Do you remember how learning to dance feels like the first day of class?

Feeling awkward, intimidated? Full of doubt. I’ve always, always loved salsa. Marc. Anthony, Victor Manuel. Even now, I’m feeling my body moving with the salsa rhythm. But over the years, I forgot the chemise. The little movements that once came so naturally. Every time I went back to class, I felt the mix of nerves and excitement. The kind where even the beginner level dancers look like years ahead of you.

You try the moves and your body locks up or trips over itself. It slowly, with time, something shifts. You get out of your head and into your body. You begin to trust the rhythm. Not just the counts, but the rhythm you already carry inside of you. That’s where I remember when:

A salsa instructor once told me “the most important thing about dancing isn’t counting. It’s discovering the rhythm that you already have.”

I think about that a lot as an entrepreneur.

I am the first one in my family to take this path, breaking from traditional ways of making money. It has felt like swimming upstream at times, sometimes against my own family’s expectations. But I’ve stayed in this river, trusting it and testing different currents, inviting others to swim with me.

But right now, the current feels heavy

• There’s a steady violence
• Funding cuts
• Saturation of consultants
• Mass deportation
• Organizational downsizing

To name a few. And it affects everything.

I’ve had to scream grief, name my insecurities, ride the waves of self-doubt that came with every proposal rejection, every ghosted email, every no. And yet, just like dancing, I’ve learned to dance with the no’s.

This is a solo dance. A dance that asks me to honor my own flow, my own genius, my own talent. Even when no one is there to mirror back. This dance gives me a life.

It heals a part of me that creates validation. The parts that aches for a neat little closure. For someone to just say “You are good enough”.

Because when you learn to dance with yourself, really dance, you stop worrying so much about the outcome. You trust that the right partner, the right project, the right yes will come at the right time.

And when it does… uf! It feels like magic.

So who wants to dance? Let’s dance.

Jorge Vidal
Intercambios, Founder and Cultural & Healing Facilitator