Growing up I had the most amazing childhood. My mother taught us everything before we were even in school. My father taught us gymnastics. Performance photos from famous places, and my parents with celebrities like Lawrence Welk, Nat King Cole, BB King and others, were on the walls of the office hall. My childhood was filled everyday with classical music over the loudspeakers, dance, yoga, poetry and make believe circus; always directed by my father who had actually been in the circus and had produced several big Las Vegas Casino acts. Our parents were both superheroes and celebrities. There was never a dull moment with all the kid activities, and some evenings as we slept, they would host parties with other celebrities (we lived in Las Vegas, NV.) Later my father would get the first Private Investigator license In Nevada and that just increased the stress. They began fighting in heated passionate arguments, that only artists would get into. They were adagio dance stars known throughout the world, and their passion for art and music was seen and heard throughout our home, and their fights were just as colorful. My siblings and I would huddle in fear, protected by our older sister during these unpredictable times. The last fight ended in extreme silence, and we found our father holding our mom with his back to the wall, and a gun to her head. That was the last fight. As I was on the plane about to take off, headed to see him in the hospital I received the phone call that he had died. More than 30 years of trying to get close to a man with guilt and shame of losing his family, the pride of his life, covered by all his coping methods so that he could look cool, only ended up with him looking like a fool. That flight My early life went from a picture perfect childhood, filled with colorful years of all forms of creativity and physical mastery, to cycles of passionately fighting parents ultimately ending with my father holding a gun to my mother’s head. The safety and reliability of that refuge my parents had worked diligently to create began to look like a facade. My father’s “play it cool” attitude after a year of depression, only ended up with him looking like a fool in the end. Having an intimate conversation with him was very difficult. And my attempts to help him as he got older were full of disappointments and misunderstandings. My mother had found more husbands and more flexibility but had a heart broken from the perfect home with children erased from her experience. I became curious to put it mildly, and I ended up leaving Las Vegas, where I grew up with my siblings and my parents, who were international adagio celebrities, performing with Nat King Cole, BB King, Lawrence Welk and more.I will always remember the sense of family and connection that my mother’s extended Latino family had. It was nothing words could describe because of the almost supernatural sensations of connection, belonging and support. From all this I dedicated my interest in the human body and spiritual meaning in life, resulting in books, television and speaking on important stages.Read more about this authorRead less about this author