The hoop brought me definition. It clarified the edges of my self.

My whole life I’ve had a talent for being the person other people wanted me to be. This was true at home as I was growing up, in school, and once I started working, where I had no boundaries between my job and my personal life. At my first job, I stayed in the office from 8am until 11pm.

I was never comfortable being single, so I plunged from the faltering point of one relationship into the headwaters of the next in a mostly unbroken stream of couplings. I was terribly skilled at fitting myself to the desires of my partner. One day I’d realize I wasn’t fulfilled, and I’d blame him or her for not reading me better, as opposed to blaming myself for not communicating my needs. But I couldn’t hear my needs; when asked I literally could not identify them: the desires of the other were always too loud.

I don’t remember thinking that people would like me less if I was myself, but I remember feeling certain that people loved me absolutely when I fashioned myself to their liking.

In striving to be perfect in the way the world wanted me to be, I was bulemic from 16 to 26. I’d have thrown up if it had worked for me, but mostly I just starved myself and binged and starved, exercised fanatically and then binged and worked out some more, in neverending cycles that revolved around food and consumed many of my waking hours.

I strove to be attractive. I was polite, appropriate, industrious. I looked the part, acted the part, and got the part: good daughter, good assistant, good wife.

Just before getting divorced, I sustained an injury to my left lower back and hip area that made my bone sheer upwards and ripped muscle tissues so that mere walking became painful.

It was around that time that I was introduced to hooping by a friend. Once I got the knack of keeping the hoop around my middle, it made me smile and it made me sweat.

Then it became more. I found it meditative to bump the hoop in rhythm with the music. I felt safe encircled by my hoop. At night when I closed my eyes I saw the hoop coming around from behind me and flashing in front of me before disappearing. I counted hoops instead of sheep to ward off sleeplessness.

In the span of a single minute, my hoop rolls across the spot where I was injured about one hundred times. My chiropractor says it’s the best thing I could do for myself, providing continuous massage of the mass of scar tissue. But more importantly, the sensation is a reminder of my physical boundaries—these are the edges of Ariane, the hoop whispers as it circles me. It makes me feel whole, independent, strong, and self-confident.

Spending so much time isolated within my hoop has enabled me to finally hear my desires and needs. It’s made it possible for me to be self-sufficient. I no longer have to rely on seeing myself reflected in the eyes of other people to believe in myself.

Hooping renders me radiant; and though I hear that confirmed from other people, I don’t need them to tell me. I feel it.