I have no reasonable expectation of being good at. Tonight's spontaneous effort was having a glass of wine, borrowing the $5 entrance fee from my 13 year old son, and heading down to the local Zumba class.

Now, those who know and love me will also know that I dance like a wombat in gumboots. The good Lord did not see fit to bless me with coordination - but even that's not the problem. It's inhibition, born from lack of confidence, born from fear, of everything and nothing in particular. There are so many things I’ve been afraid to try. I’ve always dreamed of dancing. Not even being good, but just not caring.

When I arrived at the Zumba studio, I wondered why the lighting was subdued. Whatever: I was profoundly grateful for it. I found my way automatically right to the back, into a corner, where I could shuffle and thud as inconspicuously as a person can hope to shuffle and thud.

Minutes later, under the dim lights and as the tacky music fired up, I couldn’t help myself. My body, always so constrained by other people’s eyes, began to help itself to all the space around me, arms reaching and legs striding and kicking. My habitual concentration-scowl had turned into something suspiciously like a smile. The inhibitions began to subside. I was getting into it, despite myself.

I never cared much for my body. Even though it took me where I wanted to go, grew babies, did most of the things I asked of it, I could only see its shortcomings. I couldn't imagine it rousing feelings better than indifference, in myself or in anyone else. I criticised what I should have nurtured. Maybe worst of all, although I knew it was wrong, and yet I somehow couldn't help it, I taught all this to my children.

But here I was, surrounded by women my age or older, who’d also exchanged their hang-ups for their activewear, unselfconsciously gyrating all those parts of us for which we are simultaneously judged and shamed. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t … a little bit sexy. Sexy because it was entirely free, and for no one but ourselves. It reminded me of why, back in the day, we used have to women’s only spaces (other than the shittiest corners of the labour market).*

It bears repeating that I wasn't in any way good at Zumba. When everyone else shimmied to the right, I shimmied to the ... other right. The lady beside me whose personal space I kept flailing into was endlessly patient. I kept trying. I started to get a little better. When the Ricky Martin started, something almost spiritual happened to me.

I achieved tonight something small but, for me, kind of precious. It wasn't being good. It was not caring. I am a 43 year old woman, finally learning what it means to inhabit, fully and joyfully, her own body. As they say, better late than never.

Anyway, where I’m going with this is that whatever it is you want to do, give it a bloody go. The glass of wine first is optional.

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* Before you ask, I believe that women’s only spaces are for all women, cis and trans. I yearn for the day when every sister can shake it in unity on the dance floor. It’s what Ricky Martin would have wanted.